State Department of Education officials have begun their review of proposals for new charter schools in Delaware, including two from operators whose programs have demonstrated success teaching high-need students in Newark, NJ, and in Philadelphia.
Eight groups filed proposals with the department’s Charter School Office by the Jan. 2 deadline, and three have already been told that their applications did not meet the state’s basic standards.
The five applications that remain in contention include two for high schools, one for a combination middle school and high school, one for a middle school and one for an elementary school that would be located in the heart of a still-unbuilt community just south of the C&D Canal.
The charter approval process concludes April 17, when the state Board of Education is scheduled to vote on the proposals. The process includes two rounds of public meetings and individual meetings of the boards of each applicant with the state’s Charter School Accountability Committee.
The five proposals being considered are:
Great Oaks Charter School - Wilmington would offer students from sixth grade through a high school a longer school day and two hours of daily individual or small-group tutoring. The school, to be located in downtown Wilmington, would be the third operated by the Great Oaks Foundation. The first, in Newark, N.J., is now in its third year. Great Oaks launched its second charter in New York City’s Chinatown last September. Great Oaks programs replicate the Match School of Boston, a charter that has been operating for more than 10 years.
Freire Charter School, also to be located in downtown Wilmington, would serve eighth grade through high school with a college-prep curriculum that focuses on individual freedom, critical thinking and problem solving in an environment that emphasizes teamwork, community and nonviolence. It will be modeled on the Freire Charter High School in Philadelphia, where it has served a predominantly low-income and minority demographic since 1998 and has sent 82 percent of its graduates to college in their first year after high school.
Mapleton Charter School at Whitehall would be built in the Town of Whitehall, a planned community of about 3,250 residential units whose construction is scheduled to begin later this year. The school, planned to serve about 600 children in kindergarten through fifth grade, would feature an expeditionary learning curriculum model. It would be located within the Appoquinimink School District and would also draw students who live in the southern portions of the Christina and Colonial districts.
Delaware STEM Academy, a high school whose curriculum would emphasize the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math, would serve up to 625 students, primarily those residing in the Route 9-13 corridor between Wilmington and Delaware City. Its board of directors is dominated by Delaware business leaders and former government officials with expertise in professions that require STEM-related skills.
Pike Creek Charter Middle School, which hopes to enroll 390 students in sixth through eighth grades, would employ a project-based learning approach for state-required subject areas and incorporate 50 minutes of physical activity a day and a physically active or health-related elective into each student’s schedule. Organizers have an agreement with the landlord of the Delaware Swim and Fitness facility to become sole tenant of the building when the school opens.
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If approved by the state, all but Mapleton would open for the 2015-16 school year. Mapleton proposes starting a year later.
Great Oaks and Freire, if approved, would become the first operators of successful out-of-state charters to attempt to replicate their models in Delaware. They would also join two new charters, Delaware MET and Delaware Design-Lab, which have been approved to open in August in downtown Wilmington. If all four charters are approved and operating, there could be nearly 2,000 high school students attending classes in the heart of the city by the 2019-20 school year.
Officials from both schools said they were encouraged to submit applications by an array of Delaware government and business leaders. “We met with all kinds of people,” said Kelly Davenport, Freire’s head of school, mentioning Gov. Jack Markell, Secretary of Education Mark Murphy, State Board of Education President Teri Quinn Gray and others. “They extended their hand to us and invited us to apply,” she said. “That’s very compelling, coming from a place like Philadelphia, where you feel you’re not even a drop in a bucket, to have an entire state aligned in its conversation to invite you.”
Great Oaks intends to apply to use space in the Community Education Building, the 11-story former Bank of America office site that will eventually host four charter schools enrolling a total of 2,400 students. The building will open this fall with two tenants, Kuumba Academy and Academia Antonia Alonso.
Since Kuumba will be serving kindergarten through eighth grade and Antonia Alonso kindergarten through fifth grade, “we will be looking to add middle and high school programs in our next round [of applications],” which begins in April, said Riccardo Stoeckicht, president of the Community Education Building.
With the prospect of several charters opening in Wilmington, “2014 and 2015 will be some very interesting years for the city, and for the state,” he said.
