LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – In a letter to parents, Democracy Preparatory Academy at Agassi Campus announced it will be closing its high school at the end of this school year, saying it does not have enough K-8 students to feed into the high school.
Sarina Godinez is a parent of twins, who she signed up a couple years ago to attend kindergarten at the academy, which is located on West Lake Mead Blvd.
“When I first heard of DPAC, I could see my kids going all the way,” Godinez told FOX5 Friday. “They learned how to read. They learned how to write and everything at that level.”
Even during the pandemic, Godinez was satisfied with the education her children were receiving at Democracy Prep, as well as the communication she was receiving from the school.
“I was very much in touch with the teachers and everything,” she recalled.
Over time, though, Godinez noticed a shift.
“It seemed that once everything started opening back up and it was time to go back to school, things seemed to change,” she remembered. “I noticed communication wasn’t the same.”
Godinez points to a change in leadership that wound up causing confusion between her and her sister, whose child is the same age as her twins.
“We weren’t given the same information, so one kid would say, ‘Oh, we’ve got this going on. Here’s a paper for that,’” she said. “And, of course, we’d assume it was all of them, but we didn’t get that communication for the other two. So my sister and I would be confused, like, ‘What did you get?’”
This led to some missed opportunities, Godinez says.
“Both or all three of them would miss out on something because we didn’t get that communication accurately,” she said.
It also ultimately led to Godinez pulling her kids out of the academy before the start of this school year.
“At the end of the second grade year, I said, ‘Yeah, I’m finding another school,’” she recalled. “It’s unfortunate because they had a lot of great things. But, yeah, it was a change in staff and it really wasn’t the same.”
Upon hearing the news that the high school portion of the school is shutting down because of a lack of K-8 students, Godinez said she could see why.
“When I just saw that it was the high school portion being let go, it’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t come as a surprise for me,” she said.
FOX5 reached out to Democracy Prep, which says it will be working with families to place their high school students in other schools.
The academy said in a letter to parents that it intends to open its high school back up once enrollment reaches an acceptable level. In the meantime, after closing its high school in the spring, the academy says it will focus its energies on its K-8 students.
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