By Sara Ballenger

The financially troubled Silicon Valley Essential High School closed its doors Oct. 15, after its staff, a director and three teachers, submitted resignations.

The school was unable to fund any additional staff within the time frame needed to keep the school open.

The Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District sponsored the charter school, which began last year. The school served 60 students from Los Altos, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and Menlo Park.

“Although neither the board nor I encouraged the formation of SVE, I still had cautious hopes the SVE would fulfill its charter of creating a college prep environment for students who were underrepresented and/or unsuccessful at the traditional high schools,” Superintendent Rich Fischer said.

Under the state’s Charter School Law, a charter shool is a public school that is publicly funded but given more leeway than a traditional public school in exchange for the accountability of students’ academic achievement, according to the California Department of Education.

“It’s important to note that the term sponsor is a legal term for the Charter School Law,” Fischer said. “It’s not appropriate to believe that the district initiated the sponsorship or encouraged it. Rather, we responded to the request from the SVE founders to form the charter in our district, in order to comply with the letter and intent of the law.”

The charter school’s 60 students transferred into other local high schools or charter schools this week, including Los Altos and Mountain View High.

Fischer alerted the administration and principals at both high schools of the charter school’s possible closure, to make the transition of absorbing such a large number of students after the start of the school year as easy as possible, said Susan Sweeley, board member of the high school district.

“My assessment of the school is that it had a strong theoretical foundation, but no constituency. It did not grow out of a clearly expressed community need, but was brought into the district under the technicalities of the Charter School Law with the hope ‘if we build it, they will come,’” Fischer said. “According to the Charter Plan reflected in their budget projections, the school planned to have 200 students this year, predominantly coming from the MV-LA attendance area. Well, they didn’t come.”

Fischer’s worst fears came true with the closing of the school.

“The real victims are the students,” he said.

Staff of Silicon Valley Essential High School was unavailable for comment.