Both Great Oaks and Freire focus on serving lower-income students who would often be the first in their families to attend college.
The Great Oaks model has an average class size of 33 students, higher than in most middle and high schools, but balances that with a longer school day that includes two hours of intensive tutoring (one hour in math and one in English/language arts) as well as an after-school “homework center” and office hours for teachers, so struggling students must take responsibility for making appointments to meet with their teachers. The school’s culture prepares students for a college environment, said Christina Grant, vice president of the Great Oaks Foundation, which would manage the school.
Great Oaks recruits recent college graduates to serve as tutors, Grant said. They receive free housing, living in pairs in an apartment building within walking distance of the school, and a modest expense allowance, she said. “We bring in 20 to 40 fresh faces a year. Not only do they infuse the school with enthusiasm, but they also enthuse the community. We’re excited about having that effect in Wilmington.”
At Freire, which draws its name and inspiration from Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator known for his work with peasants and oppressed social groups, the guiding principle is “saying what me mean,” said William Porter, the head of academic affairs at Freire’s Philadelphia site. Porter, a Wilmington native and a graduate of St. Elizabeth High School, has been designated to serve as head of the school in Wilmington.
“We are ‘no excuses’. Kids are held to very high expectations,” he said. “The passing grade is 75, not the 65 you see in most schools,” and everyone takes a college-prep curriculum, with double doses of English and math classes in ninth and 11th grades to help students reinforce skills they might not have mastered the first time around. Eighth grade students have an extra period added to their school day for instruction in skill support, academic exploration or extracurricular activities.
Porter noted that a recent report commissioned by the state Board of Education from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education found that only three high schools in Delaware top the national average (68.2 percent) of graduates enrolling in college, but Freire in Philadelphia, with a population that is 99 percent students of color and 84 to 88 percent low income, sends an average of 82 percent of its graduates to college.
“I want to make Wilmington a better place,” Porter says. “I’m tired of seeing one bashing story after another. I want to help make Wilmington a place where people are moving back to and not escaping from.”
Mapleton is a unique venture, a charter that would function as a neighborhood school, according to Debbie Doordan, executive director of the Innovative Schools Development Corporation, which is assisting with the project. Construction in Whitehall, off Lorewood Grove Road north of Middletown, has not begun but much of the walkable community’s first phase is expected to be complete by school’s projected opening in the fall of 2016.
Having a neighborhood school should strengthen and hasten the growth of the Whitehall community, said Michael Stetter, the former state Department of Education director who heads Mapleton’s founding board. Long waiting lists for admission to the nearby Newark and MOT charter schools “show quite a bit of market demand in the area,” he said.
Mapleton anticipates serving a student population that reflects the composition of the Appoquinimink School District in which it is located, approximately 23 percent low income, 10 percent special education, 37.5 percent minority and 1.3 percent English language learners, according to its proposal.
The need for more workers trained in science, technology, engineering and math is the driving factor behind plans for the Delaware STEM Academy, said Ted C. Williams, president of Landmark Science and Engineering and head of the proposed school’s board of directors.
“We have huge industry support for this project,” Williams said, mentioning about a half-dozen engineering and construction firms who have pledged to make their staff available to work with teachers and students once the school opens.
The school will use the science-themed New Tech Network curriculum model, which emphasizes having students work together in a project-based learning environment. “Project-based learning is how we do it in the real world — working as a team and using what we’ve learned to solve problems — so this approach ties in well with real-world aspects,” Williams said.
Organizers of the Pike Creek Charter Middle School are making their second bid for state approval. The application submitted last year failed to pass muster with the Charter School Accountability Committee on its education plan, start-up and operational proposals and its budget and finance.
“We’ve added some things and our support in the community has grown,” said co-founder Michael Smith. The school anticipates drawing most of its students from the Red Clay Consolidated School District and from nearby portions of the Christina district.
“We’re taking a holistic approach,” Smith said, pointing to research that schools with a focus of physical fitness can improve both academic performance and student behavior. Charter schools with a similar focus in Greenville, SC, and Chicago have both shown positive results, according to the Pike Creek application.
Note: The charter applications may be viewed on the Department of Education website.