A D.C. public charter school will leave 250 students and their families scrambling to find new schools as the charter closes in the middle of the academic year due to severe financial woes.

Washington Academy has surrendered its charter and is set to close Feb. 29. Another charter, Tri-Community Public Charter School, is on the path toward closure because of long-standing academic problems, charter board officials said.

The Washington Academy shutdown will mark the first midschool-year closure of a D.C. charter site. Josephine Baker, charter school board executive director, said the board would lay out alternatives for families during a Friday community meeting.

Parents told The Examiner they were frantic about where to send their children so late in the year.

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“My daughter’s in fourth grade, my son’s in second. Where do I take them?” asked Melissa Benjamin, who leads Washington Academy’s parents group. “Smothers is the public school up the street, but it’s also set to close.”

Board members discovered in December that school administrators weren’t paying taxes and could finish the year $1.2 million in the hole.

“This is the last thing we want, but if there are no funds, you cannot run your school,” Baker said as the board accepted Washington Academy leaders’ decision to close at a meeting Monday.

The board also voted to begin the charter revocation process for Tri-Community Public Charter School. Now in its sixth year, the school has essentially been on probation for the past year because of enrollment, monetary and academic problems.

Board members said the school may be making some progress in terms of its finances and enrollment, now at 133. But there’s still not enough evidence to support claims that test scores are rising, they said.

“A lot of this information I would have liked to see a year ago, and that’s disappointing,” board Chairman Tom Nida said.

In the 11 years that D.C. has had public charter schools, 13 have been closed for some combination of financial, academic and enrollment problems.

Several calls to Washington Academy were not returned. Calls to the Rev. Frank Tucker, of Tri-Community’s board, also were not returned Tuesday.

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com