School Board Approves Sandpoint Charter School Emphasis Is On Small Class Sizes, Student Involvement

After much discussion, the Lake Pend Oreille School Board approved a petition for the Sandpoint Charter School - the second charter school local citizens have attempted to launch.

Most of the discussion centered on legal details in the petition, but no one questioned the central purpose of the school.

“We felt we edited the charter to meet all the concerns,” Trish McGinnis, the self-described scribe of the document, said after listening to patron Joan Spencer urge the board to either reject the petition or accept it for just one year.

“It is my belief that we are members of the community with a desire to provide an alternative learning opportunity within public school,” McGinnis said. “The charter is written by community members. We didn’t hire lawyers to write it …

“What we have is a viable school opportunity for all the children of this district.”

Work on the Sandpoint Charter School began 2 years ago with public meetings to determine the needs of the community, said Gary Quinn, a Sandpoint High School technology teacher who was recently named Idaho’s technology teacher of the year.

“The biggest fear was from parents of children leaving the sixth grade, who were looking for a smaller alternative than what the junior high offered,” Quinn said.

So Quinn and a team of seven other community members designed a school that would have small class sizes and emphasize student involvement in the community, and parent involvement in the school.

According to a proposed schedule, the school day would be broken up by skills-oriented classes in the morning - such as English or math - while afternoons would be set aside for block classes where various skills would be applied and integrated into the study of a particular subject. Those subjects would be taught in five-week segments.

Students also would attend two 15-minute “advocacy” classes, where teacher and students would focus more on interpersonal matters and behavior issues.

The school district approved Da Vinci Charter Academy last year, but that school - designed for high school students - didn’t attract enough interested parents or funding to open.

Work on the Sandpoint Charter School most recently has been a matter of writing and rewriting the petition to meet the requirements of state Department of Education lawyers and the desires of local school district officials.

Charter board members have set July 15 as their goal to find a facility, and Sept. 1 as the first day of the school. They plan to first open just for seventh-graders and add the eighth grade later. The school would never exceed approximately 200 students, because that’s what research shows is the ideal size for a middle school, Quinn said.

The district’s blessing was essential to the charter board members, member Anders Bostrom said: “We want, we need that local interaction.”

Quinn said the charter school plans to work closely with the school district to make sure students and teachers can benefit from districtwide programs.

Charter schools receive state funding on a per pupil basis, but they do not receive any property tax money. However, according to the state funding formula, the school will receive more money per pupil than the district does, because of the small size of the school. The school, while part of the district, will operate autonomously under the charter - which essentially is a five-year contract with the state.

Outside fund-raising may be necessary to pay for all the costs of running the school, Quinn said. He anticipates that grant money will be a big part of their revenue.