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Charter
school proposal gains district popularity
By
Dana Haynes
The
project would be one of the first charter schools formed since the 1999
legislature passed Senate Bill 100 paving the way for such schools. “The
staff believes this is a good proposal. We’ve seen it work,” said Larry
McMurray, interim superintendent. “It’s just a question of how we work out
the financial side of things.” A
charter school is privately operated but receives public money. In Oregon, the
sponsor most likely will be a school district. If the school district turns down
the proposal, advocates can appeal to the State Board of Education, which can
either uphold the local board’s ruling or sponsor the charter school itself. School
districts throughout Oregon are inventing the charter process as they go along,
and that has led to confusion. Neither Salem-Keizer officials nor sponsors of
the 21st Century Community Schoolhouse are sure exactly what steps come next. McMurray
said the district is working with the sponsors to create a final draft of their
proposal. Once that is done – and it could be done within a few weeks – the
district will have 60 days to schedule a public hearing. But
it won’t take that long, McMurray predicted, it could be January 11, if all
goes according to plan. The
concept of the 21st Century Community Schoolhouse has existed in
Salem-Keizer schools, and elsewhere in the region, for several years. The
organizers are Molly Kellar and Andrew Goldstein, two teachers at South Salem
High School. The
program links community activism and international education. Students at risk
of dropping out have been targeted. This
fall, Kellar and Goldstein led 13 at-risk students from Woodburn to an
International Youth Environmental Summit in Perth, Australia. That’s
the kind of program that could be blended into the charter school, Kellar and
Goldstein said. Two
participating Woodburn students, senior Gabe Gonzales, and sophomore Marco
Pineda, spoke before the Salem-Keizer School Board on Tuesday praising their
journey to Perth. They described themselves as troubled students who were in
danger of becoming gang members before their experience with Kellar and
Goldstein. “The
trip to Australia changed my life. It will be with me forever,” Pineda said. If
the 21st Century Schoolhouse gets the go ahead, it would open its
doors in fall 2000 for 90 ninth and 10th graders. Eventually it would
expand to 150 students through 12th grade. It would maintain a
student ratio of 15 to 1. The
curriculum would focus on global collaboration, local activism and meeting the
certificates of initial mastery. “Service learning” or doing volunteer work
in the community, would be part of the academic load. “We can design a
charter school that is cooperative and collaborative, it can be modeled for
schools throughout Oregon,” Kellar said. McMurray
praised the program but said his office and charter sponsors have been
frustrated by the process of designing a charter school before Oregon’s new
law became fully understood. School
board member Bonnie Heitsch compared it to designing and building a bicycle
while riding it. And
Paul Dakopolos, attorney for the district, warned that the 1999 charter law is
exceedingly complex and filled with terminology that no one has fully defined. “We’re trying to get a policy in place,” McMurray said. "We don’t understand all of the ramifications of the law.” |
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contact: school@communityschoolhouse.org |
The
21st Century