The sudden closure of a small private school in Plano has left families and teachers scrambling to recover tuition and missing pay while looking for new schools and answers.
The nonprofit school, New Hope Christian Academy, was established in 2017 and served students from kindergarten through 12th grade under DeeDee Mims, with about 75 students enrolled. Mim’s husband, Jim Mims, served as the principal officer of the school’s nonprofit, according to the November WFAA article that first broke the story.
On Nov. 5, parents were notified by email that the school would close at the end of that week, just three days later, with no explanation or prior notice.
New Hope Christian Academy officials declined to comment on the closure for both WFAA and the Dallas Morning News.
Despite assurances from the administration, some parents reported that they were unable to access their child’s academic records despite assurances from the school, impeding transfers to different schools, according to WFAA.
Administrators also did not respond to emails from families asking for reimbursement for tuition that they had paid in advance, according to reports from WFAA and the Dallas Morning News. Annual tuition at the school was about $12,000, according to those stories.
The surprise closure also affected the roughly 30 staff who worked for the school. Many reported that they had not received income tax records or pay that they had been owed.
The school had been having trouble with funding for at least a year, one former staff member, Hope Ensminger, told the Morning News, after it moved out of its downtown property to a rental building in West Plano.
From then on, paychecks to staff routinely came through a week late, affecting their ability to make rent and bill payments on time, Ensminger said. Staff weren’t paid for their work during the month of October, and the school did not respond to her requests for that money.
New Hope Education, Inc. — the nonprofit behind the school — saw declining revenues and rising costs in recent years, the Morning News reported. According to its most recently filed tax form from May of 2023, its net assets exceeded negative $830,000.
On Nov. 19, Ensminger, who was the school’s development director at the time of the closure, filed a theft of service report with the Plano Police Department for $4,500 that she never received from the school, including $1,300 in purchases she made for the school.
As Republicans prepare plans for the upcoming legislative session to offer some public school students vouchers to attend private schools, New Hope’s closure should warn lawmakers of the dangers of improper oversight, Dallas Democratic Rep. Rafael Anchía said on Monday.
“We must insist on accountability for any public subsidy of private schools,” he wrote in a Monday post on X. “If not, kids, parents, and taxpayers get hung out to dry.”
