Charter school leaders balk at telling parents Minneapolis elementary closing at end of year

A charter school in Minneapolis is defying instructions from its state-approved regulator to inform parents that the school will be shutting down at the end of the current school year, according to records obtained by the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Skyline Math and Science Academy (SMSA) was supposed to inform parents by May 7 that the elementary school would be closing when its current contract runs out at the end of June, according to a timetable laid out by its authorizer, the Minnesota Guild of Public Charter Schools.

The guild is not renewing the school’s contract because students have consistently posted substandard test scores and its leaders have demonstrated “poor financial management and stewardship of public funds,” the guild said in a May 2 letter to school leaders.

So far, however, school leaders have refused to announce the impending closure. The school had 280 students as of January, board minutes show.

“It is crucial that you immediately inform your school community about SMSA’s June 30th closure,” guild Executive Director James Zacchini said in a May 13 email to school leaders. By withholding the information, Zacchini wrote, the school is “depriving families of time to explore schooling options for the 2025-26 academic year.”

School leaders balked at the deadline, insisting that they be allowed to withhold the news until the last day of school on June 6.

“We are still in the school year, and our students deserve to complete their remaining instructional days in a safe and dignified way emotionally,” school board chair Yonis Abdi said in a May 6 email to the guild. “Announcing closure now would severely disrupt their learning and cause significant emotional distress to our students and families.”

Skyline is one of four charter schools in Minnesota that will be closing this spring, and other charters have been warned to improve or face the same fate, records show.

In 2024, nine of the 181 charter schools operating in the state at the beginning of the year closed, the most since the first charter school failure in 1996, state records show. The closures are playing out against a backdrop of broader oversight problems with Minnesota’s charters following a 2024 Star Tribune investigationthat revealed just 13 of 203 charters have consistently exceeded the state average in math and reading proficiency since 2016.

Skyline has struggled academically since its founding in 2018, with test scores far below state averages. In 2024, 2.4% of its students were proficient in math while 10% of students were reading at grade level, state records show.

The school, which draws enrollment heavily from the local Somali community, is also underperforming other schools with large concentrations of students who are not proficient in English, according to the guild.

In 2024, statewide scores for English learners were eight times higher than Skyline in math and twice as high in reading, the guild said in an April letter to school leaders. Nearly half the students at Skyline speak English as a second language, state records show.

Annual reviews show the school met none of its 12 performance goals in 2023 and two of seven contract goals in 2024.

One of the school’s biggest problems is financial. In 2024, Skyline finished with a deficit of nearly $370,000, which is “unacceptable for a school entering its seventh year of operation,” the guild said in its termination letter. The guild said there is no evidence the school’s financial outlook will improve.

Skyline received $3.8 million in state funding last year.

School leaders appealed the termination decision, but the guild noted that the school’s executive director - Abdirahman Abdulle - did not show up to make a case for keeping the school open, nor did any parents or other staff members.

“No information was shared to counter or dispute the fact that SMSA, while under its current contract, and throughout its years of operation, has failed to deliver on the primary purpose of charter schools, which is to improve the learning, achievement and success of its students,” Zacchini said in the letter.

School leaders did not respond to requests for comment from the Minnesota Star Tribune. The school has refused to provide records involving its contract status since January, when the Star Tribune first asked for any letters of concern from its nonprofit authorizer, which oversees the school on the state’s behalf.

Instead, the newspaper obtained the records late last week from the Minnesota Department of Education.

The school was previously the subject of a whistleblower lawsuit by former business operations manager Fahmo Osman, who sued the school in 2022 for wrongful termination after she said she took concerns about various financial improprieties to her boss, executive director Abdulle.

Osman said in her lawsuit the school was overstating its enrollment to illegally obtain additional state funding. She said Abdulle demoted her to kindergarten teacher and later fired her after she removed 70 students from enrollment to correct the problem.

In its answer to the lawsuit, the school denied overstating its enrollment to improperly boost state funding. It also denied retaliating against Osman for bringing her concerns to school leaders. Skyline said in its answer that Osman was terminated “due to concerns over whether she was a good fit for her position and concerns with her performance.”

Both sides agreed to dismiss the lawsuit in December 2022.