- Newberry Christian Community School Inc. filed a complaint seeking to evict The Frazer School for unpaid rent and mortgage payments.
- The Frazer School allegedly failed to pay $150,000 monthly rent and mortgage payments under a 2025 lease and transition agreement.
- The Frazer School filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy shortly after receiving eviction papers and is pursuing legal claims to regain ownership of the Hudson building.
Court documents show that Newberry Christian Community School Inc. (NCCS) recently filed a complaint seeking to evict The Frazer School, an independent K-12 school, from a Gainesville building over alleged unpaid rent and mortgage payments.
According to the 32-page complaint, which was filed on May 29 in the Eighth Judicial Circuit Court in Alachua County but previously unreported, NCCS and Frazer School Inc. (“Frazer”) entered into a lease agreement on May 23, 2025, in which NCCS, as landlord, leased part of a school building at 4700 NW 89th Blvd. in Gainesville to Frazer, the tenant.
The complaint alleges that NCCS, a Florida nonprofit corporation, owns the property, which is “currently encumbered by a mortgage held by Capital City Bank.” This follows a “certain Promissory Note and Security Agreement dated May 30, 2025.”
While the complaint doesn’t identify the building, a lease agreement attached to the complaint includes the name “Hudson” at the top.
A contract for the Hudson, also known as the Hudson Building, was signed in November 2024 by then-Frazer School owner James Schrader, with the school planning to expand from its original building at 1520 NW 34th St. in Gainesville, formerly Cornerstone Academy.
Schrader is also listed as the registered agent for NCCS on Sunbiz.org.
Alachua County property records show that the sale of the Hudson property was completed on May 23, 2025, with SantaFe Healthcare Inc. selling the parcel to NCCS for $8.5 million.
The complaint alleges that Section 4 of the lease agreement required Frazer to pay NCCS a monthly rent of $150,000.
In addition to a monthly rent payment, the complaint says the lease required Frazer “to pay other amounts,” including a 10% late fee on rent payments not made within 10 days of the due date, all telephone and internet access charges for Frazer’s operations on the grounds, and “all taxes levied or assessed on Frazer’s fixtures, equipment and personal property located within the premises.”
On Dec. 17, 2025, the complaint alleges, NCCS and Frazer entered into a separate school transition and asset purchase agreement that “set forth the terms and conditions” for Frazer to buy the property from NCCS.
This was also around the time that Schrader resigned as owner of The Frazer School following public accusations of financial mismanagement. After his resignation, control of the school was transferred to an unpaid, three-person board.
Under the transition agreement, the complaint alleges, NCCS and Frazer agreed to a “financial pass-through arrangement,” in which the school agreed to “make all mortgage payments directly to Capital City Bank” rather than paying rent to NCCS.
However, since entering into the transition agreement, the complaint alleges, Frazer has not paid rent to NCCS under the lease and has not made any mortgage payments to Capital City Bank.
According to the complaint, NCCS sent Frazer a first notice of default on April 30.
“In this First Default Notice, NCCS demanded that Frazer pay rent to NCCS as required under the Lease because Frazer failed to make the required mortgage payments to Capital City Bank as set forth in the Transition Agreement,” the complaint says.
NCSS sent a second notice of default on May 14, according to the complaint. With Frazer still not reportedly making the required rent and mortgage payments, the complaint stated that NCCS then issued a written demand for possession of the property on May 22.
In the May 22 demand letter included with the complaint, NCCS insisted that Frazer do one of two things within three days: pay the $150,000 in outstanding rent or deliver possession of the property to NCCS.
The demand letter warned that if Frazer failed to do either within three days, NCCS could pursue all legal remedies available to the corporation, including seeking Frazer’s removal from the property in accordance with Florida law.
The complaint alleges that, as of May 29, Frazer still had not made any mortgage payments to Capital City Bank, paid NCCS rent or delivered possession of the property to NCCS.
