Auburn private school closes doors without warning
Mar 7, 2012, 9:18 AM | Updated: 12:43 pm
An Auburn private school sent an email to its parents at 11:00 p.m. Tuesday night saying it’s sorry, but it’s closing its doors immediately.
The Auburn Gateway School told its parents it’s director, who resigned on Friday, made mistakes with school finances or simply mismanaged them, and it can no longer stay open.
Cyndee Eason has two young children at school. She told MyNorthwest.com she had concerns about finances after getting returned invoices, but this was a shock. She might also be out $1,000.
“I can’t imagine, not just having daycare and now going to have to pay another $1,000 to have daycare, the families that are suffering financially and educationally,” she said. “I mean these kids are going to be set back.”
The school told parents it isn’t sure what happened to its finances.
This is the letter acting director Lisa Monto sent to parents:
Gateway Families,
It is with much sadness that I tell to you tonight. I don’t know very many of you very well, because that has been part of Emily Gomes’ role at Gateway up to this point. My main role at Gateway the past 3 years has been to work with your children and their teachers and the curriculum. I know you have received Emily’s resignation letter.
We received her resignation Friday, so we started to group a new leadership team to carry on the school with as little impact to the students and their families as possible. We also met with Emily’s husband, and let him know the situation and what we needed in terms of cash to keep the school going. At that time, he was cooperative and had the school’s best interest in mind and was going to help us get through this transition with a financial backing. Our leadership team worked round the clock for the last couple days, trying to determine the best course of action. During this process, the Gomes’ stopped returning phone calls and told us that our communication needs to go through their lawyer.
At this point, we sought out a lawyer ourselves and met with him today. Talking with him today, it became apparent that we were not going to be able to save the current company started by Emily.
So it is with much sadness that I inform you all that the school of Auburn Gateway is closed effective immediately. The church has graciously agreed to let us use their building and we will have volunteer staff here for the remainder of the week and we will be running Beauty and the Beast rehearsal for all students Pre-K and older. This will take place from 8-5P.M.and they will need to bring a sack lunch.
As we move forward we would like to discuss our vision for a new school with similar educational values. We’re conducting a meeting tomorrow night at 7:00P.M. to give you all more information and to provide a format for you to express your ideas.
The promises we can make are that we will be working as diligently and hard as possible to rebuild what we have started. We want you all to know that we have a deep passion for the education of your kids and are dedicated to them.
