Who will run two Philly charter schools? With a month to go before school, there are no answers yet.

Diana Condron spent 12 years teaching at Universal Bluford Charter School, getting to know students and building relationships with families. She doesn’t want to leave the West Philadelphia elementary school.

But after a month of turmoil — the board of trustees that runs Bluford and Daroff Charter Schools cut ties with Universal Companies, which has run the schools for more than a decade, and it’s unclear who will be running the schools after July 31 — Condron decided she just can’t stay.

At a chaotic meeting Wednesday night, the board declined to fully answer public questions about who will manage the schools, whether the schools’ principals will remain, when a new health insurance policy for employees will be in place, and how a previously promised tuition-assistance program for employees will run.

Condron is scheduled to receive cancer treatment the first week of August, and her current health insurance runs out July 31. The board’s answer to her health insurance queries — that it will reimburse employees for COBRA or reimburse Universal for the cost of keeping members on its policy if Universal agrees, and that new insurance won’t be available until September at the earliest — was not enough for Condron.

“I don’t want to leave my students, but at the same time, I have to do what’s best for myself and my livelihood, and I need to be around for my 5-year-old,” said Condron, who has worked as a first-grade teacher and reading interventionist. “This is totally unacceptable.”

A Universal spokesperson said he had been instructed by lawyers not to comment.

Though they offered no specifics, board members said Wednesday night that both Bluford and Daroff, which together educate more than 1,000 children, will be open for the 2022-23 school year. They said some but not all current employees have been sent contracts and asked to let the board know whether they will continue working at the schools.

Ken Kilpatrick, a spokesperson for the board of trustees, said the first day of school is scheduled for Aug. 29.

“The operations of the school is planned to go accordingly to ensure that the success of our scholars are met academically cross the board,” Deshawnda Williams, board president, said at the meeting, which some members of the public were unable to attend because of technological issues on the board side.

Williams said in a statement that every decision the board makes “begins with the question of, and is guided by the answer to, ‘What is in the best interest of our scholars?’”

The Bluford-Daroff trustees are ending their relationship with Universal over conflicts about the schools’ management; Universal cited “irreconcilable” differences over matters including board hiring and payment of personnel and outside contractors. Universal offered to temporarily extend its management contracts for both schools, but the board declined to take them up on it.

Both Bluford and Daroff are former traditional public schools that the Philadelphia School District gave to Universal to manage with the expectation that they would dramatically raise student achievement. But the Philadelphia school board voted to nonrenew both schools’ charters over operational and financial concerns.

The board is appealing the Bluford decision in court; a state panel just upheld the Daroff nonrenewal, and officials said they would appeal that ruling also. The schools can remain open while the matters are decided.

But in the meantime, Teresa Counts is beside herself at the uncertainty surrounding Daroff, where her daughter is supposed to start eighth grade soon. She wonders: is the school sustainable given all the unknowns?

“We found out so late that the school was in trouble, we had no time to do anything,” said Counts, whose daughter has attended school, on Vine Street in West Philadelphia, since kindergarten. “Now, we don’t know anything, and my daughter is upset that she might not graduate from Daroff.”

Though the Philadelphia school board authorizes charters and the district charter office oversees them, the schools are run independently. The board, however, would have to sign off on changes to the charter agreement.

Asked at the board meeting whether the school system had done so, a lawyer for the Bluford-Daroff trustees said they were “in the process of working out an arrangement with the school district.”

Peng Chao, the district’s Acting Charter Chief, indicated in a statement that the district did not have details, either.

The board, Chao said, “has reached out to the Board of Trustees for Bluford and Daroff to understand their plans for the opening of both schools in August. The Charter Schools Office is eager to learn more about how these plans ensure that all students are supported during the 2022-23 school year.”

As the parent of a Bluford sixth grader, Kim McKnight said she feels “lost. We don’t know who will be teaching our children. We don’t know what the curriculum will be. What about uniforms? This is is the time when parents are thinking about those things.”

McKnight also works at Bluford as a classroom assistant, and she worries about how the school will support families going forward. Under Universal, families had access to a resource center with everything from food to free uniforms.

“What kind of resources is the board going to be able to provide? Families are used to that,” said McKnight, who’s not sure if she’s going to remain in her job. “I don’t have any information. I have no contract. We all feel like sitting ducks.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer is one of more than 20 news organizations producing Broke in Philly, a collaborative reporting project on solutions to poverty and the city’s push toward economic justice. See all of our reporting at brokeinphilly.org.