More Minnesota charter schools are facing possible termination

It was a record year for charter school failures in 2024, and 2025 could be just as bad.

Ten charter schools have been threatened with the loss of their contract by their state-approved authorizers in the past year, and at least nine others have been warned about significant contract violations, according to letters newly obtained by the Minnesota Star Tribune through nearly 200 public record requests.

Low academic performance was the most common problem, though schools — including one of the state’s best and oldest charters — also were cited for declining enrollment, financial woes or an unwillingness by school leaders to deal with challenges.

The threats are playing out against a backdrop of broader oversight problems with Minnesota’s charters following a 2024 Star Tribune investigation that revealed just 13 of 203 charters have consistently exceeded the state average in math and reading proficiency since 2016.

In a March letter to the leaders of Art and Science Academy (ASA) in Isanti, the Minnesota Guild of Public Charter Schools warned that the school’s contract would not be renewed because of “significant concerns with ASA’s organizational viability.”

The letter also cited the school’s history of operational problems, which go back to at least 2019 when the guild blasted the school’s oversight board for taking “little to no responsibility for the negative climate and conflicts that have occurred over the past two years.”

Cora Packard, ASA’s executive director, said in a written response to questions that the school has made “substantial strides in addressing all identified areas of concern” and is confident the guild will agree to a contract extension when the current agreement expires this summer.

It is fairly rare for authorizers to formally warn a school of contract violations outside of performance reviews that are done each time a charter school’s contract is up for renewal, typically every three to five years, according to a review of charter school contract documents.

In 2024, nine of the 181 charter schools operating in the state at the beginning of the year closed, the most since the first charter school failure in 1996, state records show.

At least six of those nine schools received warning letters from their regulators before shutting down. In Minnesota, state leaders largely outsourced the job of regulating charter schools to 10 nonprofits, whose public funding is dependent on how many schools they oversee as so-called “authorizers.” Two public school districts also oversee a handful of schools.

Authorizers have been forgiving of violations in the past.

In late 2024, a Star Tribune review of more than 200 evaluations covering 80 charter schools showed that authorizers routinely overlooked academic failures and other problems in order to extend the lives of schools that collectively pay them millions of dollars in fees each year for regulatory services.

In three out of four reviews, schools failed at least one important academic goal, often by large margins. Many of those schools also demonstrated significant weaknesses in financial management, board governance or operations, records show.

When schools failed to meet their contractual goals, some of the nonprofits simply lowered their requirements to a more “realistic” level by taking such steps as reducing the amount of annual growth expected on test scores or the size of a school’s financial cushion, the records show.

The flawed reviews are part of broader oversight problems with Minnesota’s charters, which were created to produce better educational outcomes for children. Most are failing to deliver on that promise.

Of the schools now facing revocation, most were previously cited for contract violations, with problems going back more than 10 years in some cases, records show.

Before Kato Public Charter School was threatened with the loss of its charter in 2024, the Mankato school came close to having its contract terminated in 2019 following four years of unsuccessful interventions by its authorizer, Novation Education Opportunities (NEO), records show.

At the time, the school’s proficiency rates were far below the state averages and Kato failed to achieve half of its academic and operational goals, violating its contract, records show.

However, the school appealed NEO’s nonrenewal decision and the nonprofit agreed to a new three-year contract in 2020 after community members spoke on the school’s behalf at a public hearing. Since then, the school’s academic performance has continued to decline. In 2024, fewer than 10% of Kato’s students were performing at grade level in math, reading and science, records show.

“Based on the data and other information presented, the NEO board made the decision to renew the contract,” NEO Executive Director Wendy Swanson Choi said in an emailed response to questions. “Subsequently, the pandemic conditions made it difficult for the school to maintain the growth they were making and implement the changes that they were planning to make.”

NEO threatened to revoke Kato’s contract again in January 2024, noting that a then recent review showed the school earned just 13% of possible points on its academic performance — well below the 50% threshold needed for renewal. In a follow-up email, NEO said school leaders were “not taking any impactful steps to address the extremely low academic performance of the school, and therefore, it does not appear that anything will improve.”

School leaders declined to predict what will happen when Kato’s contract expires this summer.

“At this time we are following our improvement plan,” Kato director Mymique Baxter said in a written response to questions. “Our authorizer will decide on our renewal based on the data/evidence we provide them.”

