DES MOINES — From all over the Seattle area, students and adults have trekked to this easy-to-miss lot on the shoulder of a highway in South King County.
They came for the refuge that Why Not You Academy offered. When it opened in 2021, the small charter high school promised a community dedicated to giving marginalized students a leg up in the working world. Russell Wilson, then-quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks, and Grammy Award-winning singer Ciara, his wife, donated $1.65 million, visiting a handful of times.
But after just three years, its future is uncertain.
“There was a honeymoon phase,” said Nina Markham, who was one of the first teachers to work at the school. “Then it took a dark turn.”
In recent months, more than a dozen former students and staff have come forward alleging a chaotic and toxic culture at the school. They accuse its leadership of unprofessionalism, driving out educators and ignoring concerns about educational quality.
Since September, the school has lost a third of its students and staff, and administrators are working to stave off closure. Much of the original staff, including the founders, are no longer there.
The school’s challenges reached a tipping point this past fall, the school’s third year. During a period of rapid staff turnover, students with disabilities — at least 10, according to the state education department — didn’t receive services. Two lockdowns happened in the same week. Several former and current staff without certification say they were asked to teach classes, which could be a violation of state law. And a few times this school year, they said, some classrooms were unstaffed.
“It was like day care,” said Sahra Osman, a mother who pulled two of her children out of the school in October. “There’s no education there.”
In interviews, Why Not You Academy CEO Abigail O’Neal acknowledged a lapse in special education services but denied the school had ever placed uncertificated teachers in classrooms. She also said there was only one occasion where a class was unsupervised.
Some of the staff that resigned, she said, didn’t share the school’s vision. But she said these challenges have been resolved and that the school is fully staffed.
”We now have a team that is here and ready to just teach our scholars and focus on the priorities that we are setting as a community,” O’Neal said Dec. 15. “Some families are asking if they can come back.”
But the school’s future still hinges on whether it can get its enrollment up. It’s the latest test of an accountability system for the state’s tiny, 18-school charter sector, which serves about 4,400 kids across the state — less than 0.5% of the total public school population.
Seventy students have left since the school year began with 220 kids in August, triggering more regulatory oversight from the Washington State Charter School Commission, a board of 11 appointed officials who approve and revoke charter schools.
The commission’s staff, separate from the board, has investigated parent complaints about special education, uncertificated teachers and safety. It has met with the school’s board and administration and observed inside classrooms. They determined those issues have been resolved.
But the commission could still close the school if it continues to lose kids. Enrollment is an important signal of the school’s quality, said Jessica DeBarros, who leads the commission’s staff. Charter schools also receive the majority of their funds from the state, and those funds are based on enrollment.
“We want charter schools to be serving their communities,” she said.
Current and former staff told The Seattle Times that the school’s problems dated back to its first year. Most asked to remain anonymous because they feared professional retribution.
“I would never send my children here,” said one school staff member.
Evolution of the school
Why Not You was founded by Garth Reeves and Scott Canfield, career educators who’d worked together as assistant principals at West Seattle High School until 2019.
“Leave to Learn” was at the heart of the founders’ vision: Once a week, students would leave campus for a half day to complete internships, do job shadows or hear from speakers.
Why Not You offered students career connections and a sense of direction after school, said Carolyn Dean, whose son, Toby, made a two-hour round-trip commute to the school when it first opened.
The fall 2020 opening was delayed a year by the pandemic. The founders courted many funders, including the Wilsons’ Why Not You Foundation, which announced a $1.65 million donation in fall 2020, the largest it received. The school invoiced the nonprofit for the last installment of these funds in December.
The school was named “Why Not You” to honor that support. The couple showed up to a handful of events, passing out backpacks, beanies and scarves.
A new CEO
The founders hired O’Neal to help lead the school just after it opened in 2021. Canfield and Reeves were impressed by her charter school experience, including a stint at one of the largest charter school networks in the country, Uncommon Schools.
Her management style included a coaching model where educators receive frequent, informal feedback on their performance.
O’Neal’s scrappiness was originally what got her the job. But it also drove out several staff members, said Reeves, and soon he also clashed with O’Neal.
“Several times, I had to step in” because O’Neal wanted to fire people immediately after she had a bad interaction with them, he said. “That would’ve left the school vulnerable to lawsuits and charges of discrimination.”
O’Neal said she doesn’t recall Reeves questioning her handling of personnel issues. Reeves insists there were several conversations.
The charter school environment can be especially stressful for educators, said Jeb Binns, president of the Highline Education Association teachers union. They are often dealing with the workload of traditional public school teachers but without the guardrails of a union contract.
Several staff described feeling demoralized by O’Neal’s leadership. They say she was dismissive of their concerns about workload and educational quality, sometimes organizing events and changing school schedules with little notice.
“It was the most toxic leadership experience of my life,” said one educator who worked at the school for three months in 2022.
One teacher said O’Neal would critique her in front of students during class. In one case, she said, O’Neal picked assignments up off students’ desks during class, left the room and came back with different ones.
O’Neal also pulled students out of her class to ask them what they thought about their teacher, she said. The teacher quit after four months.
