Also a former CMI employee here: You can’t hire-out the skills your leadership team lacks and think it’s a workable solution.

If you care about your children, just drive right on past this school. There's a "head in the sand" culture that basically equates to "If I didn't see it, then it didn't happen. So, there's no need to ruffle any feathers." The place has been playing dodgeball with scandals for roughly the past year, and it's only going to get worse.

As a current staff member at CMI, I’ve debated whether to speak up publicly, but recent events have made it clear that silence only protects dysfunction.

There’s been a lot of talk about leadership changes—yes, the CEO is stepping down—but let’s not pretend that solves everything. Many of the same issues remain, particularly among the remaining C-suite. From what many of us have witnessed, the school has struggled with transparency, staff turnover, retaliatory culture, and a lack of real support for students with the highest needs.

It’s disheartening to see staff and families pour their hearts into this community only to face gaslighting and broken systems from the top. We want to believe in the mission, but leadership has to reflect that. If CMI is serious about change, they need new leadership—outside of the current inner circle.

Families deserve to know what’s really going on behind the scenes, and staff deserve a culture that supports—not punishes—them for advocating for students.

Here’s hoping the board listens this time.

Well, I did dig up some budget documents. https://www.dcpcsb.org/school-budgets But this stuff is complicated and I'm not sure I'm reading it right.


As best I can tell, for FY 2024 CMI budgeted for 581 kids. The OSSE enrollment spreadsheets say 581. The October 21, 2024 meeting minutes say that they had to submit a revised budget to the PCSB due to lower enrollment. But I'm not sure if what I'm seeing for FY 2025 is original or revised.

For FY 2025, CMI budgeted for 530 kids, and the OSSE enrollment spreadsheets show that number. (Weirdly the kids are dollar-denominated.)

For FY 2026 draft, CMI budgeted for 532 kids. But then the March 11 board meeting minutes say they're budgeting for fewer kids. But I'm not sure how many fewer and that's really the question.

I wonder if they'll stop offering 6-8th.

The next PCSB meeting is May 19 so they may be on the Financial Monitoring List at that meeting. I dunno. It's very hard to say what's going on from the outside. Maybe recently-disenrolled folks can tell us more.

The minutes: Not a single action item in public. Only reports. Not even votes to accept reports.

It's very hard to tell from these minutes how actually bad things are. CMI is not on the Financial Monitoring List at this time, but per the minutes has to resubmit their budget to the PCSB due to lower enrollment. CAPE scores are not very good but hard to interpret given the high number of ELL/SWD/At-Risk students. Summative score is 27th percentile-- not good! Seems like Academic Achievement and Academic Growth are the biggest problems in the score. Re-enrollment isn't very good-- 71%. The FY 2023 FAR looks okay.

Running a School Report Card comparison with ITDS and John Francis (because they're all preschool-8s), it seems like academics and chronic absenteeism are where the difference is. It also seems like CMI fared quite poorly in this year's lottery, not even filling up its PK3 seats which is always a red flag. Seems like an awful lot of seats were offered (a red flag itself) and not all seats were claimed.

Anyway, seems like CMI has had a declining reputation for a few years and those issues are now building to a head.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I never understood the board selection process or the lack of meaningful open meeting laws, other than to say the system was designed for minimal oversight and accountability in any kind of democratic way. As best I could tell, the board was simply friends of the director or hand-picked parents.

Look at when they last posted minutes. It was September. There’s not even transparency w the minutes! There have been a few board meetings since then and also a canceled one in December. When we were briefly at the school, I attended one board meeting. I was the only parent there. It was shocking. The board seemed more interested in free dinner than oversight. This was a couple years ago.

Minutes are posted from the two most recent meetings, February 10 and March 11. They show a significant concern for enrollment and its effect on financials.

Maybe it's a good thing that the executive director is leaving?

https://www.creativemindspcs.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Board-Meeting-Minutes-09.09.24-combined_2.pdf

Looks like the Executive Director is now leaving, after lots of other layoffs and restructuring.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CMI was sinking 5 years ago. I’m surprised it’s still around.

+1. I remember people saying CMI is bad shortly after it moved to that beautiful campus, and that must be years ago by now.

The expensiveness of the campus is one of the reasons for the trouble.

It's too pretty, it attracted people who want that kind of preschool and then they couldn't pivot to academics in mid elementary the way parents actually want even though they may not realize it when their kids are little.

What does this mean? The best academic private schools have beautiful campuses.

Oh FFS. The best academic private schools have way more money (and/or bought their campus decades ago), so they can afford a nice facility without compromising on other things like quality of academics.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CMI was sinking 5 years ago. I’m surprised it’s still around.

+1. I remember people saying CMI is bad shortly after it moved to that beautiful campus, and that must be years ago by now.

The expensiveness of the campus is one of the reasons for the trouble.

It's too pretty, it attracted people who want that kind of preschool and then they couldn't pivot to academics in mid elementary the way parents actually want even though they may not realize it when their kids are little.

What does this mean? The best academic private schools have beautiful campuses.

Anonymous wrote:I never understood the board selection process or the lack of meaningful open meeting laws, other than to say the system was designed for minimal oversight and accountability in any kind of democratic way. As best I could tell, the board was simply friends of the director or hand-picked parents.

Look at when they last posted minutes. It was September. There’s not even transparency w the minutes! There have been a few board meetings since then and also a canceled one in December. When we were briefly at the school, I attended one board meeting. I was the only parent there. It was shocking. The board seemed more interested in free dinner than oversight. This was a couple years ago.

I never understood the board selection process or the lack of meaningful open meeting laws, other than to say the system was designed for minimal oversight and accountability in any kind of democratic way. As best I could tell, the board was simply friends of the director or hand-picked parents.

It also requires an engaged board and parent community too, which this charter lacks.

It’s too bad. There are people who really want to be good teachers and I think the leadership of the school wanted to be good as well. But running a school is a lot of work and requires a mountain of expertise.