As a result, NCCS requested the following from the court:
- A summary procedure under Florida statute 83.21 (removal of tenant)
- A court order returning possession of the property to NCSS.
- Attorney’s fees and costs.
- Any other relief the court considers just and appropriate.
Court records show a summons was issued to Frazer School Inc. on May 29, care of registered agent Olanrewaju Fayiga, who serves as the school’s principal.
The summons said Frazer had five days after service to file a written response to the eviction complaint.
According to court records, the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) received the summons and complaint on June 8. The documents were then served on June 9 to Fayiga as a registered agent.
Three days after the summons and complaint were served, The Frazer School filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in what school officials described in a June 12 press release as a joint effort to address financial issues they attributed to Schrader.
The bankruptcy filing came a few days after attorneys representing The Frazer School sent a civil theft demand letter to Schrader, his wife, Rachel Schrader and NCCS, requesting over $5 million in return.
According to the civil theft demand letter, The Frazer School raised more than $5 million from parents and other benefactors to help purchase the school’s building (Hudson), but that money was instead moved to accounts controlled by the Schraders and NCCS. According to the letter, the Schraders and NCCS used the funds – $5,045,000 – to buy The Frazer School facility, placing the title in NCCS’s name, and then charged The Frazer School rent.
Additionally, the release said Schrader has not switched holdings back to The Frazer School as agreed when he resigned as owner last year.
Michael Moody, outside counsel for the Schraders and NCCS, provided Mainstreet with the following statement on June 25.
“Our practice is to try cases in the courtroom, not in the newspaper,” Moody said. “What I can tell you is that the allegations against our clients are not supported by the evidence. We have asked to confer with the Debtor’s counsel and remain ready to show them exactly why. If that conversation does not happen, the same evidence will go to the court, where we are confident it will speak for itself.”
Court records show that a notice of pendency of Chapter 11 bankruptcy was filed by attorneys on behalf of The Frazer School on June 16. The case is currently pending in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Florida, according to the notice.
In response to a request for comment, Will Frazer, founder of The Frazer School, directed Mainstreet to one of the school’s attorneys. In an interview, bankruptcy counsel Steve Berman, who is serving on a pro bono basis, explained that the state court lawsuit filed by NCCS is “automatically stayed by the bankruptcy code.”
According to Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute (LII), “an automatic stay is a statutory injunction that immediately halts most collection activities by creditors once a debtor files a bankruptcy petition.” It also temporarily bars lawsuits and foreclosure proceedings.
Berman said any issues between The Frazer School, NCCS, Schrader, and his wife, Rachel Schrader, are being handled in the bankruptcy case.
Court records show that The Frazer School filed a separate complaint in bankruptcy court against NCCS and the Schraders on June 19.
In addition to requesting more than $5 million in return, Berman said The Frazer School has asked in its lawsuit for the bankruptcy court to recognize the school as the owner of the Hudson Building.
“We believe that we are the owner as a matter of equity, and the bankruptcy court can, with a number of different legal theories, provide and grant us legal title to the building, even though it’s currently titled in the name of Newberry Christian [Community School],” he said.
Berman said a preliminary injunction hearing will likely be held after the Fourth of July holiday, adding that a date had not been set yet.
The Frazer School for competitive academics opened in fall 2024 with a little over 300 students enrolled. The school has seen rapid growth since then, winning numerous championships in various team-based competitions at the state and national level.
“We want to find the best,” Frazer told Mainstreet in an interview last summer. “We want to compete against the best.”
Before his involvement with The Frazer School, Frazer, a Gainesville native, spent nearly three decades teaching at Buchholz High School, where he helped establish the Bobcats as a national powerhouse for math competitions.
Nick Anschultz is a Report for America corps member and writes about education for Mainstreet Daily News. This position is supported by local donations through the Community Catalyst for Local Journalism Fund at the Community Foundation of North Central Florida.
Sounds like some form of a scam to me.
I’m delighted to see better researched reporting on this issue. The details are very murky because most of us can’t read any of the documents involved, the promissory notes, the transition agreement, the court filings.
