It’s historic reopening was greeted with great fanfare last fall, but the Alexandria Academy ran out of money before its first school year ended and is now all but closed. The private school’s board of governors voted in late April to shut it down because it could no longer pay rent, teachers’ salaries or scholarships for its students.
Headmaster T. Robinson Ahlstrom remains on the job with three volunteer teachers, but only five of the school’s 27 students remain, four of whom are scholarship students from low-income families.
Parents wondering how the school could fail so quickly are blaming Ahlstrom, despite his pledge to reopen next year with three times as many students.
“He lives in fantasy world where wishes come true,” said Ann Henshaw, president of the school’s parents association. “The reality of the situation is not as rosy as he would like it to be or I would like it to be.”
The Alexandria Academy is a resurrection of a school co-founded in the 1700s by President George Washington, its reopening praised by Gov. Bob McDonnell and others last fall. Behind the scenes, however, the school appeared doomed from the start.
Just two weeks before its opening, a key donor dropped out, placing the school in an immediate cash crunch.
Craig Newbold, a state representative from Ohio who pledged about $200,000, backed out of the agreement, according to Ahlstrom. The school would never have opened if it knew Newbold planned to pull out, Ahlstrom said.
“I take responsibility for where we are, and I take responsibility for where we are not,” Ahlstrom said.
Newbold did not return calls seeking comment.
Parents didn’t learn of the academy’s financial woes until February, Henshaw said, and most kept their children in school until the board vote in April.
The academy was the second school Ahlstrom opened in the D.C. region. He helped start the Washington Latin Public Charter School in the District in 2006, which, like Alexandria Academy, had a curriculum based on Latin, classic literature and the Constitution.
Ahlstrom’s time at Washington Latin was no less tumultuous. He left after about a year following a spat with the D.C. Charter School Board and the school’s board of governors, four of whom resigned because Ahlstrom “refused to cooperate or communicate” with them.
“He only wanted people working with him who completely supported his vision,” said Thomas Nida, the charter board’s chairman at the time.
Despite problems, parents still support Alexandria Academy, but not Ahlstrom.
“I believe in the mission, and I still believe we need this institution,” Henshaw said. “But I’m a realist, and if you cannot afford to pay teachers, then you do not have a school.”
