Uncharted Territory

Last week, Imagine School’s petition to charter was denied by board members of the Imperial County office of Education. The big question is what’s their next step.

“It was unfortunate that they were unable to come to a consensus, but hopefully we, through the state we’ll be able to get that approval and we’ll be able to continue,” said Grace Jimenez, Principal of Imagine School.

But one Imperial Valley public school teacher doesn’t see why an appeal to the state, would make any difference. James Taylor, President of Uniserv and a teacher said, “you have your city school board, your county school board both saying that they’re not willing to renew the charter. I don’t know why the state would make a different decision.”

An official from the ICOE says it wasn’t an easy choice for the board to make. Todd Evangelist, ICOE Director of Development and Community Relations said, “that was a tough decision that our board took seriously and deliberate heavily on those items. To the degree where I don’t think they had a consensus on our board.”

The last ditch effort for the charter school is to make a final appeal at the state level.They hope to have a hearing scheduled for the summer where they’ll be able to know if they can continue to serve their 800 student body.