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• Enrollment at the K-7 school has plummeted from 255 students last October to just 82 students today, records show.
• The school’s revenue, which comes from public tax dollars directly tied to the number of students, has shrunk from more than $2 million in 2010 to just over $1 million today. As of February, the school owed more than $100,000 to the Internal Revenue Service for unpaid payroll taxes.
• The school has lost two principals since January, and school district officials said they cannot identify the current members of the nonprofit school’s board.
School district officials threatened to close the charter school last year, after it received an F grade from the state based on poor student test scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. But Balere appeared to make a dramatic turnaround when it raised its grade to an A this spring, winning the school a reprieve.
Yet Balere remains under scrutiny by the school district over its finances. The school had to submit a financial recovery plan to the district after two years in the red. District officials have questioned whether the school has a realistic plan to stay afloat.
Earlier this year, the school sought to raise $500,000 through $5 donations transmitted by phone — a goal the school district’s charter school operations chief, Tiffanie Pauline, called “highly unlikely” in a Feb. 14 e-mail to the school.
District officials are now questioning how the school property is handled as well. The campus is owned by Balere, Inc., the nonprofit company that also holds the charter to operate the school. Yet Balere, Inc. leases the property to another school-related entity for $8,000 a month, according to a financial audit of the school.
The salacious news of the party investigation caught many parents by surprise on Friday. Mileydis Crespo said she thought her two daughters, a first-grader and a third-grader, were receiving a quality education at Balere.
“When the school opened this year, there was a sense of hope,” she said, noting the school’s improvement on the FCAT. “Then this happened.”
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