Sean C. Morgan
The operators of Sand Ridge Charter School in Sodaville are asking the District 55 School Board to sponsor a new charter school in Sweet Home.
With a list of 147 students waiting to get into the charter school, Lebanon School District denied an increase in the size of the charter school last year, leaving it capped at 208. People Involved in Education, Inc., which operates Sand Ridge, has turned to Sweet Home for expansion as early as September if possible.
Mary Northern and three other persons representing the nonprofit company delivered a proposal to the School Board Monday night. The district has 15 days to determine if the proposal is complete.
Once Supt. Larry Horton and work committee determine that, a public hearing must be set within 60 days and a decision reached within 30 days of the hearing.
A charter school operates under contract with a sponsoring district. Eighty percent of state funding per student goes to the charter school and 20 percent typically goes to the local school district. A charter school can operate in a variety of ways to promote creativity and innovation in teaching. Only half of a charter schools teachers must be state certified.
All teachers at Sand Ridge are certified, and each classroom has an aid with a maximum of 18 students per room. About half of the students are from Lebanon. Others students are from Sweet Home, Scio and Albany.
Sweet Home has 15 to 20 students attending, according to administrator John Leon.
Enrollment may bring new revenues to a district if it draws students from home-schooled families or outside the district, Northern said. Charter schools tend to attract home-school students.
It also increases the number of teaching jobs in the community, Northern said. It offers choices for parents, and in-service opportunities for both the charter school and district.
Two-year-old Sand Ridge has the highest test scores and attendance in the Lebanon District, Northern said. The school has helped improve Lebanon’s annual district report card.
The charter school gives monthly budget reports to the local school board, has an annual audit and provides an annual report.
The low student-teacher ratio is possible because staff members believe in the concept, Northern said. Parent volunteerism also helps keep the ratio low.
Parents help grade papers, answer questions and chaperon field trips.
Last year, parents logged more than 8,000 volunteer hours, Northern said.
“It’s based on every individual student’s educational capacity,” Leon said. Not every student has the same capacity, so students study at their current level of understanding, a fourth-grade student studying fifth grade math, for example, or vice versa. He cited test scores as proof the system works.
The presenters said the charter school provides a personalized education for individual students.
Socioeconomically, Sweet Home kids deserve a chance at a school like this, board member Scott Proctor said, but if students enrolled in the district switch to a charter school, “we lose significant revenue. We lost a lot of capabilities.”
Attorney John Liljegren, one of the presenters, of Oregon Charter School Service of Portland told the board that the funding is not one of the criteria for deciding whether to sponsor a charter school.
The board’s goal is to do what is best for the children, and losing revenue could have adverse effects on the district’s programs, Chairman Don Hopkins said.
When talking about an ending fund balance of $100,000, Supt. Horton said, losing revenue would affect the district adversely.
“I’m somewhat offended by the implication that we aren’t give our children personalized education in this district,” Hawthorne Elementary teacher and local union president Joyce Baugus said.
“I would say they get more attention because of the smaller classrooms,” Doug Miner, a parent of four at Sand Ridge said. Prior to Sand Ridge, his children were home schooled for two years.
“How many districts in the state are talking about overcrowded classrooms?” Leon asked.
“We’re happy there,” Miner, of Sweet Home, said. “My wife is actually a teacher’s assistant, and I’m on the school board. We’re really looking at expanding to Sweet Home to duplicate what we’re doing.”
“We want them to want us,” Northern said. “We want to show them that we have some benefit for Sweet Home.
“As a parent, I feel like the teachers, the administration and staff not only ask me to be involved but expect me to be involved,” Miner said. At Sand Ridge, parents can sign in and go into their children’s classrooms. The public school system has “almost a feeling that you had to ask permission.”
Alesha Dern would like to send her daughter to Sand Ridge for the personalized education, she said. “She’s average, and she’s falling through the cracks.”
Dern is teaching her both math and reading at home, something she did not think she was getting at school, and now she is doing well in both.
Sand Ridge grew out of the Brownsville Academy in the Central Linn School District, an alternative school where each student had to make a transfer and the school board could choose whether to transfer funding.
Under that scenario, “the parents have no power to decide where their kids are going to go to school,” Liljegren said.
Northern, Leon and Liljegren were joined by Sand Ridge School Board Chairman Jay Jackson in the presentation. In addition to Miner, Sand Ridge’s music teacher attended the meeting. She has three grandchildren that attend school there. Dern and three other adults attended because they were interested in the charter school.