Financial crisis and teachers fired. What’s happening at Bluffton’s May River Montessori
Last month with 20 minutes left in the school day and two weeks left in the academic year, assistant teacher Samantha See said she was pulled from the “Sunflower Classroom” in front of her 24 May River Montessori students, asked to go to the office where she was fired.
“(They said) I did nothing wrong. I was hysterical,” See said. “I had to say goodbye to sad little faces. I’ve established so many relationships with these kids since the beginning of the year. We were all hysterical.”
Samantha and her mother, Gina, were two of five assistant teachers fired from May River Montessori May 8 due to an unexpected financial crisis, according to a written statement from the MRM school board sent to community members mid-May. See said she and her mom were let go by board member Mark Billion and the Interim Executive Director Sarah Stone.
The staffing changes come as $250,000 in projected grants for the 2022-23 school year fell through and as the board asked long-time Executive Director and teacher Michelle Quigley to step down because of the financial situation, according to the statement.
According to the nonprofit 990 tax forms filed to the IRS, the school reported that during its fiscal year 2021 — running July 2021 through June 2022 — the school had 37 employees, revenues of $2.4M and expenses of $1.9M leaving a difference of a positive $485,513.
The prior year — ending June of 2021 — the school had 36 employees and a positive $136,636 after subtracting expenses from revenues. From 2019 through the 2021 fiscal years, revenues grew by 100% from $1.2M to $2.4M while expenses increased 45% from $1.3M to $1.9M. Form 990 for the fiscal year ending this June is expected to be filed later this year.
Teachers and parents weren’t aware of this year’s financial crisis until last month, according to See and her mother, raising questions over how much financial transparency a private, non-profit school should show tuition-paying parents, salary-dependent teachers and the public.
“There’s a lack of transparency throughout this entire school,” Gina See said.
The Bluffton school is a non-profit corporation and has programs for students anywhere from 24 months to 16 years old. Montessori school doesn’t rely on formal teaching methods, rather students learn through hands-on, self-directed, activities.
Despite their financial troubles this school year, which ended May 20, they’re running “normal operations next year,” according to board member Carey Christiansen Ford.
The school put plans for a new building on hold. Ford said she couldn’t comment on when groundbreaking — previously scheduled for this year — would take place.
“We are not worried about financing and we are definitely in a stable place,” board member Catherine Runyan said. “We are in great communication with our bank and (Certified Public Accountants).”
The board consists of seven community members who meet once a month and play an advisory, not an operational role. This means that they don’t handle the schools financial affairs, according to the statement. It says the board hired Board hired an accountant and trusted the school’s bookkeeper and executive director to manage finances. Quigley served as a full-time teacher and the executive director at the same time and is no longer at the school in any capacity.
The statement says they weren’t aware of the financial issues until early May, and as a commitment to transparency they are opening the board to include a teacher and parent representative.
Beloved teachers let go
Gabriel, a May River Montessori student, loved Samantha See as his teacher, according to parent Maria Walls.
“I don’t know who informed the students (she was let go), but he was clearly concerned. Clearly upset and confused,” Walls said. “He knew before I did.”
Firings like this can happen in South Carolina because it’s an at-will state, meaning employers can terminate staff for any reason or no reason at all.
Runyan and Ford said they couldn’t comment on why the teachers were terminated while class was still going on. See and her mother said it would’ve been less traumatic for the students, parents and teachers if they waited until either the end of the school day or year, especially because they are being paid through June 30. They were first told they would be paid only through May 15.
“(There were) lot of tears,” the mother-daughter duo said. “We were kicked to the curb, not even, you know, ‘thank you for your service.’ Nothing.”
The statement sent to the community said staff expenses needed to change immediately for their bank to “secure funds to pay expenses for the remainder of the year and guarantee our future financial stability for 2023-2024.”
As of May 17, the school was working with their bank to provide a new line of credit for $385,000 to fund the school for the remainder of this fiscal year ending June 30, according to the statement.
The statement said that the decisions were purely financial and because “they had positions that could easily be covered by other MRM staff.”
