![]() “Agora’s Board of Trustees cannot speculate about how the Pennsylvania Department of Education will perceive the Board’s actions when Agora seeks renewal of its charter,” said Steffey’s statement. In a statement released to Capital & Main, Steffey confirmed that the Agora board hadn’t made a final decision regarding its curriculum services contract with K12 but otherwise refused to publically comment on the political considerations behind the board’s thinking. without K12, our application looks better.” “Mary Steffey, the board president, that, ‘Becoming self-managed puts us in a better position to be re-chartered by the state.’ And she had said that the current conversations that are happening between the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the Agora board. “That application is going out soon,” McNulty noted. ![]() His understanding of the board’s rationale, he told Capital & Main, was for it to take on self-management and consider another online curriculum vendor - Agora’s continued affiliation with K12 had become a political liability in getting Agora’s five-year charter renewed by Pennsylvania this year. ![]() Math teacher Michael McNulty is a five-year Agora cyber high school veteran who logged onto both of the charter’s virtual August board meetings. April’s decision by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) that it would no longer accept coursework from 24 virtual charters that use K12 to provide their online curriculum, including both Agora Cyber Charter and California’s largest online charter network, the California Virtual Academy (CAVA).This spring’s formal opinion by New Mexico’s Attorney General that a Farmington, NM-based K12 affiliate is in violation of a state law forbidding a for-profit company’s involvement in managing a charter school.Last month’s order by Tennessee’s education commissioner for the closure of K12’s affiliate there, Tennessee Virtual Academy, at the end of the 2014-15 school year, citing its dramatically poor academic performance.Last year’s loss of a management contract at Colorado Virtual Academies (COVA) - that state’s largest cyber charter - for the 2014 school year after complaints by parents and COVA about the company’s mismanagement of resources and misplaced priorities.Investors had already been skittish following an avalanche of recent setbacks for the company, including: ![]() ![]() The call-in’s moment of revelation can be heard here: So when news of the August 5 decision came to light during an August 14 K12 Fourth Quarter investor conference call, it sent K12’s high-performing stock into a nearly 13-point tailspin. The action came nearly three weeks after an August 5 vote by Agora’s board to not renew its management contract with the online learning giant beginning with the 2015-16 school year.Īgora had been the jewel of K12’s 29-state network of virtual charters, accounting for 14 percent of the company’s annual revenues of $848.2 million. The latest sign that the nation’s 14-year romance with the for-profit cyber charter industry might be cooling came last week when the Board of Trustees for Pennsylvania’s scandal-plagued Agora Cyber Charter School discussed completely severing its relationship with K12 Inc., the nation’s largest for-profit cyber charter management and curriculum supplier. ![]()
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