VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WVEC) — Teachers at Emmanuel Lutheran School were busy painting, decorating, and cleaning classrooms Friday in anticipation for the first day of school on September 4th. Then everything came to a halt.
“We were just notified this morning that the school is closed,” said Rachel Lizan.
Lizan doesn’t just have a child who attends Emmanuel Lutheran School, she is also the chair of the school board. She said she was just as shocked as anyone to find out the Church Council was shutting them down without any explanation.
The school has been around for decades, and up until Friday, it cared for and educated children ages 16-months to four-years-old.
“We’re a week and a half from school starting, and we have more than 50 students that don’t have a school to go to,” said Lizan.
Nisa Cochren is a parent of one of those students. She said it’s too late to find her daughter a new pre-school, let alone one that she trusts.
“It was so incredibly disrespectful and disheartening to get a voicemail. Like I am displaced, I can’t find childcare for my daughter,” said Cochren.
Cochren said the best she can do is get on a waiting list, which could take months.
“I called multiple, multiple pre-schools today since we got the call, and all of them are hearing from Emmanuel Lutheran parents, and saying I wish we could help,” said Cochren.
Parents said they thought Emmanuel Lutheran was like a family, and family shouldn’t turn their back on one another.
“The ethics kind of went out of the window, and in my opinion for the church to operate at that capacity is unacceptable,” said parent Ashley Bolding.
The school closure also puts nine teachers and school director Shannon Tate out of work.
“I have no answers for them. I have no answers for myself,” said Tate.
Tate said it’s extremely difficult to land another teaching job this late in the summer.
“And they might be forced to look outside of this field which is really sad because they are fabulous, fabulous educators,” said Tate.
These teachers found out about the closure from a letter from the church council.
Emmanuel Lutheran School Closing Letter by 13News Now on Scribd
13NewsNow spoke with church council President Carol Wasko over the phone. She had no comment about the closure of the school. However, she did accuse the teachers of stealing and vandalizing the classrooms during their last day.
The teachers deny any wrongdoing, and they said anything they took home belonged to them.
According to teachers, the last official school day ended with the church calling the police, and officers asking the faculty to leave.
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