Declining enrollment has led to the closure of a free public charter school in Grass Valley. Jennifer Dearduff just took over this fall as director of Sierra Montessori Academy, which is on Duggans Road. She says the K-8 student population had been around 140 in recent years, but had dropped to around 40. Then her predecessor resigned, at the beginning of September…
Dearduff says that made it very difficult to run the school cost-effectively. She says there are no other K-8 Montessori schools in the area. The school district of residence has to accept these students…
In a letter to families on its web site in mid-September, Sierra Montessori Academy officials stated the County Office of Education was not interested in closing the school and had pledged to help improve enrollment. It also asked families to disregard rumors they were closing. But officials are closing the academy on October 31st. It opened in 2005.
John Loy
I dont understand why we were told the SMA school would not be closing just 3 weeks ago and that all these speculations were rumors when obviously we were lied too. The only ones suffering from this are the kids. Now have to transition to new schools when should have been weeks ago. We were failed by the system and now our kids are the ones who suffer.