There is a Southwest Charter School open house this Tuesday evening from 7:00-8:30PM at the Multnomah Center. NOTE that there is also a final design meeting for the new Gabriel Park skatepark on the same evening, although I don’t anticipate much audience crossover. The skatepark has the auditorium last time, but I anticipate that they may have to find a smaller space this time around, due to what I anticipate should be a good turnout for the Charter school.
SW Charter School has a website (on which they need to fix their extended ASCII characters, by the way), which is full of information except for one key point. The cost. They define their mission as follows:
Southwest Charter School is a small, public school community that emphasizes safety and caring; a place where neither race nor economic status will determine a child’s potential for success.
There’s been lots of talk about this school in the news over the past year or so. Especially surrounding their unsuccessful quest to rent the former Smith School building from PPS. I’m thinking of popping into this meeting just to find out where they’re going to be. Actually, I don’t really understand the concept of charter schools. I know they’re some sort of hybrid between public and private, but that’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge on the subject. I should do some research, although it would take some kind of major sea-change in the quality of PPS before I would even consider moving Jr. V away from Maplewood, even if I could afford it.
NCES.gov tells us this about charter schools:
A public charter school is a publicly funded school that, in accordance with an enabling state statute, has been granted a charter exempting it from selected state or local rules and regulations. A charter school may be newly created, or it may previously have been a public or private school; it is typically governed by a group or organization (e.g., a group of educators, a corporation, or a university) under a contract or charter with the state. In return for funding and autonomy, the charter school must meet accountability standards. A school’s charter is reviewed (typically every 3 to 5 years) and can be revoked if guidelines on curriculum and management are not followed or the standards are not met.
Here is The list of Portland Charter Schools at the PPS Website.
Here’s an interesting site (GreatSchools.net), although it’s infested with pop-up ads, about public and private schools, including charter schools. It has reviews on it, etc. and this interesting article - Seven Things to Know About Charter Schools.
Again though, missing the eighth thing, which is the cost.
