Shortly after arriving in Detroit last year, schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti put 13 charter schools on notice: They might have to scramble to survive.

Unlike most of the privately managed, publicly funded charter schools in Michigan, these schools are not overseen by colleges or universities. Instead, the schools got their charters, or contracts, from Detroit’s main school district, which now called the Detroit Public Schools Community District.

The district has 106 schools of its own — and those schools compete with charters for student and teachers.

Vitti announced last summer that the district was thinking of getting out of the charter school business to better focus on the schools it runs directly. He put the matter in front of the school board at a special session in November, with the expectation that there would be a vote in December.

But the matter wasn’t on the school board’s December agenda. It wasn’t on the January agenda, and Vitti now says he’s not sure when a decision will be made.

The uncertainty has left about 4,000 students in limbo.

Read more about the Detroit charter school vote by Amanda Rahn at Chalkbeat