“If that happened in a class I was teaching, I would find it hard to walk into my classroom the next day,” Binns said.
O’Neal said she does not remember that incident but said she sometimes will suggest assignments that are better suited to students’ reading levels. She denied speaking with students about their teachers.
“There can be misunderstandings about what our community and our students need,” said O’Neal. “I don’t think I’ve ever been disrespectful to anyone.”
By the end of the 2022-23 school year, the school’s second year, families said a number of staffers had departed.
One mother said her daughter’s math teacher left in the middle of the year, and the new teacher who took over was missing 15 of her assignments. Credits disappeared from her transcript, the mom said, including U.S. history.
“She was having panic attacks and migraines,” she said.
After seeing so many teachers leave, said Dean, her son Toby decided to enroll in a program that allowed him to take classes exclusively at Highline College.
Canfield and Reeves, the founders, also resigned at the end of last year. Both said they left to spend more time with their families. But Reeves said tensions between him and O’Neal had also been escalating.
In March 2023, O’Neal told the board of directors that Reeves used a racial slur when talking to a student. Reeves said he apologized for the incident. At the time, the entire school was concerned about students’ casual use of slurs, he said. Reeves said he repeated the full word while he was trying to share what students were saying to each other.
Four of the school’s board members also quit last summer. By fall, only two teachers from the previous year’s staff had returned.
“We deeply regret the challenges some families and students have experienced due to staff turnover and related issues during the last school year,” O’Neal wrote via email.
At the end of the last school year, O’Neal was named CEO.
The Why Not You Foundation, which is the school’s primary private sponsor, did not make anyone available for an interview for this story.
“We are aware that the school is addressing some challenges and we understand that school leadership has created opportunities for community members to voice concerns,” the organization said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to partner with Why Not You Academy.”
Chaos this school year
Kowsar Abshir, who served on the school’s board of directors, resigned her position and began working at the school in fall 2023 because she could see “students were struggling.”
At Why Not You, test scores are low — only 11% met standards in math, a metric the school is trying to improve. Only about a third of the students regularly attended classes last school year.
Abshir was supposed to help head up the Leave to Learn program. But because of short staffing at the beginning of the year, she and others say they had to work as substitutes in classes they weren’t qualified to lead.
“I couldn’t look these students in the eye knowing they weren’t getting a good education,” she said.
Within the first few weeks of school, several staff members quit. Dozens of families followed suit, describing aimless class periods and a roulette of instructors. Many also described feeling unsafe after two lockdowns happened within the same week.
In the first incident, on Sept. 15, police were called to the school to break up a fight between students, and a knife fell out of a staff member’s pocket and into a student’s hair, according to a police report. The school said it disciplined the employee who had the knife but wouldn’t specify how.
“He still works at the school,” said Abshir.
Three days later, a student was discovered with a gun in his backpack.
The school also asked special education teachers to cover classes, leaving students with disabilities without critical services for more than a month, one staffer said. O’Neal said all students affected are receiving compensatory services now.
One teacher said she received no information about which kids in her class had disabilities.
“I had a student who would come in and would just pace,” she said. “Every day, you never knew what you were going to get.”
On at least one occasion, students reported to a class where a teacher hadn’t shown up. One screenshot of an Aug. 30 conversation shows a photo of a student appearing to lead the class.
“There was no teacher here but the students were running the math class,” O’Neal said in a message sent to staff. “We have the best kids! #mybad”
In October, students walked out of their classes after they learned two instructors were escorted from the building, teachers reported. Parents and staff began contacting the board and Charter School Commission pleading for intervention.
“I only had one teacher out of six who was giving solid work,” said Kyle Bissett, a former student who left the school in October. “The school felt defunct.”
Abshir was also among those people who spoke up.
She said the board’s president, Bobby Humes, raised his voice at her after she penned an email flagging her concerns about the school to funders and the commission. She was placed on administrative leave days later and then laid off. Humes denied raising his voice, and O’Neal said those decisions were not related to the email.
Charter schools are subject to the same legal requirements as regular public schools. And while traditional public schools have their share of controversies, critics like state Superintendent Chris Reykdal argue that the structure of charters allows problems to “fester” longer because their governing boards aren’t elected.
But in several ways, charter schools are actually under more scrutiny, argued DeBarros, the executive director of the charter commission’s staff. The commission can revoke a contract with a charter school over a long list of issues, including lackluster academic performance and low enrollment — although since its inception in 2012, it has never pulled that lever.
The school’s governing board has a plan to keep the school financially viable. Humes, who recently took over as the board’s president, said he’s communicated with a number of parents about their concerns and hosted public forums. The complaints and resignations came in so swiftly, he said, “It felt as though there wasn’t even a chance to get ourselves on the right course of action.”
The board recently hired a chief academic officer to assist O’Neal with everyday operations.
“I’m confident with Abi’s leadership and a refreshed board,” said Humes. “I’m not getting emails anymore.”
But ultimately, the commission will decide the school’s fate. It is now determining whether it will place the school under a Corrective Action Plan for failing to enroll enough students. The commission can also issue sanctions for unsatisfactory performance or choose to terminate the school’s contract early over any violations of commission rules.
The school’s contract is up for renewal in 2025.