OAKLAND, California. – State officials and the school district ordered the closure of a charter school in Oakland, but parents still dropped their children off there on Friday, assuming the school year would go on as planned.

Now these parents are faced with the task of finding a new school for their children.

The news came as a shock to the parents, students and teachers of this close-knit community, even though the decision to close the school had already been made in June.

It was an emotional scene in front of the North Oakland Community Charter School (NOCCS) on the border of Emeryville and North Oakland.

One mother, Brittany Philpart, who said she runs a daycare that serves as a feeder program to NOCCS, said her daughter attends that school.

“She didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to her friends,” she said. “The school didn’t tell them they were closing.”

Juanita Pintane left the school and hugged her son, fourth-grader Liev. Both were crying. “It feels like the ground has been pulled out from under us,” she said. “We actually received the message a few days ago that the school would be open today, that we would be here and that everything would continue as normal.”

“We dropped her off at 8 a.m. and got a text at 10 saying the school was closed,” Philpart said.

Despite the shock, the battle between NOCCS and the Oakland Unified School District has been going on for years.

OUSD announced in 2019 that the school was threatened with closure, but the parties reached an agreement to close only the NOCCS middle school and improve its standardized test scores.

Most recently, at a meeting on June 5, the school board voted to revoke the charter and permanently close NOCCS, effective June 30, 2024.

At the meeting, Kelly Krag-Arnold, director of the OUSD Office of Charter Schools, said, “NOCCS has not met the academic goals set forth in the agreement and is therefore required under the agreement to self-close by the end of the 2023-2024 school year.”

Shaeonna Muhammad, chair of the NOCCS board and a parent, said tearfully that the school has fought back and sued the school district.

“They immediately go to board meetings and argue, sit in board meetings for hours, begging, pleading, emailing and writing back and forth,” Muhammad said.

“The school’s performance has improved. For example, last year we won an award for improving the test scores of black and brown children,” said Pintane, adding that the school offers her son a special community.

But the Alameda County courts ruled in favor of OUSD, and the school district said in a partial statement: “Because NOCCS does not have an active charter, it is not legally permitted to operate a charter school or to open the 2024-2025 school year as a charter school…”

Muhammad told KTVU the school remained open because it believed it could continue operating while appealing the decision. She also said it requested another transition year before closing permanently and has not received a response.

“No, the teachers did not teach academic material. No, we did not turn away any students. However, the students were able to have fun and say goodbye,” Muhammad said with tears in his eyes.

The school district claims the school was informed of her fate multiple times and said in a partial statement:

“Despite receiving a written notice from the state to initiate closure actions and being informed that it would no longer receive state education funding for 2024-2025, NOCCS decided to resume classes, leaving its students and families with the situation of having to move to a new school once the charter school ran out of operating funds.”

The California Department of Education stated that “a charter school may appeal the revocation to the county school board within 30 days of the charter board’s decision to revoke the charter.”

The state continued, “Our Charter School Division is not aware of any appeal by the charter school to the Alameda County Office of Education.”

Now the teachers are unemployed and parents are looking for new schools.

“We don’t have many options, but we’ll figure it out,” Pintane said.

140 students in grades K through 5 were scheduled to attend North Oakland Community Charter School (NOCCS) this school year.

The school helps parents enroll their children in other charter schools in the area.