Cda Venture Is Off To Good Start

Coeur d’Alene’s Charter Academy clearly is not for everyone. Dozens of students left the school during its first year of operation or plan not to return in the fall. The school has tough academic standards, rigid behavioral rules and very few extracurricular activities.

But it’s also clear that the Academy has been a big success for the majority of its students. And, so far, fears about a charter school being a drain on the rest of the public school system have not been borne out.

A sign of public acceptance of the charter school came last week, when the Coeur d’Alene School District gave the Charter Academy four portable classrooms for $4. The district could have auctioned off the surplus trailer-like buildings but chose instead to donate them so the Academy has the room to include 11th grade this year and 12th grade later. This magnanimous gesture shows that the school district and Charter Academy can be partners - instead of rivals - in providing the best possible public education for everyone in Coeur d’Alene.

The Charter Academy has a dedicated, professional staff and is guided by board members who are well respected in the community. The result is that parents and students who were dissatisfied with other public schools have flocked to the Charter Academy. Only about half of the students at the Charter Academy actually transferred in from other public schools in the Coeur d’Alene district. The rest were former private school students, home school students and those from public schools outside of Coeur d’Alene.

This kind of experimentation is critical to the future of public education. The charter school concept seems to be working in Coeur d’Alene. We hope the Da Vinci Charter Academy, now forming in Sandpoint, has similar success.