Who Holds a Charter School Board Accountable? TJCA Parents Take Their Fight to North Carolina Lawmakers

What happened: In 2018, amid growing controversy over the governance of Thomas Jefferson Classical Academy, parent organizer Dr. Ingeborg Collins launched a Change.org petition titled Accountability for NC Charter Schools! The petition challenged a fundamental feature of North Carolina's charter-school system: publicly funded schools operated by private nonprofit corporations whose governing directors could exercise considerable authority without being elected by the families they served. The preserved petition records 185 supporters and identifies several North Carolina legislators as its intended audience. Collins argued that the structure of some charter-school boards allowed directors to reappoint one another, maintain control over leadership decisions, and limit meaningful participation by students and parents.

Her criticism was pointed: "There is no accountability to the stakeholders (students and parents)."

Although the petition addressed charter schools statewide, its origins were firmly rooted in TJCA's unfolding governance dispute. During 2018, the Academy faced intense criticism over changes to its bylaws, the restructuring of administrative authority, the departure of founding headmaster Joe Maimone, and difficulties obtaining records of Board and committee proceedings.

For Collins and other concerned families, these controversies illustrated a larger problem.

Parents could choose to enroll their children in a charter school, but that did not necessarily give them any meaningful say in choosing—or replacing—the people who governed it.

The campaign transformed a local dispute over school leadership into a broader challenge to North Carolina's system of charter-school accountability.

What was established:

A Petition Challenges Self-Perpetuating Charter Boards

The petition opened by describing North Carolina charter schools as nonprofit corporations receiving state and federal funding.

It acknowledged the existence of state oversight but characterized the available mechanisms for correcting wrongdoing as inadequate. Collins argued that some charter-school bylaws allowed directors to serve repeated terms, select their successors, and concentrate control among a relatively small group of individuals. Under such arrangements, parents and students might be able to attend public meetings, submit grievances, and express disagreement without possessing any direct power to change the Board's membership. The petition raised a distinction that is central to public charter-school governance: Being permitted to speak to a governing body is not the same as having a meaningful role in determining who serves on it.

Unlike traditional local school boards, whose members are generally selected through public elections, North Carolina charter schools have historically been governed by nonprofit boards operating under their own approved governance structures. State law requires charter-school applications to describe their governance arrangements and provisions for parental involvement. It does not generally require parents to elect the school's directors. For Collins, this created a troubling imbalance between the public responsibilities of charter schools and the private corporate structure through which many were governed.

The Petition Seeks Legislative Attention

The archived Change.org page identifies five North Carolina lawmakers as decision-makers:

• House Speaker Tim Moore

• Senator Ralph Hise

• Representative David Rogers

• Representative Kelly Hastings

• Senator Warren Daniel

Their inclusion demonstrates that the campaign was directed beyond TJCA's Board of Directors.

Rather than relying exclusively on appeals to school officials, Collins sought attention from lawmakers with authority to reconsider the state's charter-school framework. The preserved petition excerpt does not contain a complete proposed legislative amendment or a detailed replacement governance model. Its central demand, however, was clear: stronger accountability for nonprofit boards operating taxpayer-funded public schools, particularly where stakeholders had little control over who served as directors.

TJCA's 2018 Governance Disputes Provide the Background

The petition developed during one of the most contentious periods in TJCA's history.

In February 2018, the Academy's Board approved the conversion of former parent representatives Steve Herndon and Elizabeth Sabolovic into at-large directors. In May, the Board adopted revised bylaws affecting its governance structure. These actions became the subject of criticism from Collins and other members of the school community, who questioned whether the changes had been adequately announced, whether existing procedures had been followed, and whether parents were losing representation. The controversy intensified following Joe Maimone's departure from school leadership.

At the September 4, 2018 Board meeting, parents, students, and supporters publicly challenged the directors over Maimone's departure, the Board's transparency, and the Academy's founding educational mission. Collins separately organized the Keep the Founding Vision for TJCA petition, which sought Maimone's reinstatement and changes to the Board's leadership. The statewide accountability petition represented a broader extension of those concerns. Even if TJCA's immediate leadership dispute could be resolved, the underlying governance structure would remain. Collins questioned how families could prevent similar controversies from recurring when the directors themselves retained primary control over Board membership and institutional decision-making.

October 10, 2018 — Petition Update Highlights Internal Committee Records

The preserved petition includes an October 10 update headed: "ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY" In it, Collins turned to recently obtained records of TJCA's internal committee proceedings. She reproduced the minutes of a May 11, 2018 Executive Committee meeting involving Ray Maxwell, Tony Robbins, Sally Harbin, Andy Francis, and Paul Foley. Those minutes documented discussions about employee concerns following the Board's curriculum directives.

According to the committee record, multiple staff members had contacted directors about the working atmosphere and uncertainty over administrative authority. The committee agreed that Maxwell and Robbins would meet with school administrators to discuss reporting relationships, staff expectations, and workplace tensions. Collins interpreted the minutes as evidence of deeper conflict between TJCA's governing Board and its administrators. Her update also questioned events surrounding the departure of administrator Gary Blake and the Board's treatment of Maimone. Some of those statements were Collins's interpretations and suspicions rather than conclusions established by the committee records.

But the underlying May 11 minutes were significant in their own right. They demonstrated that concerns about administrative authority and workplace conditions had been formally discussed months before the Academy's leadership controversy became a public confrontation. The petition therefore served a second purpose: preserving and circulating documentary evidence that community members believed deserved greater scrutiny.

North Carolina's Charter-School Structure Was Central to the Dispute

The governance concerns raised in 2018 were not imaginary features of the legal framework.

