The Gathering Place opened in Northwest San Antonio in 2020. Credit: Google Street View

This week, the Texas Education Agency [TEA] opted not to renew San Antonio school The Gathering Place’s charter beyond the 2024-25 school year, the Express-News reports.

The TEA made its decision after the Northwest San Antonio charter school became mired in a series of controversies, including substandard academic performance and financial struggles, according to the daily.

“The TEA non-renewal decision coincides with our ongoing financial challenges,” Gathering Place Superintendent Brian Sparks wrote in an email to parents, cited by MySA. “As I have communicated over the past several months, our student enrollment has been significantly lower than initially projected. As a public school, our funding is directly tied to enrollment numbers, which impacts the resources we can allocate to our programs.”

Located at 5818 Northwest Loop 410, The Gathering Place opened in 2020 with an experimental learning focus built around social justice and project-art learning. However, the school’s test scores are well below average and student turnover was high, the Express-News reports.

The Gathering Place had an attrition rate of 49%, well above the state average of 18%, according to daily. Meanwhile, only 30% of the school’s students were up to grade level in math, and just 57% were reading at the appropriate level, according to the report.

The decision by the TEA not to renew the Gathering Place’s charter also follows a finding by the state education agency that the school had hired special education teachers who lacked required certifications.

The charter school’s potential closure comes as the Texas Legislature gears up for another battle over school vouchers. Skeptics warn the program, championed by Gov. Greg Abbott, could lead to a deluge of under-qualified private campuses popping up to take advantage of parents’ voucher dollars.

In an earlier interview with the Current, Michigan State University public education scholar Joshua Cowen said states that adopt voucher programs tend to see gold rushes of “subprime” or “pop-up” private schools.

“It’s not the elite private schools that are doing really well and have endowments and are propped up by a Catholic Church diocese or wealthy alumni and waiting lists,” Cowen said. “Those are not the schools that participate in school voucher programs. They don’t want anything to do with it.”

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