Local charter school planned Local charter school planned (April 08, 2005)

MountainView-Whisman parents want choice, diversity

By Kathy Schrenk

A group of Mountain View-Whisman School District parents is planning to start a charter school and hopes to have it open in the fall of 2006.

The group's organizers plan to petition the school board to sponsor their charter school, called the Collegiate Arts and Sciences Academy, or CASA, this fall, according to Vicki Schultz, who has been looking into the charter concept with other parents.

Parents say they want to start the school so that Mountain View parents will have more educational choices -- like advanced math and language immersion -- and a more socio-economic and racially diverse environment.

School district officials haven't seen a proposal from the CASA group, so they aren't talking yet about how they might react to a charter petition. This is the first group to plan a charter school in the district, said Mountain View-Whisman finance chief Rebecca Wright.

Starting a charter school can be very challenging, said Gary Larson, spokesman for the California Charter Schools Association.

First, the parent group has to market its concept to the community, Larson said. That process is beginning at 7 p.m. Tuesday, when the CASA group is having an informational meeting in the Mountain View Public Library Community Meeting Room at 585 Franklin Street. Organizers want anyone interested in learning more about the charter to attend.

Second, the group needs to get signatures from parents interested in enrolling at the school and teachers who plan to teach there, Larson said. "If they plan on having 200 students, they have to get 100 signatures," he said. "The legal threshold is 50 percent."

Third, they need to work on a curriculum, chose a board of directors and establish nonprofit status. Finally, they have to face what Larson called "the big hurdle:" finding a physical home for the school.

If CASA does get its charter, from the Mountain View-Whisman district or another local entity, it will cost the district some money.

Since the district is a revenue-limit district -- meaning it gets funding from the state based on enrollment - the financial hit shouldn't be too bad, according to Los Altos school board member Duane Roberts. Because Los Altos is a basic-aid district, Roberts said it faced a big financial hit when parents got the county to approve Bullis Charter School.

But while a revenue-limit district has to pay a small amount of money to a charter for each student that attends the charter, its costs are covered in part by the state's per-student funding. For a student from an outside district like Palo Alto, the district would get fully reimbursed by the other district.

Schultz and her group plan to petition for a kindergarten-through-high school charter but don't plan to begin with every grade level.

"We hope to do more research before there is final determination. Without committing, we have been looking at kindergarten through eighth grade to begin and then adding a high school," she said. She added this might change based on community input.

Carol Nunnally's daughter is in fourth grade at Bubb School, and Nunnally plans to enroll her girl at the charter when it opens next year. She has helped in the planning process for the school and likes the flexibility CASA could offer. Flexibility is what's needed to give kids the education that's best for them, she said.

Another Bubb parent, Taylor House, agrees. "Our district lacks choice and a really strong academic school or curriculum," she said. "We're losing a lot of kids to private schools. I think it can be a way to draw more people into Mountain View."
E-mail Kathy Schrenk at kschrenk@mv-voice.com.

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