Radnor school board denies another proposed charter at Valley Forge Military Academy

The Radnor Township School Board has denied an application for a military-themed charter school that was seeking to open on the grounds of Valley Forge Military Academy — saying it wasn’t clear that the charter had an agreement to use the academy’s facilities.

The school board, which voted 9-0 to deny the Pennsylvania Military Charter School’s application, took issue with numerous other aspects of the proposal, including the lack of an agreement with an education management company to run the school, no proof of community support, and a “profoundly deficient” proposed curriculum.

The application “is more of a concept ... than a specific program that is ready to be implemented,” the board said in a Feb. 21 decision prepared by the district’s solicitor and administrators denying the charter.

The denial marks the second time Radnor has rejected a charter proposed for the grounds of the Main Line military academy, which has experienced declining enrollment. The academy put forward the prior application, which Radnor dismissed in May 2021 as an apparent effort “to subsidize VFMA and make VFMA available to students through the use of public funds.” (Charters are free for students to attend, while the military academy costs $39,000 annually for boarding students, and $24,000 for day students.)

Like the past effort, the latest proposed charter would have paid rent to the military academy. However, the applicants — who had no formal ties to the academy — didn’t show evidence that the academy was willing to rent to them, according to Radnor.

The school board noted that the Radnor planning commission recently considered an application for a 55-and-older community to be located on the academy’s campus, raising questions about what space would be available for the charter.

“The lack of commitment by the prospective landlord was so great that it is unclear if [charter] students would be able to use any VFMA facilities or buildings,” the board said.

Lisa Packer, a spokesperson for the military academy, said that the academy issued a request for proposals two years ago for an unused portion of its campus, leading to the plan currently before the Radnor planning commission.

That plan — which would transfer 33 acres of unused land to a developer — is separate from the proposed charter, and neither plan for the campus would affect VFMA’s operations, Packer said. She said that had the charter been approved, “buildings on the campus ... would be rented by the company running the charter school,” and directed further questions to the charter applicants.

Joshua Johnson, who presented the charter proposal to Radnor’s school board, did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

Johnson, a retired U.S. Army Green Beret who lives in Carlisle, previously told The Inquirer that he was asked to serve on the charter’s board by Charter One, a charter management company that started in Arizona and now runs schools in states including Florida, Nevada, and North Carolina. The board intended to contract with Charter One to manage the military charter, Johnson said.

However, the charter didn’t provide any proposed management agreement to review, the Radnor school board said. And the charter didn’t fully address how its board would operate, Radnor said — raising questions about “who will actually retain authority over the school” and run it.

The charter said it would feature a “military culture” and enroll 975 students from kindergarten through 12th grade — about four times as many students as are currently on the campus. (Officials have said the boys-only academy enrolls about 140 students in grades 7 through 12, and the military college enrolls 80.)

During hearings in December and January, the charter applicants acknowledged that they might not reach their targeted enrollment and had a “backup” plan and budget, according to the Radnor school board, which also noted a lack of support for the charter during the hearings. Almost all public comments were critical, including one questioning why the charter had not mentioned sexual orientation or gender identity in its nondiscrimination policy.

Noting Johnson’s statement that the school would address students by their name and gender on their birth certificate, the Radnor board said the charter’s practices would likely violate federal antidiscrimination law.

The charter, which was proposed to be located partially in the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District, applied to that board for approval as well. Denials of charter applications can be appealed to the state’s Charter Appeals Board.