A deal to save a Philly charter was nearly worked out, but its founder balked. Parents are furious.

A portrait of the founder Veronica Joyner hangs in the main lobby of the Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School.

Concerned, frustrated parents demanded answers — and help — this week from the board of a charter school that’s closing because its founder is retiring and believes no one can educate her students the way she can.

They didn’t get far.

Despite their pleas and the behind-the-scenes efforts of the school board — despite intervention by the Philadelphia School District’s charter schools office, politicians, and charter sector players who came together with a potential eleventh-hour solution — the plan was rejected by the trustees of the Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School.

The plan, according to multiple people with firsthand knowledge, was to have Global Leadership Academy, an existing charter run by veteran educator Naomi Johnson-Booker, take over MCS’s charter. The MCS board would have to approve the move, then ask the Philadelphia school board to amend the school’s charter, transferring it to Global Leadership.

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MCS educates about 900 students in grades 1-12; it was proposed that Global Leadership would take only MCS’s high school students. Veronica Joyner, the MCS founder who triggered the closure when she said she would retire and sell the school building owned by the nonprofit she runs, would get to retire and sell the building.

A ‘fool’s errand’?

A group of MCS parents appealed to the board directly Thursday, reminding it that though Johnson founded the school, she reports to the trustees. The parents urged the trustees to think not of Joyner but of their children, and to give MCS to Global Leadership, which currently has an active application for a new high school before the Philadelphia school board.

But Lewis Small, the MCS attorney, said it would be “a fool’s errand.”

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Citing a 2023 Inquirer article about the Philadelphia school board’s move to twice deny a new Global Leadership high school charter application, Small said “when you look at the article, it’s rather hypocritical for anybody in my opinion, and it’s only my opinion, of course, to recommend anyone going to this school when it’s already been voted down,” Small said.

Johnson-Booker, in an interview Thursday, said she had approached Joyner in October to ask if Joyner would turn the charter over to her to manage the high school. Johnson-Booker’s existing charters are takeovers of other schools.

Initially, Johnson-Booker said, Joyner “was in agreement,” and Global Leadership had pre-enrollment meetings with MCS parents. Nearly 200 MCS students have already said they want to attend Johnson-Booker’s yet-unapproved charter high school, she said.

But Joyner then “had a change, or whatever,” Johnson-Booker said. “She’s just shutting down her school, and nobody can do it like her.”

School board president Reginald Streater, charter chief Peng Chao, City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, Dawn Chavous of the African-American Charter School Coalition, and others — a group of people who do not always see eye to eye — all reached out with the same intention, multiple sources confirmed.

Small said he asked the board who might want to meet with Streater and Chao, and just one MCS board member was willing to do so. The meeting never happened, Small said.

Thomas, chair of City Council’s education committee, confirmed he had reached out to Joyner to try to explore ways to keep the school open in some way.

“Unfortunately, some of the things that I thought as the best course of action haven’t actualized themselves,” said Thomas, who commended the school board for its work on the issue. “The biggest concern right now is the children and the families…who are going to be impacted. My focus has been to try to come to a resolution to make that landing as soft as possible. We’ve explored a number of options as to what we can legally do.”

Thomas said he hoped the district and charter schools would relax rules around admissions for MCS families, allowing them to bypass charter or district special-admissions school lotteries, but so far, there’s been no movement.

Streater said the school board has been working for months to attempt to save MCS, but finds it “perplexing” that the board voted to close anyway.

“The abrupt closure of any public school sends shockwaves through the educational system in Philadelphia and impacts our learners and their families profoundly,” Streater said. “The board and district will continue seeking a student-centered pathway forward.”

A chaotic meeting

Emotions ran high Thursday night at the contentious, unruly board meeting full of shouting and finger-pointing. No roll was taken, and board members conducted no business other than voting on one item: adopting the prior month’s meeting minutes.

Zakiyyah Salahuddin, an MCS parent who has been organizing other families and pushing for Global Leadership to take over, blasted Joyner and the trustees.

“I do not understand — if there is a solution to save the children, then why would each of you refuse to discuss this situation with the Philadelphia school board and charter school office and get all the facts?” Salahuddin asked. “Instead, you have chosen to force these children who have been loyal to the school to break up their family unit and disperse them all over the city to different schools.”

Salahuddin asked the board to “act in the interest of the school alone — meaning the students and teachers are the school. Each of your thought processes and decisions needs to be independent and free of any coercion or influence from other voting board members, and Mrs. Joyner. Contrary to what Mrs. Joyner believes, she is not the school.”

Avia Williams-Johnson said she was “disheartened” at how things have devolved at MCS; her straight-A student son is so upset by the tumult that his grades are dropping. Another parent said her daughter has had to start therapy because she’s terrified about her school closing.

“I’ve seen things in this building in the last month when I pick my kids up early — it is very alarming,” said Williams-Johnson. “To hear that a teacher is leaving, day after day. Classes are being pulled together. No emails — I haven’t had an email all year.”

Melissa Thompson said she arrived at school to pick her daughter up and was alarmed to see police cars at the school.

“The parents were cursing me out,” Joyner said. “That’s why [police] had to come.”

William E. Jacobs Jr., the school’s maintenance chief and Joyner’s brother, at one point took the microphone and defended his sister: “For 25 years or more, she’s been with children, and you come in here and crucify her… this school’s supposed to be forever? Who said that?”

After a handful of parents spoke — often interrupted by Small, or Joyner, who compared herself to Harriet Tubman and said if more parents had volunteered to help, she might have waited longer before retiring — the meeting was adjourned.

“Don’t come and beat up on me when the school district gets billions and you don’t want to put your children in their schools,” Joyner said.

Absent any intervention, the school will close in June.

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