ORANGE PARK – More than 60 students will need to find a new school less than a month before the school year starts following the surprising closing of Orange Park Performing Arts Academy International. The private school apparently was evicted for unpaid rent.

OPAAI’s history leading up to the eviction has been tumultuous. After opening as a charter school years ago, it received consecutive F-grades, forcing its closure by the Clay County School District in 2017. A year after that closure, it re-opened as a private school with hopes to polish its name in the district with new administration and new teachers. Now the school will close its doors again – this time for good – at 1324 Kingsley Ave.

“The school was $150,000 behind on rent,” former OPAAI Executive Assistant LeShawn Stubbs said.

Court records show that the property owner sued the school’s founder and president, Alesia Ford-Burse, for $156,000 in unpaid rent. As a result, OPAAI was evicted from the building, leaving its 60 students unsure where they’ll begin the new school year next month.

That court case isn’t the only case Ford-Burse faces. In May, Stubbs filed a suit against Ford-Burse for unpaid wages.

“She owes me $4,600 for working that I have not received yet,” Stubbs said.

Stubbs, who worked at OPAAI from July of 2018 to March 1, said she’s not only owed her standard working wages, but additional pay for working at the school’s daycare and filling in for principal Tracy Hay, who left earlier this year.

“When the principal left, [Ford-Burse] was supposed to give me an additional $500 per pay period because I stuck around to help out, but she only gave me $250 extra and she only did that one time,” Stubbs said. “She told me she was waiting for funding from the state and then totally blew me off.”

On March 1, when news broke that students were sent home because the rent was late, Ford-Burse told the media it was a rumor that a disgruntled ex-employee started. Stubbs said she assumed Ford-Burse was talking about her, but that she didn’t tell the media anything.

“If I wanted to have the school closed like she thought, I would have called the media in December when the sheriff served us eviction papers at the school,” Stubbs said.

Despite the eviction, Ford-Burse said OPAAI is not closing.

“We are not closing,” Ford-Burse told Clay Today with a text message. “We are relocating...still deciding on the location.”

Ford-Burse has not returned several messages for further comment.

The Department of Education has “issued an immediate Notice of Noncompliance giving them 15 calendar days to submit the necessary documentation in order to come back into compliance for the current school year. Failure to provide this information within the specified timeframe may result in the suspension or revocation of their participation in state scholarship programs,” according to Cheryl Etters, deputy director of communications with FDOE.