Arkansas' Charter Authorizing Panel on Tuesday accepted the voluntary non-renewal of the state-issued charter for Covenant Keepers Charter School, meaning the southwest Little Rock school will cease operations in June unless other means are found to keep it open.
City of Fire Inc., the sponsors of the school, and another charter school organization, Friendship Education Foundation, had attempted to reach an agreement in which the Friendship foundation would apply to attain a transfer of Covenant Keepers' charter.
The Friendship foundation — which already holds state charters for one soon-to-open Friendship Aspire school in Little Rock and one school in Pine Bluff — has been managing the Covenant Keepers campus this year through a memorandum of understanding with City of Fire and Valerie Tatum, the founder and original director of the school.
But Joe Harris, the chief operating officer of the national Friendship organization, told the seven-member state panel Tuesday that negotiations on the proposed transfer of the charter were unsuccessful.
"The reason for the breakdown was chiefly due to slow responses and a delay in City of Fire producing documentation to support additional debt that was included in a new debt schedule presented to Friendship," Harris said.
Tatum told the panel that she retired from the school last October and that her organization no longer wants responsibility for the school although she would like to see it continue. Tatum said she believed it was Friendship's responsibility to apply for the transfer of the charter.
With both entities declining to apply for the charter renewal and transfer, the panel had no application on which to act.
The current charter will expire at the end of the fiscal year, June 30.
Harris said in an interview after the panel vote that his organization will move within the next few weeks to attain state approval of an amendment to one of Friendship's existing charters that will allow the organization to operate its own charter school in place of Covenant Keepers in the 2019-20 school year and beyond.