West Concord Charter School to officially close at the end of school year

After months of seeking ways to increase student enrollment, the end came quietly last week as the West Concord Public Charter School board voted to close the doors at the end of the school year.
Board members voted 5-0 to close the school. Board member Naomi Froyum was not present at the meeting.
“The status right now is closure of the school,” said Board Chair Minor “Corky” Buckingham in opening the meeting. “We don’t have the numbers. The number is 29.”
School board members had determined earlier that unless they could enroll 40 students for the 2016-2017 school year there would not be the financial resources to keep the school open. After a last-ditch effort to increase enrollment the number stayed at 29.
The choice facing the board, Buckingham said, was either to close voluntarily or be closed by the school’s authorizer, the Friends of Education in the Twin Cities.
“We said if we gave it a last-ditch try and it didn’t work we would close,” added Board Member Crystal Nielsen.
Parents were to be notified of the closing by e-mail and a formal letter was also to be sent.
With the official decision to close made attention now turns to the process for closing down the three-year-old school.
Buckingham said the school had received the closure information from Friends of Education and Director Nicole Musolf added that she had a closing checklist of 36 items.
The biggest item to be done now, she said, and potentially the most costly is to schedule an audit for the finances. The school will also need an attendance audit, she said, which will be conducted by the Minnesota Department of Education.
The hope is to have the financial audit done in June, Musolf said.
The building in which the school is located is a portable structure leased by the Charter School. Buckingham said it had come to West Concord from Minot, ND, where it was used after a flood and would stay at the current location until the owners found a new location.
Buckingham said that the playground equipment at the school is cemented in the ground and will stay at the location.
Supplies in the school will also have to be disposed of, Musolf said.
Those items purchased with grant funds will have to go to another Friends of Education school if their value reaches a certain threshold, she said.
Other supplies can be disposed of by the school, Musolf said, and if possible the school could sell some supplies to make some money. The cost of the financial audit has not been determined.