Questions about the management of Imagine Schools in Indiana is no

longer confined to the charter schools' Fort Wayne locations.

Concerned community members are meeting Tuesday night to discuss

concerns at Imagine Indiana Life Sciences Academy East.

The Rev. Theron Williams of Mount Carmel Baptist Church called me

last week about the meeting. A founding board member of the charter

school, he said members of the mostly African American community

surrounding the school now believe they have been shut out of a role

in its operation.

Williams, who is no longer a board member, said questions have been

raised about how discipline is handled at the school, with an

enrollment that's 84 percent African American, 9 percent Hispanic and

5 percent multiracial. Williams said he was told that a teacher at

Imagine East made the comment that "my little black students are

retarded," and another disciplined students by making them get on

their hands and knees on the floor.

He was also critical of the hiring process at the school, which he

said mostly excluded people from the immediate community.

Williams told me that the charter school's founders originally sought

a charter through the Indianapolis Office of Charter Schools, but the

application was rejected.

"(Then-Mayor) Bart Peterson said there wasn't enough local

oversight," he said.

Lack of local oversight is what JG reporters Dan Stockman and Kelly Soderlund discovered in their investigation of the Fort Wayne Imagine schools.

There are also unhappy charter school founders in Kennesaw, Ga.

A school there that ended its association with from Imagine Inc. If you watch

the video from the postings on the Schools Matter blog, you'll see that these people are almost giddy at the

prospect of being free of the Virginia-based company.