Athlos Academy of St. Cloud has failed to meet contractual goals in every review since 2016, but the situation didn’t become dire until enrollment began tumbling in 2020, records show. In 2024, 270 students attended the K-12 school, down from 630 in 2020, a decline described as “unsustainable” by the school’s authorizer, Volunteers of America-Minnesota (VOA).

VOA issued the first of several warning letters in January 2023. In May, the nonprofit threatened to “commence charter revocation proceedings” if the school was unable to address VOA’s “most immediate financial concerns.” The letter noted the school was late on vendor payments, faced a $1.2 million deficit in 2024 and had “exhausted all cash flow borrowing options at this time.”

Athlos officials declined to answer written questions from the Star Tribune.

In Minneapolis, the University of St. Thomas first raised concerns about Hiawatha Academies’ falling test scores in 2020. The organization — which operates three schools in the city — has continued to decline, records show.

In March, the university warned that Hiawatha’s continued failure to improve scores “could place the school at risk of losing its charter.” In 2024, just 11.2% of Hiawatha students were proficient in math, down from 57% in 2017.

The letter also cited concerns about a lack of “transparent communication” between school leaders and teachers, students and their families, tensions that led to a student protest last spring. The school’s executive director also resigned last year after board members talked about the need to go in a new direction.

Karen Klinzing, Hiawatha’s new executive director, said its leadership team is implementing changes aimed at reversing the trends that have plagued the school since 2017. Hiawatha is one of Minnesota’s largest charters, with 1,467 students in the 2023-24 school year.

“We remain confident that the steps we are taking will ensure our charter is renewed in 2027,” Klinzing said in a written response to questions.

Five schools were cited for using unlicensed teachers, or for employing teachers whose licenses had lapsed.

That has been a frequent problem at charter schools, generating at least a dozen complaints to the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) since 2019, records show.

In some cases, parents and other teachers have complained that short-handed administrators were allowing unlicensed paraprofessionals to teach classes.

At one school, an employee complained that the “lunch lady” was providing instruction to special education students. MDE investigated and agreed the school needed someone with an appropriate license for the job.

In 2023, a complaint about the routine use of unlicensed teachers at a St. Paul charter school prompted an unusual letter of support from the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board, which oversees enforcement of the state’s teacher licensing requirements.

“This is a charter school we receive a lot of complaints about hiring unlicensed teachers,” wrote Maria Zaloker, a teacher ethics specialist who works for the board. “We have no jurisdiction of someone if they do not have a license and are unable to do anything as the executive director is also unlicensed. We have forwarded countless complaints about this charter to MDE and the authorizer but it does not seem to help the situation at the school.”

Not all of the schools that received warning letters last year are struggling academically. In fact, one that routinely shows up on lists touting the nation’s best high schools was repeatedly criticized in 2024 by its authorizer, Student Achievement Minnesota.

Math and Science Academy in Woodbury, one of the state’s oldest charters, has been wrestling with governance problems that go back several years and prompted a third-party investigation in 2022 that documented multiple legal violations as well as “discriminatory actions towards students in protected classes,” according to a January 2024 letter from Student Achievement.

Though the school agreed to fix the problems, Student Achievement said the gap between black and white students has widened significantly in the past four years, indicating the school’s efforts have been “inadequate or ineffective.”

Moreover, Student Achievement described the school’s oversight board as “dysfunctional,” noting repeated violations of rules involving top-level hiring decisions, board membership and the manner in which board meetings are conducted.

Student Achievement weighed in with more concerns in July, when the nonprofit complained that the school’s application for a state grant to fund expansion contained “false or misleading information.” Specifically, Student Achievement said the application had been altered to make it appear the nonprofit supported the expansion when in fact it withheld its approval because of ongoing concerns about the school.

After investigating, MDE agreed that the discrepancies were of “great concern” and blocked the school’s application, records show.

Kate Hinton, executive director of Math and Science Academy (MSA), said in a written response to the Star Tribune’s questions that a review showed the misrepresentations were not intentional and led to new procedures aimed at avoiding such “confusion” in the future.

Hinton said the school has addressed its governance problems by updating its bylaws, beefing up its internal evaluation system and taking other steps aimed at transforming the way it carries out its responsibilities.

Regarding the school’s achievement gap, Hinton said the school no longer employs the staff members who told investigators that certain struggling students are “not MSA material.” She said the school also conducted an “equity audit” and is taking steps to address racial imbalances, noting Black 11th-grade students at MSA were the “highest performing demographic” on math proficiency tests last spring.

“It does take time to close gaps, but our … work is paying off,” Hinton said.