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Plans for charter school in Fayette limping along

By J. FRANK LYNCH
jflynch@theCitizenNews.com

The Fayette County Board of Education isn’t ready to enter the charter school business just yet.

Monday night, members of the board heard an update from Pam Riddle, assistant superintendent for curriculum, on efforts to start a charter high school in the county.

As proposed by Superintendent John DeCotis, the charter school would be housed at the LaFayette Educational Center and offer advanced course offerings that the county’s five traditional high schools can’t offer individually because of lack of interest.

For example, this semester one class of Advanced Placement psychology is being offered at the LEC as a trial run, Riddle said.

Though it’s going well, Riddle said the experiment has proven that the county doesn’t have the resources available yet to launch a full-scale charter school with a host of course offerings.

“Last year we decided to start small because we didn’t have the funding,” Riddle said. “We feel at this point that we’re not ready to make this committment.”

Financing is just one concern, Riddle said. Others are support from different agencies in the community, as well as a solid committment from the Board of Education itself.

“It would involve a lot of legwork on our part” to get a full-fledged charter high school up and running, Riddle said. “We’re still interested in studying a charter school, but not without the proper funding in place.”

Riddle said Fayette school officials have been looking hard at Coweta County’s charter high school, which is a good model.

“Whether we need to proceed with the exact same model Coweta has is another question,” she said.

One key to success of Coweta’s charter program is that transportation to the site is provided. The single AP Psych class being offered in Fayette County this semester is taught in a modified first period, and students from the various high schools must provide their own transportation back to their own campuses.

“The students are pleased with it, but until we can fund transportation to and from a central location I don’t think we’ll have the large-scale numbers we’ll need for a full charter program,” Riddle said.

Riddle said administrators would keep exploring the possibilities for a charter school and report back as things develop.

Also Monday, Construction Superintendent Klaus Darnell informed the board that the auditorium at Whitewater High School is now open and is already being used by students. The contractor is finishing up punch-list items at the school, which is otherwise complete, Darnell said.

The auditorium at Sandy Creek High is close to being finished as well, said Darnell. The fire inspector gave an OK to the building on Monday, and the final occupancy permits were expected to be in hand by the end of the week.

The auditoriums at both Whitewater and Sandy Creek are built from nearly the exact same blueprints. Both facilities seat about 600 people and include professional sound and lighting, as well as fly systems for scenery and catwalks above the stage.

Meanwhile, work is progressing at McIntosh High School as well, Darnell said. The concrete flooring has been poured for the new kitchen, and the school’s new gym is still on target for a December opening.

In other business, the Board of Education:

•ÊApproved the appointment of Mary Ann Babb as Assistant Principal at Oak Grove Elementary. Babb had been a teacher at Peachtree City Elementary.

•ÊPlaced on the table for consideration a host of changes to administrative policies. DeCotis explained that most of the amendments were tied to change in state law, and were part of an ongoing effort to make all of the board’s policies available online.