Josh DeWeerd, executive director of Ka‘u Learning Academy, had to make tough phone calls last week, telling families that their small charter school had shut down and they needed to move on.

“It’s difficult for everybody involved,” said DeWeerd, who took over as executive director April 2 in hopes of setting things right at the rural campus in Naalehu on Hawaii island. “The school is no longer a school anymore. It hurts the communities and it hurts our families, but we’ll get through it.”

The Hawaii Charter School Commission voted unanimously July 9 to revoke the school’s charter, alleging 22 violations of its contract. The commission first put the school on notice late last year. But the final decision still came as a surprise to DeWeerd and new board leaders who stepped up in April and worked diligently to turn things around.

The commission listed a range of allegations, including financial and operational irregularities, improper record maintenance and a governing board that was not properly formed. The school’s testing protocol was so problematic that its students’ 2017 test scores were invalidated last month after a Department of Education investigation.

“Since April we really tried to rectify each of those 22 items, and we felt like we had,” DeWeerd said Tuesday. “We worked extremely hard in those three months. We had such a great academic plan. We were really excited on the direction it was going to go.”

Sione Thompson, the commission’s executive director, commended the new leaders of the school for their efforts.

“They did a tremendous job in moving what was very broken into something that was starting to fix a lot of the issues and allegations,” Thompson said last week. “They have done things with integrity and transparency.”

But ultimately commissioners determined that the situation was less a “cleanup effort” than “a restart with a whole new endeavor,” he said. They suggested the school apply for a new charter, a process that typically takes at least a year.

Thompson stressed that the problems at Ka‘u Learning Academy should not be generalized to other charters.

“This is not reflective of chartering in Hawaii,” he said. “It was just a few people that made some bad decisions.”

Ka‘u Learning Academy has 21 days to appeal the closure decision to the Board of Education.

“We are looking at all options, and appeal is one of those options,” DeWeerd said.

KLA had 93 students in third through seventh grade in the last academic year. Sixty students had registered for the coming year, and enrollment was projected at 90 this fall. The academy opened in August 2015 under the leadership of Kathryn Tydlacka, its founder and executive director, whom DeWeerd replaced in April.

Other schools in the area will accommodate the displaced students, but the shutdown is short notice for teachers and staff to land other jobs. KLA had 12 staff members, according to DeWeerd. Four of them were teachers, including two emergency hires.

The academy was the second charter school in Hawaii to have its charter revoked, following Halau Lokahi, which was forced out of business in May 2015 due to recurring financial woes. Without KLA there are now 35 public charter schools statewide, including two that opened last fall.

While an appeal remains an option for Ka‘u, the closure stands for now. Next steps include informing families and state agencies, processing final employee payrolls, transferring student records and itemizing property that will revert to the state from the school.