The primary issue seems to be that an $8.5 million building was purchased with only at most $5 million in funds, and then millions more dollars worth of improvements were complete completed, leading to an enormous huge debt. It is not clear to me how the management of Frazier school believed they would not have to be paying either through rent or mortgage payments, on the millions and millions of debt?
At the same time, they were paying enormously outsized salaries to high school teachers. I myself sent several teachers to them because their families needed the income!
At the demand of the Frazier school, a transition agreement was created and signed. But it appears that it has not been carried out.
If you don’t have the ability to pay on an enormous building, and enormous renovations, and you stop payment completely to both the owner AND to the bank,, what is the owner to do other than to evict you?
The attempt to escape these obligations appears to be using the courts?
If some workable budget cannot be established,The building needs to be sold to pay off the debts to Joyner construction and to the Alachua bank. I’m hoping that the bankruptcy judge will see these enormous glaring issues and find some solution. You can’t keep occupying an expensive building without paying anyone!
Wishing the best.
What about the money used to purchase the building from the parents money, total $5 Million!
One point to keep in mind in this mess is the initial lease agreement. The same person -Schrader- was representing BOTH sides of the contract between NCCS and Fraser Schools. This type of self-dealing is rampant in the non-public school industry and is how many so-called non-profits can be so lucrative. It was your tax dollars that created the vouchers that became the primary revenue stream for this corporation.
Tax dollars were not wasted during the 2025-2026 school year at Frazer. The school provided a good education. As a parent of kids there, I’m very worried about the term starting in August, but no parent has been scammed.
As for the legal issues behind the business deals that broke down and are now in the courts, I’m clueless beyond what’s in the papers. Parents at Frazer School are not being given any inside information, so all we can do is see if a miracle happens. We are being told all will be worked out, but with no details.
Again, the taxpayers have not been scammed, but something went very wrong with the planning and running of the business.
Someone needs to be CRIMINALLY charged in this case. Taxpayers may be on the hook for this.
No, not so far. Frazer School provided a good education for its students in the 2025-2026 terms. Taxpayers are not “on the hook.”
The Math is off on this transaction!
If anyone can solve the “Who’s on First?” with the deed, it’s Will Frazer and his team of superstars.
no its not !!!
( Full Disclosure: I have taught as a volunteer at GCCS, encouraged teachers to apply to Fraser, and I don’t have access to any of these complicated financial documents, so I’m somewhat in the dark also)
Yes, the “math” is off, but apparently not as others have proposed I simply don’t’ know the details: without having the agreements in front of us to examine, how shall we make vast judgements? Several questions are however obvious. To start:
Question: When purchasing an $8.5M building and arranging multiple $M in repairs, how do you then refuse to pay any ongoing rent or mortgage? I don’t understand how you do that…
Seems like something is off with a budget plan for a new school that pays twice-normal salaries to teachers but initially charges quite modest tuition, and needs to pay off $millions in renovations and $3.5M+ in mortgage and interest? Someone was right to suggest significantly higher tuition. It looks obvious that the tuition costs to those students must rise dramatically and payments in arrears must be brought up to date, and ongoing payments made; otherwise how can you continue to inhabit the structure?
Question: With a new school refusing to pay either rent or mortgage, who has been forking over the money on the debt to the Alachua bank? And if that person stops paying out of pocket, what happens to this new school? And how long will Joyner wait to be paid?
The sooner this gets into court, the better. I sure hope a judge can figure all of this out. Both schools seem to be serving lots of students, but your budget simply has to allow you to pay costs incurred for your building, right? That ought to be straight forward math that can be easily demonstrated for all to read.
This is the best perspective and set of questions I have heard anybody express! Spot on.
Only parents with kids at the school can understand how much the kids love the school, and how hard it is for parents to try and explain what’s happening.
Schrader hired Joyner construction to do all the renovations, and assigned some of the work to himself. That is a scam!