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REBECCA CATALANELLOWith supporters' money and staff cuts, the struggling school may have a future.
PORT RICHEY - For the first time in weeks, the parents, students and teachers of Deerwood Academy left a meeting Tuesday night believing their school has a future.
Faced with an enrollment squeeze that threatened to close the charter school as recently as Friday, parents stepped up to the challenge over the Labor Day weekend, raising money, canvassing supermarkets with Deerwood literature and, in the words of one parent, "praying hard."
By the time Deerwood's board of trustees convened in an emergency meeting at 7 p.m.Tuesday, parents and others had committed to give the charter school $16,800 to keep it afloat, $6,100 of that in monthly donations for, parent Debra Gartino said, "as long as it takes us to get our enrollment back up."
During a meeting Friday that seemed would be destined to consist of a vote for closing the school, Deerwood's board of trustees voted 3-0 with one abstention to approve what they called the "Deerwood turnaround plan."
Under the plan, which awaits approval by the Pasco County school district:
Principal Ken Brown will resign. Brown, who was appointed by the Pasco County School Board to take the reigns of the school midway through the 2002-03 academic year, first suggested cutting his position Aug. 21 to help solve budgetary concerns. The savings will bring $8,500 a month into the school, board of trustees president Jonathan Bentley said.
Science teacher Stephen Kane will assume leadership of the school. Kane has been employed by Deerwood all of its three years.
The school's rent at Unity Church on Pine Hill Road will be reduced $2,000 a month.
The donations of $6,100 a month will help pay for the addition of two teachers - one to replace Kane and one to fill vacancies created during deep faculty cuts made two weeks earlier.
"I guess you can't underestimate the power of people when they get involved in something they care about," said Max Ramos, who oversees charter schools for the Pasco County School District. "It seems like a true grass roots effort."
Enrollment at Deerwood Academy had dropped to 125 by Tuesday, about 25 fewer than it was a week earlier and 75 fewer than anticipated this year. With funding based on student bodies, those numbers alone turned a $250,000 budget shortage into a $400,000 dilemma, Bentley said Friday.
Going into the Tuesday meeting, board members, parents and even Pasco County School District Superintendent John Long were unsure of what would happen.
After already cutting a 13-member faculty to seven to fix the original $250,000 problem, Bentley said he feared more cuts could undermine the strength of the school's academic program.
Two Deerwood board of trustees members had submitted their resignations over the weekend after other parents grilled them on Friday for pulling their children out of the school.
Board member Doug Van Etten decided to withdraw his two daughters last week, worried that lack of parent involvement was sinking the school. Board member Pete Constanza said his decision to pull his daughter arose from transportation issues - nothing to do with the current crisis, he said.
Deerwood has been through many trials, most stemming from the discovery last year that it had been defrauded of $100,000 - a scandal that resulted in the arrest of one former employee.
But hope was real for many of those who observed Friday's show of support and came to Tuesday's meeting.
In related news, the Pasco County School Board on Tuesday voted 5-0 to add an eighth-grade to Language Academy Charter School, also raising the enrollment cap there to 250.
The only other west Pasco middle charter school without a waiting list, the Language Academy had been suggested as a merger possibility for Deerwood.