Privately-operated charter schools fail and close every week. The top four reasons include declining enrollment, mismanagement, financial malfeasance, and poor academic performance. Such closures are usually sudden, abrupt, and take place mid-year, leaving many parents, students, teachers, and principals stunned and stressed about what to do next.
Currently, 69 students are enrolled in the K-12 Agnes J. Johnson Charter School (AJJCS) located in rural Weott in Humboldt County, California. The deregulated charter school was authorized by the Humboldt County Board of Education in 2019.
On January 26, 2026, The Times-Standard reported that, “Last week in a tearful meeting, the [AJJCS] school board voted to begin developing plans for [a mid-year] closure, facing an around $700,000 shortfall needed to finish the year with current staffing and programs. School officials cited shrinking enrollment, with a 35% decline since 2020.” Twenty employees are expected to lose their job before the end of February 2026.
Charter school officials cited “the crash of the cannabis industry as the cause of shrinking enrollments in the region.” AJJCS Executive Director Mary Halstead said, “Families cannot afford to live here anymore. They have to move away to find jobs.” Many area businesses have closed and the region’s economy has shrunk, resulting in “a population decline.” Services have suffered as well. Humboldt County Supervisor Michelle Bushnell said, “We are seeing people leave in droves.”
While charter schools in other parts of the country have likely closed for similar economic reasons, this particular example from Humboldt County brings out two key facts.
First, the existing economic system is outdated, uneven, and unplanned, ensuring instability and crisis on a regular basis. Naturally, harmony, stability, and predictability are rare when the actual producers of wealth have no control of the economy. When socially-produced wealth across many sectors is controlled and directed by a tiny ruling elite, many disruptions, tragedies, and recessions are bound to arise. An economy dominated by private monopolies ensures chaos and anarchy—all in the name of the “free market.”
Secondly, why is something like a school for the community, which is supposed to be stable and reliable, not shielded from the crises intrinsic to an economy dominated by the financial oligarchy? Education cannot be left to chance in the 21st century. The right to education cannot be upheld one day and violated the next.
People are no strangers to economic disasters caused by an obsolete economy that privileges a tiny ruling elite and ensures poverty, homelessness, inequality, unemployment, despair, and debt on a broad scale. The need for a new pro-social direction for the economy is revealed every day.
However, stability and security will remain elusive so long as working people are deprived of an independent, diversified, self-reliant, all-sided, pro-social economy under their control. Clearly, the narrow aim of maximizing profits as fast as possible for a handful of competing owners of capital no longer conforms to modern conditions and requirements.
To avoid sudden school and business closures, and to bring an end to chaos and insecurity in people lives, people must have real decision-making power in all the affairs of society. From this perspective, there is no place for funneling public funds to privately-operated charter schools because such a set-up further distorts the economy and undermines a modern nation-building project. A modern society and economy require a high-quality fully-funded free education system open to all and controlled by a real public authority. The funneling of socially-produced wealth to private interests undermines the public interest by taking wealth out of the economy. Privatization is not the way forward. Public funds and resources belong only to the public and must stay in public hands at all times. The private sector has no legitimate claim to public funds or resources. The collective economic well-being and security of people cannot be guaranteed so long as narrow private interests impose their will on everyone.
The post Cannabis and the Closure of Agnes J. Johnson Charter School first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Shawgi Tell.