Last year, in its very first year of operation, St. John Fisher Academy, a voucher school, was forced to close its doors from lack of funding. The Northwestern Avenue school had counted on various grants and other funding coming in. But they didn’t come through and, after months of teachers working without pay, the school announced its closing.
After that episode, which left students looking for a new school, it was especially concerning to hear about another voucher school with money issues — Evergreen Elementary School.
This is a brand-new voucher school that wants to capitalize on the voucher program that started here in Racine during the 2011-12 school year. The program allows low- to middle-income students who live in the Racine Unified attendance area to attend participating private schools using state-funded $6,442 vouchers to pay tuition. There was a cap on the number of students who could attend the last two years, but the cap has been lifted for next year.
For a spirited entrepreneur, this is an opportunity to establish a new business and, possibly, that is what the founders of Evergreen were thinking.
Are all publicly funded school budgets well vetted?