When the school board votes on whether to close Montgomery County’s only charter school, some families will see the decision as a statement on whether charters are welcome in Maryland’s largest school district.

Montgomery County Public Schools leaders said they tried to be good partners in launching the campus. Still, Superintendent Thomas Taylor determined it should close because of special education violations, staffing issues, privacy breaches and financial woes.

“It’s supremely regrettable that we’re here,” Taylor said recently, as he laid out his argument against the charter’s continued operation.

The leaders of MECCA Business Learning Institute say they’ve worked hard to fix problems but they need more time to prove it. The campus has been operating for a little over a semester.

“Closure — particularly at this early stage, three months into a school’s founding and starting — is neither proportionate nor supported by the record,” said Princess Lyles, a communications consultant working with the school.

Underlying the arguments is a tension that spans years. Montgomery County education leaders originally rejected the charter school’s application to open, citing concerns about its funding and transportation plans.

The charter middle school secured approval only after appealing to the Maryland State Board of Education, which directed the district to reverse course. In their decision, state board members highlighted structural barriers that can make it difficult to open a charter school here.

The state board also alluded to the “local board’s repeated reluctance to give applicants a chance to demonstrate the viability of a charter school.”

The upcoming vote to revoke the school’s charter was slated for Jan. 22, but school board members determined they needed more time. A new date hasn’t been announced, but it could be early next month.

Caught in the middle are families who send their children to the charter’s newly opened Germantown campus.

Kate Amburgey, whose child attends the charter, said MBLI and district leaders have made mistakes. She asked the school board not to “chop down a tree before it even has had time to take root.”

“Do the children matter in all of this?” she asked during a recent board meeting. “Because the students at MBLI are happy to be there. They are happy to have an alternative to MCPS. … They are happy with their business curriculum, as they dream of becoming the future business leaders of Maryland.”

On Thursday night, the mother helped a group of students make signs urging the board to keep MBLI open.

“All we can do is raise our voice and make our experience heard,” Amburgey told the children, who had questions about whether they’d be able to keep going to their school.

Some parents see hypocrisy in the district’s attempt to close the charter. Traditional public schools have also struggled with serving students with disabilities, bus transportation and student privacy breaches.

“MCPS, in every category that they’re dinging MBLI, has been guilty of the same,” said Ricky Ribeiro, a leader with the Black Coalition for Excellence in Education.

How did MBLI start?

MECCA Business Learning Institute was envisioned as a new option for Montgomery County families: a career-focused academy that would teach financial literacy and entrepreneurship. Founders planned to start with 250 middle schoolers before expanding to include high school students.

To open a charter in Maryland, operators need approval from the local school board. District leaders aren’t incentivized to approve charters because they compete with traditional public schools for students and funding.

Public charter schools educate about 25,000 students statewide and are most concentrated in Baltimore City and Prince George’s County.

Charters are publicly funded but privately run, giving them more flexibility and autonomy than traditional public campuses.

“The way our charter system in Maryland is designed is that it has lent itself to this contentious relationship,” said McKenzie Allen, the Maryland Alliance of Public Charter Schools director.

When it opened in the fall, MLBI became the only charter in Montgomery County. Its sole predecessor became a private school years earlier because of financial problems.

Money woes are now part of MBLI’s story, too.

The question of whether charter school funding is fair has vexed education leaders for more than a decade, with the issue reaching the state’s Supreme Court three times. Charter leaders say the system shortchanges them, while district officials have argued these campuses are asking for too much.

Charters are responsible for costs that traditional public schools aren’t, including rent and upkeep for their school buildings.

When MBLI founder LaChaundra Graham outlined her plans, she said the projected student body would be mostly Hispanic and African American children.

Ribeiro said some Black families were eager for additional options after years of documented disparities within traditional public schools.

“We need as much optionality as we can to make sure that our children are getting educated in a way that is successful, that is safe for them,” Ribeiro said. “Charters are just one of many options that we should have access to.”

Tierre Johnson’s 11-year-old daughter has found smaller classes and a family feel at MBLI. She knows the charter school has faced challenges but said the district’s scrutiny feels outsize.

“Why not give them support?” she said.

District spokesperson Liliana López said MCPS values “the diverse range of educational options available to families.”

“We believe our schools are best positioned to serve our diverse student population through comprehensive programming, specialized resources, and equitable access for all learners,” she said in a statement. “Our goal is not to exclude any specific model, but to prioritize the high-quality, inclusive environment that our families expect and our students deserve.”

