Charter school grows up

Skepticism surrounded the Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy when it first opened.

After squeaking by the Coeur d’Alene School Board on a 3-2 vote, Kootenai County’s first charter school faced scrutiny from the school district and community over how it would operate and whether it could succeed.

That was more than eight years ago.

Now, no one questions whether the school will be around next year.

“I’m pleased at their success,” said Vern Newby, chairman of the Coeur d’Alene School Board.

While Washington is one of 10 states without charter schools – voters have rejected them three times – the schools are an accepted part of the Idaho education system. The Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy was one of the first charters in Idaho after the Legislature passed a charter law in 1998, and, along with the nationwide charter school movement, it’s gaining ground.

New Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna has pledged to push for more “school choice,” a blanket term that includes charters and magnet schools, and he’s created a new area of the state Department of Education to tackle that. Nationally, the number of charter schools has jumped to more than 3,600 in 40 states, according to the U.S. Charter School Movement organization, up from about 3,000 schools in 37 states just two years ago.

Meanwhile, the Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy – the state’s only charter school that bills itself as a college preparation school – has more than double the 200 students it did when it opened. Parent volunteers are holding a fundraiser Feb. 10 to pay for building additions to accommodate the enrollment jump.

“We are in dire need of more space. …We’re actually trying to build a whole building,” said Suzan Ward, whose son Ryan is a ninth-grader. Ward is leading this year’s second annual fundraising auction. Last year’s auction raised about $100,000.

The school started in an old pet-and-garden shop on Kathleen Avenue. The place barely passed a safety inspection, and a lack of basic supplies like chairs meant students had to lug theirs with them.

“We need to allow the Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy to take its course. Whether it’s ultimately successful or ultimately a failure, only time will tell,” said Newby, then a school board member, after the charter’s approval in November 1998.

Time appears to have been on the academy’s side.

Instead of taking things one year at a time, the school is planning well into the future. Money from the auction will be used for additions to the Kathleen Avenue building, such as more classrooms, a library, a music room, and a gymnasium.

The school has added sports through the years, such as cross country, volleyball, basketball and tennis, but games are held at other schools – the academy rents gymnasiums – because its multipurpose room isn’t big enough. Added four years ago, the room serves as the gym, lunchroom and auditorium, but can’t hold all of the 445 students.

“We don’t have a place for the whole school to come together,” said principal Dan Nicklay.

The school had planned an expansion this year, but soaring construction costs pushed it out of reach. That left the school with 100 extra students at the beginning of the year, but no room for them until two modular classrooms arrived a few weeks later.

Nicklay said enrollment won’t grow significantly again. The small size of the school is one of the reasons many students choose the academy over regular schools like Lake City and Coeur d’Alene high schools.

“We’re not all just a bunch of geeks and nerds here,” said Cameron Hjeltness, 17, a junior.

Ward said many people still don’t understand how the charter school operates. It is a public school. There are no admission requirements or tuition fees. It receives state funding just like other public schools but can’t levy taxes like they can.

“It definitely has come a long ways, but there still is a lot of that misinformation out there,” Ward said.

It hasn’t been smooth sailing for the school since opening in 1999.

An exodus occurs every year, Nicklay said, when students enter the school unprepared for the rigorous workload. A minimum of three hours of homework each night is average. Nearly 40 students have left since the school year began with about 485 students in late August.

That exit rate carries over to the administration. No principal has stayed longer than three years. Nicklay is the school’s fourth. The previous three were removed by the school’s board of directors, an autonomous group that appoints its own members.

Whether the school can comply with federal disabilities law and provide equality for special education students has also been scrutinized. A parent complained to the federal Office of Civil Rights in 2001, alleging the school didn’t give her son, who has attention deficient/hyperactivity disorder, the attention he needed. Charter school representatives say they did everything they could to help the boy, except for lowering academic standards, which they said would go against the school’s mission statement and would ignore the fact that charter schools are schools of choice – no one is required to be there.

Supporters say the positives of the school trump any struggles it has had along the way.

Nicklay said that whenever he or his vice principal, Steve Taylor, feel overly stressed from the job and need a reminder of why they’re at the charter school, they’ll drop by one of founder Bill Proser’s classes and listen in.

Proser is fiercely proud of his school’s success.

“I don’t think there was one person in this town who thought this would work,” said Proser, a high school English teacher in Coeur d’Alene for more than 25 years.

He’s reluctant to gloat, calling himself “not objective at all,” but points to the school’s record of high test scores as proof his idea for a college preparatory school, where teachers decide how their classes are taught, works. ed.

“We seem to be the best kept secret in the state,” Proser said. “To me, our success is explosive.”