State recommends closing charter school

Finds not enough academic progress

The state commissioner for elementary and secondary education yesterday recommended closing Boston's Uphams Corner Charter School, saying its lack of academic progress was "deeply disappointing."

"There is little evidence that this school is on a trajectory toward academic improvement. This decision has to be about what is best for students, and I do not see enough evidence here to convince me they are being properly served at this school," Commissioner Mitchell Chester said in a statement, which he released after a meeting of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education yesterday in Malden.

Chester said officials had given the middle school, which serves about 175 students, "ample time to turn around."

Chester recommended that the school's charter be revoked at the end of this school year. Should the board approve the recommendation at its meeting next month, Uphams Corner would become one of only a handful of charter schools to close since such schools first began opening in the state in 1995.

Michael Mayo, the school's interim executive director as well as a founder, said the school's board of trustees has not yet decided whether it will contest the commissioner's recommendation. The trustees, he said, will meet Dec. 30.

"We are very disappointed," Mayo said in a telephone interview last night. "We are doing amazing work at the moment. We are doing everything we can to serve these kids."

Mayo said he told the students of the commissioner's recommendations during assemblies held for each grade level yesterday afternoon. Some students, he said, cried.

Two years ago, the seven-year-old school successfully lobbied the state education board to vote against a recommendation made by then-Education Commissioner David Driscoll to revoke its charter.

But in renewing the charter, the board included several conditions - many related to improving academic quality and achievement. A recent state report found that the school made little progress toward meeting those goals.

The board also ordered the school, which is located at a YMCA on Huntington Avenue next to Northeastern University, to secure a location in Dorchester's Uphams Corner - the community the founders of the school intended to serve. But as of this week, the school had not done so.

Mayo has disputed many of the report's findings, saying that since he and an interim principal took over a few months ago, they have been aggressively building relationships with families, have increased the emphasis on discipline, improved academic programs, and hired a social worker to help students having difficulty adjusting to school.