Schools

No Time to Waste

With the foreclosure of American Heritage Academy set for April 5, a parent committee is hurriedly searching for a new location.

Wanted: A new home for , the Sixes Road private school facing .

Big enough to house anywhere from 120 to 220 students in prekindergarten through 12th grade.

Preferably no farther north than Riverstone Parkway and no farther south than Highway 92.

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Move-in ready.

“We’ve looked at a couple of churches, vacant school buildings, business offices, local colleges,” said Lori Haigwood, a member of a newly created parent committee. “We wanted to reach out to the community and see if other people out there had ideas for us.”

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American Heritage has to be out of its current home by June 15. The county’s first .

A that was under construction along Bells Ferry Road has been tossed around as a possible new home for American Heritage. But as school officials explore that option, parents are working behind the scenes to line up an alternative site of their own.

Food Lion “is one of our main options at this point,” Haigwood said. But “nothing is set in stone. There is no signature on the dotted line yet.

“Parents want to know that their kids are going to have a place to go to school. The earlier that they know, the better.”

* * *

Since American Heritage was advertised for foreclosure on March 11, families have scrambled to understand how a school that charges tens of thousands of dollars a year in tuition sank so far into debt.

Officials at American Heritage have not returned several telephone and written messages from Canton-Sixes Patch. And on Monday, just before a parent meeting got underway, a school official escorted a Patch reporter out of the building.

According to Haigwood, the parent committee and other reports, this is how American Heritage Academy assumed $12 million in debt:

American Heritage’s enrollment plummeted from more than 500 students in the late 2000s to approximately 325 today.

Despite the drop, the school built a new sports-arts complex, which was financed with the 's help. The authority is listed in the foreclosure notice, but isn't on the hook for any of the debt, executive director Misti Martin told the . It was merely the conduit through which American Heritage secured the bond for the gym, which was based on the private school's creditworthiness. The bond was not to exceed $18 million.

Enrollment never turned around and that took a toll on the school’s bank account.

It’s not clear if American Heritage ever defaulted on any of its bills, but in December 2008, the school entered a verbal forbearance agreement with its lender in an effort to trim operating costs. During forbearance, the lender typically agrees to work with the client, not to foreclose.

As part of the agreement, American Heritage paid interest only on the mortgage. The lender, Haigwood said, “controlled American Heritage’s bank account and came in and had regular meetings with the administration.

“I wouldn’t say they ran the school. I would say that they were helping manage the school.”

After another party expressed interest in the property recently, the lender exercised its option to foreclose on American Heritage. Just four days after the foreclosure listing, Cherokee Charter officials announced at a March 15 informational meeting that it was moving into American Heritage’s building.

Families like the Haigwoods, who have prepaid more than $20,000 of next year’s tuition for their three girls, didn’t know that their money was controlled by an outside entity. The school didn’t think it was necessary to discuss it with parents. And parents didn’t know to ask.

“As long as my kids are getting a good education and everything that I see within the school is top notch, would I question who is handling their bank account?” Haigwood asked. “No.”

* * *

It wasn’t until parents checked their e-mails on March 10 – the day before the foreclosure listing appeared in the – that they learned the gravity of the school’s financial situation.

“My biggest question to them was, ‘We’re family. We always talk about the school being a family. Why didn’t you tell us,’ ” Haigwood said. “The explanation was basically they sat down, discussed it and they just felt like if they had conversations about the monetary situation of the school, that people would leave.”

The reality hasn’t been at all how American Heritage imagined, she said.

“Once we did get the announcement,” Haigwood said, “it’s been amazing the response that the parents have had. They’re not leaving. They want to stay and they want to see the school move forward.”

The parent committee doesn’t know how many families will indeed return next year. A website that parents created to share updates with the American Heritage community indicates that the number is somewhere around 124.

The committee is working to get a more concrete number from the school.

* * *

Haigwood doesn’t think American Heritage operated in an underhanded fashion.

“We’ve seen the tax documents,” she said. “We’ve seen the audited financials. And we understand that the way the lender was managing the funds. It was just such a process to get money back for an invoice. There left very little room for anybody who wanted to try and do something underhanded.

“I believe that it’s simply just a sign of the times. Heck, (to) go from 500 students down to 320 makes a big difference in making that big mortgage payment.”

Haigwood said the school has been nothing but forthcoming since the school's financial woes became public.

Still, things must change, she said. And it starts with the school’s board of directors.

"There needs to be more parental involvement on the board so that parents are more involved in the decision making process of the school," Haigwood said.

But first, parents want to secure a building for the school and see if they can get their prepaid tuition dollars back. Approximately 50 families handed over a total of $450,000 toward next year’s tuition not knowing that the school would be part of a foreclosure sale.

American Heritage has hired McKenna Long & Aldridge, an Atlanta law firm, to represent the school in negotiations with the lender.

"We have been directed by the School to negotiate with the secured bondholders to obtain an orderly and fair transition agreement which will enable the School to continue its existence, to secure the return of pre-paid tuition and to advise the School on other alternatives to achieve these goals," attorney Henry F. Sewell Jr. wrote in a March 18 letter to parents.

Haigwood said she's hopeful that there will be a positive resolution.

“I would assume that this company – a lending company to learning institutions – certainly (doesn’t) want that type of reputation of taking parents’ money that there’s been no services rendered for at this time," she said.

“But that’s all part of negotiations.”


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