A small group of students stands around a picnic table in an outdoor cafeteria. Instead of typical street clothes, the students are wearing thick plastic aprons, rubber gloves, and goggles. And instead of gossiping about last night’s episode of American Idol or Justin Bieber’s haircut, they’re busy mixing concoctions in glass beakers.
“OK, now we’re going to put hydrogen peroxide into the mixture and see what happens,” a girl says to the gathering crowd of other students and parents.
She tips the liquid into the beaker and a stream of yellow-green foam erupts, like a miniature elephant’s trunk rising into the air. The crowd “oohs” and “ahhs” like a kid at the circus.
On May 19, students and teachers at Orcutt Academy welcomed parents, siblings, and friends to their annual “Spartan Showcase,” an open house displaying the charter school students’ achievements.
Attendees spent the evening viewing student art and photography and watching science experiments, musical and theatrical performances, and a demonstration by the Orcutt Academy Robotics Team.
Now in its third year, the academy is Orcutt Union School District’s chartered high school.
“The school district wanted to have its own high school, and a charter school seemed like the best solution,” Orcutt Academy’s
Associate Superintendent Ken Parker said.
After organizing a steering committee and going through the proper procedures, the district opened Orcutt Academy high school and the Orcutt Academy K-8 school in Casmalia in 2008. (Parker explained that charter high schools are legally required to offer all grades leading up to the secondary level to be able to operate in the state.)
Since 2008, the schools have garnered attention from parents and educators alike, accumulating an ample list of awards and achievements and a waiting list of potential students.
Parker said there are more than 100 students on the waiting list for the Casmalia school and a handful of students on the waiting list for Orcutt Academy.
This trend of more families turning to charter schools for education isn’t just a local phenomenon.
According to the California Charter Schools Association, an advocacy and educational resources group, 115 new charter schools opened their doors in the state during the 2010-11 school year. That bumps the grand total of approved California charter schools up to more than 900.
Currently, there are 10 charter schools operating in Santa Barbara County. Three of those schools—including Orcutt Academy and the newly approved Central Coast Classical Academy—started in the last three years.
“We’ve seen an unprecedented amount of growth,” said Jed Wallace, the association’s president and CEO. “It’s the most charter schools to open in any state in one year.”
Why the sudden growth spurt?
“We always get asked, ‘What’s driving this?’ And the answer is parents,” Wallace said.
Vicky Waters, the association’s director of media relations, agreed with that sentiment.
“We’d definitely attribute the majority of the growth to the demand from parents and students for a more quality education,” she said. “Charter schools are no longer just an experiment. They’ve been around in this state for two decades now.”
A history lesson
From the public’s perspective, charter schools might seem like a relatively recent phenomenon. The concept, however, was first written into state law in the early 1990s.
The Charter Schools Act of 1992 allowed individuals—parents, educators, and other community members—to establish schools outside of the traditional school system as a way to improve student learning and provide more educational opportunities
to families.
Charter schools, by nature, are tuition-free and open to all members of the public. People interested in starting a charter school must create a petition detailing the potential school’s curriculum, teaching methods, budget, and other important features.
Once the petition has been signed by at least 10 percent of the district’s teachers—or 50 percent of teachers employed at one school—it can be submitted to the district’s governing board for consideration. A charter school must be sponsored by a traditional school district to be recognized by the state. Petitions are reviewed by the local school district, the county education office, and the State Board of Education.
Trisha Vais recently had her new charter school, Central Coast Classical Academy, approved by all three entities.
For the past several years, Vais spearheaded “classical” home-study programs in Santa Maria and Lompoc under Family Partnership Charter School. But now she’s ready to break out on her own.
“We just got officially numbered by the state,” Vais said proudly in a recent interview with the Sun. (All state-recognized charter schools have to have an identification number.)
Classes are scheduled to start this fall at the Santa Maria and Lompoc locations, as well as a new location in Arroyo Grande, she said. All of the programs will operate out of church facilities. (Most charter schools have to rent space in the community because sponsoring school districts aren’t legally required to provide a facility.)
But just like traditional public schools, Vais said, “we can’t cover religious material.”
The Central Coast Classical Academy curriculum follows a four-year history pattern. The first year, students study ancient history and biology. Next is the middle ages coupled with astronomy and earth science, followed by chemistry and early modern times, and 1850 to present and physics.
“The idea is to have the kids understand the thought process that went along with the time period and how discoveries were made,” Vais said. “The kids discover history through cause and effect, as opposed to just memorizing dates.”
As an example, Vais described a lesson she used to teach students about the Civil War and slavery.
