UPDATE: Office of Education votes to revoke Millennium Charter High School charter

UPDATE 4/10/2019: A troubled Salinlas Charter School has suffered another setback. The Monterey County Office of education voted to revoke Millennium Charter High School’s charter.

The vote happened during the Office of Education’s board meeting Wednesday. It means the board will be moving forward to issue a notice of revocation.

The Monterey County Office of Education authorized the school’s charter and handled their business services.

In December the MCOE told KION that the school was out of money and more than $300,000 in debt.

MCOE took over payroll services for the school in the month of January. They gave the school a February 1st deadline to make a financial comeback.

MCOE said in a release Wednesday that –

“MCHS’ ongoing fiscal mismanagement of the Charter School has been a primary concern of MCOE. MCHS has failed to make sufficient budgetary cuts when faced with declining revenue, consequently generating a substantial deficit that the Charter School is not equipped to address. This issue has been compounded by MCHS’ failure to establish attendance accounting procedures, which may cause the Charter School to forfeit significant state funding.”

They also cited the school’s inability to properly establish attendance accounting procedures and give proper special educaiton services.

We reached out to the board president of Millenium Charter High School, Jose Arreola, and did not immediately hear back.

This is what he told us KION back in December:

“The business services admits it was their accounting errors at MCOE,” Arreola said. “Now that’s fine, we appreciate they’ve owned that responsibility, but what we’re asking is for them to make it right.”

The next step in the process for the Monterey County Office of Education to revoke the school’s charter is a public hearing on May 8th.

PREVIOUS STORY 12/19/2018: Parents, students, and staff of Millennium Charter High School stood strong with signs of support for their school, Wednesday afternoon.

The Monterey County Board of Education decided to give the school one last chance to stay open. ” We are gonna end up, pretty much, doing their payroll for them for January. February 1st, they’re gonna take over all of their business services, which means they’ll take over their payroll,” said Janet Wohlgemuth, President of the Monterey County Board of Education.

Millennium Charter High School is currently $330,000 in debt. Parents said the school’s board failed to tell them, until a few weeks ago. “That really shocked me. I feel like we should not upheave everybody and turn their lives upside down,” said Bell Farber, a parent at Millennium Charter High School.

Hundreds showed up at the Monterey County Office of Education, Wednesday, to protest the board’s decision to close the school in January. The students who showed up said they are not ready to back down. “What we have here is something that you can never find anywhere else. We’re a family,” said Mohalala Gapa, a junior at Millennium Charter High School.

Staff members showed up as well, standing behind their students and sticking up for their jobs. “W e’ve got 100, almost a 140 students, couple dozen faculty members, whose lives are gonna be thrown into turmoil in the middle of the holiday season,” said Lorry Robin, an english teacher at Millennium Charter High School.

The possibility of the school closing could be avoided if they are able to make a financial comeback by the time all business services are handed over to them, in February 2019.

The school has yet to announce their plans following the February 1st deadline.