While under the management of Mayor-elect Kevin Johnson, St. HOPE Public Schools fell more than $1 million behind on required payments to the Sacramento City Unified School District.

St. HOPE started paying the money back in October, and the Sacramento City school board Thursday night voted 5-2 in favor of an agreement that would require it to pay off the remaining $729,742 debt by June 30, 2010. The money owed was for rent on the Sacramento Charter High School and P.S. 7 elementary schools, both leased from the district, and for administrative and special education expenses.

Rick Maya, the former bank executive who in January replaced Johnson as head of St. HOPE schools, said the deficit from school year 2007-08 stemmed from a drop-off in the number of students attending St. HOPE schools as the school year progressed. St. HOPE has struggled with attracting and retaining students since it took over the former Sacramento High School and turned it into an independent charter in 2003.

In the 2007-08 school year, Sacramento Charter High started the fall with 1,100 students, and ended in the spring with 840, Maya said. The loss of students reduces the amount of funding the school receives from the state, which is based on attendance.

"They were staffed for 1,200 kids," Maya said.

This year, Sacramento Charter High School has a population of about 1,000, Maya said. Nonetheless, he said he has cut staffing to the 850-student level just to be cautious. St. HOPE is current on its obligations to the district for this fiscal year, district staff said.

Local residents attending Thursday night's board meeting complained that St. HOPE has received special treatment from the district. They said St. HOPE's debt should have been disclosed when its charter was renewed last December. Members of this group opposed from the start giving a comprehensive high school campus to a private charter school operation.

"It seems as though an independent charter should be fiscally solvent," said resident Karen Gunby. She said a group of parents would be filing a grand jury complaint over the district's handling of St. HOPE.

"It's just appalling that they can keep getting preferential treatment," Gunby told the Bee.

Critics of St. HOPE say that lower performing students are pressured out of the school during the year, resulting in the lower attendance numbers.

Maya singled out a different culprit. He said the school district has shut St. HOPE and other charter schools out of the process of recruiting middle school children. For a long time, he said, Sacramento Charter High School wasn't even mentioned on the district's web site, much less permitted to send mailings to district students or participate in open enrollment. Without the opportunity to recruit more motivated students, St. HOPE has attracted some students who wind up there by default and are likely to chafe under the school's strict requirements, such as a dress code, extended day and refusal to give credit for any grade lower than "C."

The school board Thursday night also approved a pilot program that would allow independent charters such as St. HOPE to participate in the district's open enrollment process and get included in district-wide mailings about high school opportunities. The charters will have to pay the costs associated with their portion of the mailer.