“There were the kids with light eyes and the kids with dark eyes and they weren’t allowed to talk to each other,” she explained. “We wanted to show them that it wasn’t something they could control.”
Another example: launching watermelons out
of catapults in the school’s parking lot to learn about physics.
Academy students attend group classes two days a week at the various learning centers, where they study history, science, and literature. The other days are spent at home, where they focus primarily on math, language arts, and writing. The academy offers subject support and funding for educational materials.
The idea of home schooling one’s children might seem daunting to some parents, but Vais said it’s definitely doable.
“I think more people can home school children than who think they can,” she said, “even English language learners, because there’s so much support out there.”
Vais said her charter appeals mostly to home-schooling families who want educational and community support. But she’s also seen an increase in district transfers in the last few months.
“Sometimes [parents are] just desperate because they had something bad happen at traditional public school and they think, ‘Well, I don’t know what to do so I’m just going to put my kid [in charter school],’” she said.
Other times, parents feel that charter school is just a better fit for their children.
Mark Palmerston, assistant director of Family Partnership Charter School, said a lot of his clients choose to put their children in charter school because they’re struggling in a specific subject or they need to attend a school with a more flexible structure.
Family Partnership Charter School has centers throughout the Central Coast and offers several different programs, including Montessori, independent/home study, and classical programs.
“A lot of our students are athletes who travel and need to be able to do school from the road,” Palmerston said. “We have some students who are training to be actors and actresses, and we have some students who are working and need to schedule class work around that.”
Family Partnership Charter School and Central Coast Classical Academy are both sponsored by Blochman Union School District in Sisquoc.
Standards and cents
Of course, charter schools aren’t just about finding something that’s fun or fits into a busy schedule.
Charters are legally required to meet the same academic and testing standards as their traditional public school counterparts. And, according to California Charter Schools Association’s Wallace, they’re often held to even higher standards.
“The very hallmark of charter law is freedom and flexibility, which is received in exchange for higher academic standards,” he said, adding that his association is currently looking at increasing its minimum membership standards.
Charters are afforded more flexibility because they’re exempt from most of the California Education Code.
“The school almost becomes the Ed Code,” Orcutt Academy’s Parker said.
Essentially, the parents, students, educators, and other community members get to have a bigger say in how the school is run.
“Orcutt Academy is dedicated to family-based learning and creating a family-like environment,” Parker said. “We also focus on theme-based learning where the curriculum is linked to specific subjects.”
Charter schools also have more flexible budgets. Unlike traditional public schools, which receive money from several dozen sources, most charter schools receive money from only two or three major sources.
Typically, each funding source has its own rules to meet the needs of the unique group of students for which it’s intended.
Orcutt Academy, on the other hand, gets most of its funding from a charter school block grant.
“It’s a categorical block grant that combines all of the funding sources from the state, so there are less strings attached to the money,” Parker said.
To receive this funding, however, charter schools must undergo a petition renewal process every five years. If the charter hasn’t met the goals it outlined in its petition, it can get shut down.
Orcutt Academy’s Parker said he’s heard from state officials that as many as a third of the charter schools opened in California are later disbanded. The two biggest reasons for closure, he said, are “the inability to deliver on the things that were promised in the charter” and financial mismanagement.
The Sun was unable to confirm this statistic with the California Department of Education because, according to a spokesperson, “the data is not available.” However, Department of Education records did show that approximately 344 charter schools have been closed since the 1990s. Some of the schools converted back to traditional public schools, citing difficulty meeting their goals. Others cited financial problems. Many gave no reason at all.
“We could do the books for this school the way you balance a household checkbook, but we don’t because it’s not financially responsible or what’s best for the students,” Parker said.
He said the district chooses to have Orcutt Academy adhere to certain portions of the state education code because “some things are very smart to comply with.”
For example, the academy is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, and the district only hires credentialed teachers for core subjects.
“Sometimes the school seeks waivers to hire some non-credentialed educators, but they always work alongside someone who is credentialed,” Parker said.
The charter school structure, however, isn’t for everyone.
“It’s all about what’s the best fit for the student,” Parker said.
Orcutt Academy’s main objective, he explained, is to give local families more choices when it comes to education.
“I’m not here to say we’re better than other [traditional public] schools—we’re just another option,” he said. “I think good education is good education, no matter what kind of school it is.
“People who deeply care about kids and have a clear vision of what they want to teach them and engage them in the learning process, instead of just telling them, will always create great opportunities for learning,” he said.
Contact Managing Editor Amy Asman at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 26 – Jun 2, 2011.