Why this matters
America’s Finest Charter School, which serves transitional kindergarten through 12th grade, had roughly 450 students enrolled at one of its two campuses last year. The majority of students were Latino or Hispanic, with almost all considered low-income.
A campus for high schoolers in San Diego will not shut down despite its struggles with finances and declining student enrollment.
About 20% of enrollment at America’s Finest Charter School is made up of high school students who attend a separate location on Estrella Avenue in the Talmadge neighborhood. Last week, officials told the community during a forum that it was considering closing its high school campus after meeting with its authorizer, the San Diego Unified School District.
But board members unanimously voted on Monday to keep the campus open, adding that input from students about how much the school means to them greatly swayed their decision.
“They made the pitch, and so we accepted,” said board member Roosevelt Blackmon.
The small charter school is grappling with a deficit that has ballooned to $2 million — and vocal opposition from community members calling for leaders to step down. The school’s board president, Gary Rubin, has resigned in the wake of the criticism, and a petition launched last week calling for the immediate resignation or termination of Executive Director Tim Bagby has so far garnered more than 200 signatures.
“I think my resignation speaks for itself. I’m no longer associated with the school, as a board member or substitute teacher,” Rubin told inewsource in an email Friday.
Officials also unanimously voted to end board member Alexandra Carrillo’s term Monday, but did not provide further details.
Officials had remained optimistic in front of a frustrated audience during a forum last week, but conceded that San Diego Unified’s charter office raised concerns about their finances.
Board members assured the community that they did not want to close the high school campus.
“Taking the school away from these students will be a travesty,” Blackmon said during the forum last week.
The school’s shortfall is partly due to “unbudgeted expenses and some sub-categories already going over the year-end budget amounts,” according to its financial documents. COVID-19 pandemic funding that helped keep struggling schools afloat is also ending in September.
Roughly 100 students are currently enrolled at the high school campus, down from 110 during the 2021-22 year. In total, the school serves an average of about 450 students. But enrollment at the school has fluctuated in recent years, and Bagby, the school’s director, said it would need to add about 100 more students to help stabilize the budget.
Bagby and board members began meeting with San Diego Unified’s charter office about the school’s finances in January, but it wasn’t until March that officials began to be more concerned about its future.
“There are a lot of details that I cannot go into tonight, but those things were brand new to us during that meeting and at some point in time I’ll be able to share that with you,” Bagby told the crowd last week.
San Diego Unified’s charter office did not answer inewsource’s questions about the meetings. While America’s Finest Charter School is independently operated, the district is its authorizing entity and is scheduled to discuss renewing the charter in the 2027-28 school year.
Community members said they should’ve been notified of the talks sooner and that the school has known about its struggles with enrollment and finances for two years, prompting some to question what its executive director has been doing to identify other streams of funding.
“I’ve done the very best with the time I have, and yes, we have looked at exterior funding,” Bagby said.
As inewsource previously reported, the school’s leaders have faced criticism before. Last year, as the school laid off employees in the wake of what was then a $1 million shortfall and was under warning that it could run out of cash by the winter, community members raised alarm over the use of an out-of-state consultant and allegations of nepotism within school leadership.
Board member Chris Lemke said leadership did not intend to leave people in the dark about the high school.
“It’s super important that we — as hard as it is and I know that people don’t want to hear it — make sure that the time is given to look into every potential option that can possibly be there and that any discussion regarding potentially closing the school is an absolute last-ditch effort,” Lemke said last week.
