Another online charter school is getting ready to close after its sponsor pulled the plug on the program.
Insight School of Ohio, which is based in Columbus, will be closing its doors in June after the school’s sponsor, Buckeye Community Hope Foundation, decided not to renew its charter.
“Overall, the school wasn’t performing on the state report card, and they weren’t performing over a period of time, and they did not meet the criteria for renewal,” says Jennifer Schorr, the foundation’s associate director for education.
In the most recent state report card, Insight received an F in every category it was graded, including categories tracking achievement and progress.
Despite Insight's closure, Schorr says the foundation still believes in online learning.
“As a matter of fact, we actually are transferring in an online school this year from another sponsor," Schorr says. "So it’s not at all that we don’t believe in online learning and that it can work,”
The closure comes hot on the heels of a different sponsor severing ties with the Columbus-based online charter school, ECOT, which closed shortly after. ECOT is suing the state Department of Education over orders to repay millions in funding, after the state claimed the charter did not enroll as many full-time students as it claimed.
About 1,300 Insight students will be enrolling somewhere new this fall, but the Buckeye Community Hope Foundation will be assisting parents in finding a new school.
ECOT's sudden closure last month left some 12,000 students looking for a new school in the middle of the year.
