Beehive charter school gets another chance

SALT LAKE CITY — After a six-month-long investigation into alleged financial misconduct, the State Charter School Board decided Thursday to give a Salt Lake secondary school one more chance.

Beehive Science & Technology Academy, a tax-funded public charter school, has been struggling to balance its budget since a disgruntled former teacher accused the school in July 2009 of using its classrooms to promote Islamic beliefs. A board audit cleared Beehive of any wrongdoing, but the school lost 11 percent of its per-student state funding when parents, made wary by negative media reports, took 25 of the school's 224 students elsewhere.

"I am so happy," said Murat Biyik, who helped found the school in 2005 and is now temporarily serving as the school's pro-bono principal. "This is like another start for us. Things are going to turn around."

In the months since the audit began, Biyik and other administrators have been working desperately to make ends meet.

Beehive principal Frank Erdogan voluntarily sacrificed his position. Four teachers were let go. The school saved $325,000 by renegotiating their facility lease and garnered more than $170,000 in donations. Biyik himself forgave the school a $58,000 personal loan.

"The school, it means a lot," Biyuk said. "Money comes after that."

Beehive will be on probation for one year, pending sufficient enrollment growth and budgetary adjustments.

For 17-year-old Sarah Ahmed, Beehive's student body president, the charter's second chance means a lot. She struggled through eight different schools — public and private — before finding Beehive.

"Those other schools weren't good for me," said Ahmed, who has blossomed from a C to an A student since her transfer to Beehive. "I'm a senior. I don't know what I'd do if we lost Beehive."

Ahmed and about 50 other students, parents and teachers crowded the State Office of Education Thursday in hopes of saving the charter.

Parents shared stories of how the school's science- and math- intensive curriculum inspired their previously failing students to take an interest in academics. Teachers make themselves available for evening and weekend homework help, they said.

"If there's any way I can help Beehive get past this bump, I'll do it," said David Detienne, of Draper, whose ninth grader attends. "It's a great school."