Charter school piques interest Charter school piques interest (April 15, 2005)

Meeting draws crowd of about 75 parents

By Kathy Schrenk

Mountain View's fledgling charter school movement officially went public Tuesday evening with a meeting that outlined the still-vague tenets behind its founding.

About 75 people attended the meeting -- double what organizer Vicki Shultz said she was expecting. The folks gathered in the library's community room were mostly parents of young Mountain View-Whisman School District pupils who wanted to learn more about Shultz' vision for the school dubbed Collegiate Arts and Sciences Academy, or CASA.

Many had no idea how a charter school works or what goes into creating one. So Schultz started the meeting with a brief history of the charter movement, pointing out that it started only 10 years ago and that the first charter school in the state sprung up not far away in San Carlos.

Among the many requirements for charter school status, organizers must petition a district for a sponsorship, or charter. Charters are public schools that are open to students from anywhere in the state.

Along with three friends, Schultz has been researching the charter concept for several years and hopes to open CASA in the fall of 2006, she said. She and her group want to bring another choice to the Mountain View education scene and a chance at a rigorous academic education for kids of all backgrounds and abilities.

"We bill ourselves as the equivalent of an independent school education" -- but without the giant tuition bills, Shultz said.

Schultz made a point of emphasizing that her goal with the school is to collaborate with the Mountain View-Whisman School District, which she plans to petition for a charter in the fall. "This is not about what's wrong with Mountain View," she said. "We want this to be a draw to Mountain View."

Many parents, like Castro School mom Lisa Parramore, came away from the meeting with their interest piqued, but unsure about what to think of Schulz's plan. "It's way too early to tell," Parramore said when asked if she might send her children to CASA.

Such uncertainty is to be expected, since the school is still in its early formative stages. Schultz and her group aren't sure how many students will attend the school in its first year and they have no idea where the school will be located.

But that's sort of by design, because her vision, she said, is to have this school be the community's.

"We will only go forward with community support," she said. "We are not so invested in this that we cannot walk away tomorrow."

For now, Schultz's goal is to get more community feedback and find out if there is enough support in the community to open the school. The group plans to hold an informational meeting in Spanish in the coming weeks. For information on that or to sign up for a mailing list to keep updated on the school's progress, go to http://www.casacharter.org.
E-mail Kathy Schrenk at kschrenk@mv-voice.com.

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