Passions flared Wednesday morning at a meeting held at ASU Preparatory Academy Phoenix discussing the possible termination of the school’s lease.
The emergency session was held after a renegotiation of the K-12 charter school’s lease whicresulted in the Phoenix Elementary School District voting to suspend their agreement with the campus. PESD decided to raise the price of renting the property from $300,000 a year to an unaffordable $2.7 million, according to ASU Preparatory CEO Beatriz Rendón.
Parents and community members present at the meeting were outraged after finding out about the development on the first day of school.
For now the Phoenix campus and its students are in limbo, with the school possibly closing its doors at the end of the academic year. PESD is allowing a 60-day negotiation period during which the lease will not be for sale to any party other than ASU Preparatory.
PESD said the price hike was due to the fact the lease agreement was created in 2009, when the area was still recovering from the economic recession and the market value of the land was much lower.
Parents at the event said that PESD wasn’t taking calls, and PESD did not immediately return requests for comment. They did release an information statement. PESD said they were invited to attend the Wednesday meetings, but their request to answer parent questions was denied by Rendón.
ASU Preparatory Academy is a network of K-12 charter schools in Arizona. The schools boast high graduation and college enrollment rates and, often, long waitlists. The Phoenix campus is located at the corner of Seventh Street and Fillmore Avenue in the Garfield Neighborhood, and enrolled over 1,100 students last year for grades K-12. Another thousand potential students were waitlisted, according to the school’s annual report.
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Demographically, a majority of the the Phoenix campus’s students are on free and reduced lunch, and about 63 percent of the Phoenix campus is Latino. The meeting began in English, but after parents protested, Rendón began to translate her own words into Spanish.
Some parents at the meeting said the rent increase was related to the value of the land, including Aida Crespo, who has a granddaughter in the third grade at ASU Preparatory.
Crespo said the land was “prime” real estate and speculated it might be considered for condos or other university purposes during the meeting.
“I don’t live too far from here and every day I get two or three calls trying to buy our house,” Crespo continued. “They want to get us out of here so they can get somebody else to pay more.”
Many parents complained that Arizona State University, which ASU Preparatory’s network of tuition-free schools is affiliated with, was not stepping up to help them.
Rendón assured parents that Arizona State University “is 100 percent with us.” In addition to being CEO of ASU Preparatory, Rendón is also Vice President of Educational Outreach at ASU.
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Since its inception in 2008, the schools have boasted high academic performance. Students at the three ASU Preparatory Academy campuses surpassed state averages in English and math at all grade levels, according to the most recent ASU Preparatory annual report. Last year, 100 percent of ASU Preparatory students graduated and were accepted into a two- or four-year college.
ASU Preparatory will continue operating through the current academic year, regardless of the outcome of lease negotiations.
Contact the reporter at Dylan.Simard@asu.edu.
Update: This story was updated on August 2 at 10:00 a.m. to reflect information PESD provided regarding parent meetings and the reasoning for the increase in rent.
