|
ABC's of Charter Schools
Maine's Need
Maine's Legislation
Get Involved!
National Charter Schools
MACS Information |
The Boston Globe
Small Rural School, Closed Last
Year, Reopens as Charter School
Charter schools advance
in New Hampshire
State approves 3 more facilities
By James Vaznis, Globe Staff | March
19, 2006
The New Hampshire Board of Education's
approval last week of three charter school proposals, including one by
Daniel Webster College in Nashua, shows how the alternative form of public
schooling is growing in popularity in the Granite State after years of
difficulty in getting started.
The state will have 11 charter schools
once the doors to the three new schools open in the next two years. The
first ones opened a year and a half ago, even though the state has allowed
charter schools to exist for about a decade.
The growth of these schools is being
fueled by a special program, passed by the Legislature a few years ago, that
enables the state Board of Education to approve the opening of 20 charter
schools without receiving the consent of local school boards or voters.
Local opposition caused previous charter school proposals to fail.
Michael Fishbein, the provost and vice
president of academic affairs for
Daniel Webster College, said
the college couldn't be more delighted about receiving state approval.
''The state is moving in the right
direction," in opening charter schools, Fishbein said.
The school, which will be called the
Academy for Science and Design, will be geared toward 450 students in grades
7-12 who are interested in pursuing careers in the math and sciences.
Students in their junior and senior years will be able to major in a subject
as they would in college. Among the choices: aeronautics and aviation,
chemistry and biomedicine, and space, astronomy, and astronautics.
Daniel Webster hasn't secured a
location for the school yet, but is considering an offer by
New Hampshire Technical
Community College to house the school on its Nashua campus, Fishbein said.
The school will open in the fall of the next calendar year.
Education reformers hail charter
schools as a great way to focus an entire school on a certain academic area
or teaching philosophy. Teachers at the schools tend not to belong to a
teachers union, making it easier for administrators to fire problematic
teachers or to institute new programs or teaching strategies, charter school
advocates say.
But critics don't like charter schools
because states often divert aid away from a student's hometown school to the
charter school the student attends.
That debate, however, was largely
absent during the consideration of the three charter school proposals, even
in
Nashua, where a change in the
state formula for education aid is causing the city to lose $2 million this
year. In fact, Nashua Mayor Bernie Streeter, who is promising that next
year's city budget will be 5 percent lower than this year's, wrote a letter
to the state Board of Education in support of the charter proposal,
according to the state Department of Education.
And in another sign of how
New Hampshire is further
embracing charter schools, the Nashua School District has applied for money
to study the creation of a charter school for dropout students. Should that
school open, it would be run independently of the school district, although
the district could have a couple of its employees sit on the charter
school's board. Two other school districts, one in Exeter and the other in
the North Country, have opened charter schools for students at risk of
dropping out.
New Hampshire has received a
$7.5 million federal grant to jump start its charter school program.
Small Rural School, Closed Last
Year, Reopens as Charter School
The two other schools that received
approval last week were an elementary school in the
Concord area that will focus
on early literacy and another for a rural village school in Surry, which is
in the state's Mount Monadnock region. The latter school has filled its
curriculum with many activities known to New England village life, such as
maple sugaring, gardening, and bringing together people of multiple
generations.
The village school will open this fall
in a shuttered elementary school building in Surry. The closing of that
school last summer has forced children to endure long bus rides to other
towns for their elementary school education.
In an e-mail last week, Frank Conroy,
the founder and chairman of the Board of the Alliance for Rural School and
Village Preservation, said, ''This is a great day for schools of choice. . .
. This approval highlights the vital role that rural, village schools have
to play throughout
New Hampshire."
Top of Page
Charter Schools in Other States
|
Charter Schools in Other States |
|
National Charter School Service Directory |
Browse the first directory of charter school service
organizations, a charter school "yellow pages" produced by the National
Charter School Clearinghouse. FMI call 866-954-1414. www.NCSC.info/service |
|
Center for
Education Reform |
Publishes annual "Directory of Public Charter Schools"
and other reports on charter schools.* The Center for Education
Reform has lots of information on charter schools across the country.
http://edreform.com/ |
|
New England
Charter Schools |
|
New Hampshire Center for School Reform |
The New Hampshire Center for School Reform
provides advocacy, support and technical assistance for charter schools
and charter school supporters in New Hampshire. FMI, contact Director
Dr. Susan Hollins, info@nhschoolreform.org. Location: 89 South Street,
Box 2466,Concord, NH. 03302-2464. Tel. 603-224-0366; fax 603-224-8366 |
|
NH Dept of Education |
Official NH Dept of Education site. See
references to charter schools. http://www.ed.state.nh.us/ |
|
Massachusetts Charter School Association |
The association of public charter schools in
Massachusetts provides advocacy, training and support for charter
schools and those interested in charter schools. Cynthia Snow is the
Director of Technical Assistance, 413-625-0135; snow@masscharterschools.org.
http://www.masscharterschools.org/ |
Top of Page
* MACS would be glad to lend you a copy of the annual "Directory of Public
Charter Schools".
To received a free copy of the US Department of Education’s June 2004
publication, "Successful Charter Schools," which highlights 8 diverse
charter schools around the country, email
macs@mainecharterschools.org
|
