Last week, the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved 16 new charter schools across the state. Although perhaps “across the state” is not the best way to put it—of the chosen 16, only one of the schools will be in Western Mass. The rest will all be located in the eastern part of the state, with the majority in the Boston area.
The one school in this region to make the cut was Springfield’s Veritas Prep, scheduled to open in the fall of 2012. The school will begin with a fifth-grade class and add additional grades in subsequent years, eventually serving 324 kids in grades five to eight. While a school site has yet to be announced, organizers are focusing their search on Springfield’s South End.
Veritas’ application to the state emphasizes academic rigor and high expectations: ‘Veritas Prep provides a structured, positive and safe middle school where student achievement comes first. Limiting all distractions and keeping a laser focus on achievement allows staff and students to build and celebrate student success.”
In an announcement about the new charter, Rachel Romano, one of Veritas’ founders and its expected executive director, said, “We believe that long-term academic and life success begins with high expectations. . & The sky is the limit for what our students can learn. It’s our job to ensure we get them there. We will develop our students’ foundation of content, skill, and character critical to their success, teach them to envision their future in college and beyond, and instill within them the drive to realize that vision.”
To underscore her point, Romano refers to the inaugural class of fifth graders as “the class of 2024″—the year they will graduate from college.
The 16 new charter schools underwent a lengthy approval process that began last summer, when 42 groups—the largest number since 1997—submitted initial applications. That high level of interest was spurred by new education reform legislation passed last year that will incrementally raise the cap on how much districts can spend on charter-school funding, from the current nine percent to an eventual 18 percent.
The law was drafted especially to aid struggling school systems; the increases will apply only to school districts whose students test in the bottom 10 percent on the MCAS exam.
The initial group of applicants was winnowed down to 25 in the fall, before the final group was announced last week. Among the Western Mass. applicants not to make the final cut was the proposed Paulo Freire Social Justice Charter School, planned for Holyoke. That school would have served kids in grades five to 12 from Hampshire and Hampden counties and would have been led by Bob Brick, founding director of the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts charter school in South Hadley.
Named for a Brazilian educator and philosopher and author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the Freire school, according to its application, would be “dedicated to academic excellence … following the concepts of social justice” and would “promote powerful, transformative teaching and learning for the development of whole human beings integrated with their communities and dedicated to a just and sustainable society.”
That concept generated a lot of positive buzz in the Valley—and perhaps families interested in the Freire school, or any of the schools denied charter last week, need not give up hope just yet. The state education board says that founders of schools that did not win charters this time are invited to reapply in the future.
