Hillcrest Academy

STAY AWAY FROM THIS SCHOOL. DO NOT SEND YOUR CHILDREN HERE, AND DO NOT EVER WORK FOR THEM. The Mesa Campus is still open. Their teachers end of the year paychecks BOUNCED!!! Not only were they 7 days late — -they BOUNCED!!! Now 2 weeks have gone by and they still HAVE NOT BEEN PAID! The owner of the school is a liar, and a thief who lives lavishly while the people that worked hard to educate children — have not gotten paid! Local newstations, and newspapers, please take heed! This happpened before. The lies and excuses we all heard while the Phoenix Campus was open, were endless and heartless. Teachers, Staff, students and parents were lied to constantly. KARMA WILL GET HIM!!!

I would highly advise any parent who is considering Hillcrest Academy Mesa campus to research on the financial strength of this school and the integrity of the governing board. In the summer of 2014, Hillcrest opened a campus in North Phoenix and were enrolling students K-​12, what we didn’t know is that the school did not have the charter approved for grades K-​4 until those students were given 1 day notice that they had to leave the school. Enrollment went down about 50% and it appears the board did not have a back-​up financial plan to handle the financial loss and never once reached out to the families to ask for any type of help (fundraisers, donations, tax credits, etc) nor did they make any major cuts (they maintained 3 buses at the school). Upon returning from Winter Break, parents, teachers and staff were informed by someone who gained information from staff at the Mesa campus prior to break that the Phoenix campus would be closing in January. The president attempted to close the campus as discreetly as possible as not to have to face the parents or students; however, due to the efforts of parents and students a meeting took place on ¹⁄₁₃ to ensure the board would have to face the parents, students, teachers and staff. In the end the campus is now closed and many parents are left with very limited options of where to place their students mid-​year. During the board meeting on 1/​13, the board discussed the financials of the campus and in that discussion it was stated that the Phoenix campus only was carrying the cost of running that facility and the Mesa campus carried the cost of all other operations (including a district office of 10 employees). This seems to be a lot of overhead for a school of 118.
The Phoenix campus had an amazing team of teachers and staff, a tightly knit group of students and a group of very passionate parents, it has been very sad to see that destroyed by a president who clearly does not care about the students (he offered no apology, no assistance to the families to find alternate schools, and during the entire meeting with the parents and students held in a classroom would not remove his baseball cap which only proved his lack of respect for the entire group).
In addition, a few days later we received an email from the Mesa campus letting those parent’s know that they let go several of their teachers and replaced them with some of the Phoenix campus teachers. A clear indication those making decisions at this school have no regard for the kids emotional well-​being… letting go the teachers they have had for a semester and replacing with a new set of teachers.

By far the worst experience — the school is closing in the middle of the school year leaving 4^th to 12^th grade kids out not to mention staff and teachers who are now out of a job!
Very poor communication with the parents created a huge amount of gossip and unclear mixed messages. Very disappointed by how this was all handled.