See said that assistant teachers developed relationships with students every day, planned lessons and material, and worked full school hours from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
“I went to work that day not expecting to lose my job.” former assistant teacher Alex Golden said. “Tears just started flowing. I couldn’t say goodbye to my kids.”
Golden estimates that she’ll lose a little over $2,000 in income.
“We have done everything in our power, everything that we know to do, to prevent any sort of dramatic events like this from happening again,” Ford said.
How didn’t the school notice the missing cash?
Most people, and businesses, would notice hundreds of thousands of dollars missing from their bank account. Why didn’t May River Montessori?
Prior to this fiscal year the board approved a budget, supplied by the administration including the executive director, that included $250,000 in grants, according to the statement.
The statement says that the administration never mentioned that the school hadn’t received those grants, and Runyan and Ford, the board members, said they didn’t know the names of the grants or if they had been applied for.
The board was notified by the bank April 21 that the school had requested a line of credit increase from $100,000 to $250,000, but they believed it would be used as a safety reserve and not to meet operating costs, according to the statement.
On April 27 their bank notified the board of concerns “regarding communications they were (receiving) from the bookkeeper,” according to the statement. Runyan and Ford declined to say what those communications were.
The board discovered May 3 that the school wasn’t going to have enough money in the bank to make payroll on May 9, and board members personally loaned money to the school to make that payroll, according to the statement.
From there, the board became aware of the missing grants and began working with the bank to secure a loan.
“We like to think of our school as a family, but we’re a business also,” Ford said. “Businesses have to make business related decisions. Can we predict the future of the business of May River Montessori? No, but we’ve done everything that we can do to prevent something like this from happening again.”
‘at the end of the day it’s a private school’
Unlike Beaufort County public schools, which provide a broken down budget for each school year, private non-profit schools like May River Montessori are only required to publicly submit 990s tax forms, often leaving the public, parents and teachers in the dark about where their money goes.
Golden also pays for her niece to attend the school in addition to being a former teacher. She said as the person giving the school payment, she isn’t privy to where the money goes once she submits her check, though she said she hasn’t specifically asked for it either.
“It’s gotten down to the point where I pay my niece’s tuition at school, and I have never received a receipt after her tuition has been paid,” she said. The full-day primary program tuition is $8,870 a year.
The school had $1,975,122 in expenses for the fiscal year ending June 2022, according to their most recent 990 tax forms.
Quigley, the previous executive director, had a $123,239 salary that year, up about 35 percent from the year before when she was paid $91,000.
In comparison, Hilton Head’s Sea Pines Montessori Academy’s most recent tax forms are from the fiscal year ending June 2021. The forms say their position of “head of school” similar to an executive director, made $131,644 in total.
Runyan said they gave parents and teachers all the information they needed to know about the recent financial situation.
“At the end of the day it’s a private school,” Runyan said. “And we we gave everybody who needs to know, which is the parents and the teachers, all of the information.”
Runyan and Ford said their most recent financial audit was for the 2021-22 school year, and they don’t have an answer for if they’ll do an audit for this year.
What will happen next year?
At the end of May River Montessori’s school year See, her mother and Golden watched as their former students crossed a stage with graduation caps on their heads and tassels swinging across their faces.
Golden said a student called her one of the best teachers they’ve ever had in a speech.
“Not being able to be a part of that anymore is what hurts the most. I feel like that we probably could have gotten past this as a school if they would have just included us and let us known,” Golden said. “We could have figured something out together.”
See, her mother and Golden said that they all want to continue teaching.
“One of my main goals is to inspire (kids), to help kids, and (to) help them grow and develop into who they need to be, who they want to be,” Golden said. So being let go and not being with the kids really hurt.”
Despite everything that happened, Runyan and Ford said the energy going into next school year is very positive, and they have the funds needed to for a full 2023-24 school year.
“There’s a lot of positive energy moving forward and a lot of support,” Ford said. “We’re really looking forward to a great year.”
Correction: Earlier version of this story referred to Samantha See and her mother with the surname of Lee. The story has been updated to correct the error.
This story was originally published June 11, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