Under North Carolina's charter-school laws, a charter operated by a private nonprofit corporation is governed by that corporation's Board of Directors. Those directors exercise authority over the school's budget, administration, curriculum, and operating procedures. The state retains oversight powers, including authority concerning charter approval, compliance, and potential revocation.

However, the existence of state oversight does not give an individual parent the same influence over Board membership that a voter possesses in a traditional school-board election.

Collins's petition challenged precisely that distinction. It asked whether accountability mechanisms dependent on state intervention and internal Board procedures were sufficient when stakeholders believed the Board itself was the source of their concerns.

What was not established: The preserved petition records 185 supporters, but does not establish the number of signers who were TJCA parents, students, employees, or other North Carolina residents. It does not demonstrate that every charter-school board in North Carolina operated as Collins described or that the campaign resulted in statewide legislative reform. The claims concerning specific TJCA bylaw violations and leadership decisions remained disputed. The petition is evidence of the concerns raised and the advocacy undertaken, rather than proof of every allegation advanced during the campaign.

Original Evidence:

Change.org — Accountability for NC Charter Schools! (2018)

Petition organized by Dr. Ingeborg Collins, preserved in TJCA Truth's historical research archive.

The archived copy documents 185 supporters, the principal arguments concerning nonprofit charter boards and stakeholder accountability, and five North Carolina legislators identified as decision-makers.

Change.org — October 10, 2018 update, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

Preserved with the petition. Includes TJCA's May 11, 2018 Executive Committee minutes and Collins's commentary concerning administrative authority, curriculum decisions, and school leadership.

Related contemporary advocacy:

• Keep the Founding Vision for TJCA! — August 22, 2018 update concerning grievances and Board accountability

• We Have School Choice. But No Choice on Who Leads Us! — September 13, 2018

• TJCA Board Members Violated Our Bylaws!! — September 17, 2018

Official school and state records:

• TJCA Board of Directors — Historical Meeting Minutes

• North Carolina Office of Charter Schools — Collins Grievance Closure Form, December 27, 2018. Preserved in TJCA Truth's state oversight records.

• North Carolina Session Law 2018-3, documenting the charter-school governance framework in effect during 2018.

Subsequent developments: The accountability campaign continued beyond the petition itself.

On October 11, 2018, the North Carolina Office of Charter Schools received a formal governance complaint from Collins concerning TJCA. The complaint raised multiple issues, including Board appointments, bylaws, purchasing decisions, committee meeting notices, grievance procedures, and public records access. After reviewing the Academy's responses and supporting documentation, the Office of Charter Schools issued findings on December 27. Some allegations were not substantiated. The agency found no evidence of public meeting-notice violations in the materials reviewed, although it could not determine precisely when notices had been posted.

Other findings were more consequential. The state identified deficiencies in how TJCA documented potential conflicts of interest, found discrepancies between state records and the Academy's submitted bylaw history, and recommended improvements to Board procedures.

It also acknowledged an especially important limitation relevant to Collins's petition: North Carolina law did not require a nonprofit charter-school board to maintain a grievance procedure specifically addressing complaints against the Board itself. The Office of Charter Schools nevertheless recommended that TJCA provide clearer information about how stakeholders could raise such concerns.

The agency ultimately required Board governance training by July 31, 2019, along with corrective measures concerning the approval of future bylaw amendments. These findings did not deliver the statewide governance reform Collins had sought. They did, however, demonstrate that community complaints could bring aspects of a charter school's internal governance under formal state scrutiny—and that such scrutiny could identify shortcomings requiring corrective action. The archived petition's 185 supporters provide a measure of the campaign's documented public reach, but its longer-term political impact remains unclear.

No legislation directly attributable to this petition has been identified for this archive.

TJCA Truth welcomes correspondence with the legislators identified in the campaign, responses from state education officials, historical advocacy materials, and records documenting any subsequent efforts to reform charter-school Board selection or stakeholder representation.

Report from the community: Dr. Ingeborg Collins's petition and accompanying updates provide a direct account of a parent's effort to challenge what she considered an unaccountable governing structure. Her criticism extended beyond individual Board members or the departure of a favored administrator. Collins questioned whether parents and students possessed meaningful mechanisms to influence the decisions of a publicly funded school, particularly when its directors could select and reappoint one another. Her contemporaneous statements repeatedly returned to the relationship between school choice and governance.

In a September 13 update to the related Keep the Founding Vision for TJCA petition, Collins emphasized the contradiction she perceived between parents having a choice of schools and having little say over the people governing those schools. She also proposed looking to other charter-school governance models that incorporated elected parent, teacher, and student representation. The statewide petition records 185 supporters, demonstrating participation beyond Collins as an individual organizer. The preserved excerpt, however, does not include a collection of separate supporter testimonials.

At TJCA's September 4 Board meeting, numerous community members independently raised concerns involving Board accountability, transparency, leadership, and the preservation of the Academy's founding mission. Together, the petitions, public statements, and reported Board meeting participation document a community attempting to exercise influence over an institution whose governance structure provided limited opportunities for direct representation. They also preserve an important distinction between the legal authority of a self-perpetuating Board and the expectations of families who believed their investment in the Academy entitled them to a meaningful voice in its direction.

TJCATruth.com welcomes additional firsthand accounts from parents, students, teachers, administrators, and community members who participated in or witnessed these events. We are particularly interested in recollections of the September 4 Board meeting, the organizing surrounding the petitions, any responses received from Board members, and whether participants observed changes in the Academy's approach to community involvement afterward. Contemporary correspondence, meeting notes, photographs, recordings, and other surviving materials may help preserve perspectives that were not captured in published reporting or the surviving petitions. Individuals with relevant firsthand experiences are encouraged to contact TJCATruth.com. Requests for anonymity will be respected, and identifying information will not be published without the contributor's explicit consent. All submissions will be handled with discretion and confidentiality.