What went wrong?

There were signs of trouble from the jump, according to interviews, public statements and more than 100 pages of documents reviewed by The Banner.

Some of the problems were operational. But emails and memos sent between charter and district leadership spotlight tensions.

Charter officials labeled district leaders as “unduly adversarial” in a fall memo. MCPS staff members, meanwhile, took issue with the insinuation that they didn’t support the school.

“The substantial investment of time by MCPS staff, the access provided to principal memoranda and meetings, and the detailed guidance shared with you outlining the necessary steps and timelines to open the school directly contradict this assertion,” they wrote in a letter.

The documents outline squabbles with the teachers’ union over the collective bargaining agreement, concerns about adequate staffing and an array of transportation-related problems.

The charter was expected to operate out of a brand-new campus in Germantown, but construction wasn’t finished in time for the start of the year. So, for more than $50,000 a month, it leased a district-owned building in Bethesda.

To get students roughly 20 miles farther than anticipated, the charter school contracted with yellow bus companies.

But Montgomery County Public Schools’ transportation department flagged issues with the vendors. Some drivers were not certified to operate yellow buses, according to district emails. Officials also received a complaint that at least one of the buses didn’t have functioning red stop lights for students loading and unloading.

“If verified, this constitutes a significant safety hazard and immediate violation of state law and MCPS standards,” Chief Academic Officer Niki Porter wrote in an email.

Shortly after the school year began, the charter paused yellow bus service.

An enrollment nosedive followed, as families in the Upcounty region struggled to get their kids to class.

By the end of September, MECCA Business Learning Institute had lost more than 25% of its students. The decline would only grow steeper.

Not enough students

Maryland schools are funded based on the number of students enrolled. So, when families began leaving in droves, new funding problems emerged.

In an Oct. 2 letter to charter leaders, Porter was frank: “As a result of decreased enrollment and higher-than-anticipated costs, MCPS has already disbursed to MBLI more funding than is currently available under the per-pupil allocation. At this time, MCPS cannot release additional funding beyond the amount already disbursed.”

By the end of that month, roughly 140 students remained, triggering a staffing shake-up. The charter school eliminated six full-time teaching positions and reduced five others from full time to part time, officials said.

“Our middle school students had to adjust in October to new schedules and different teachers for the start of the second quarter as classes were collapsed and combined,” Associate Superintendent Donna Redmond Jones said.

Families expected lessons in the creative arts, but reductions in librarian and music teacher positions left students without access, she said. The charter’s signature business class was at times taught by a teacher who was certified in physical education and health, Jones added.

As of early January, officials say fewer than 100 children were enrolled at MBLI.

Special education

Problems with how the school served children with disabilities appeared to be Taylor’s final straw.

District officials documented failures to provide timely special education services, retain qualified personnel and offer psychological services.

In a Nov. 21 audit of special education plans, district officials said they found “widespread, systemic patterns and recurring issues posing significant compliance risks” at the MECCA Business Learning Institute.

When The Banner contacted charter leaders for comment, Graham responded by forwarding a letter that included the full names and ID numbers of 16 students who receive special education accommodations at the school, along with a summary of the services provided to each child.

Such records are protected by federal student privacy laws. Taylor listed this apparent violation as another factor in his recommendation to revoke the charter.

Charter leaders said it was a one-time, unintentional mistake. They noted that district leaders sent schoolwide notifications about the privacy breach, “expanding awareness beyond the scope of the incident.”

As for the special education issues, they said their problems with plans stemmed from Montgomery County Public Schools’ own records.

They added that district officials didn’t give them enough information or notice on alleged violations — or enough time to resolve them. And they disputed that students were denied access to education on a schoolwide basis.

What’s next?

Charter school leaders appear ready to continue their fight and have asked the state board of education to intervene again.

In a December petition, Graham accused the district of undermining the school to families, interfering with enrollment and funding, and failing to provide timely information that would’ve helped it launch.

Families will be closely watching what happens next.

Nithyanandan Jayapal’s children dream of opening a restaurant together, so he thought lessons on financial literacy and business could give them a head start.

While Jayapal’s kids adore their teachers and new friends at MBLI, he’s clear-eyed about its challenges, specifically related to transportation.

Now that the school is settled into its Germantown campus, charter leadership told families it would again rescind promised bus service due to “significant financial constraints.”

Jayapal said this forced him to consider unenrolling his children. Ultimately, he said, they want to stay.

He will keep them there as long as he can.