West Virginia Academy Ltd. wants a chance to answer one question.
That is, what can a charter school do in Monongalia County — that isn’t already being done by a public school in Monongalia County?
Mon Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. told Board of Education members Tuesday night that the first official talks between the district and the proposed academy will begin next week with a review session at South Middle School.
“This gives us a chance to start asking clarifying questions,” he said.
State lawmakers last year opened the door to the idea of charter schools here.
West Virginia Academy Ltd. could be Mon’s first.
The statute allows for the possibility of three such operations, all coming under control of the respective local boards of education, by 2023.
After that, there’s the allowance of three more schools every three years.
Plans are for the academy to open next fall, with students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
If enrollment proves popular, the goal is to add a grade a year until it becomes a K-12 building.
The academy’s president and board chairman is John Teul.
He’s a WVU professor, who serves as assistant department chair of accounting in the Chambers College of Business and Economics.
Consistent underperforming of Mon’s schools in reading and math proficiencies were part of the motivation to the launch the academy, Teul said.
Charter schools, meanwhile, run separate from county schools.
West Virginia regulations aside, they mostly aren’t beholden to state-mandated policies or benchmarks.
Charters can have a free-form curriculum and a year-round calendar, if that’s what their founders and administrators want.
They can exist solely online, even.
The nation’s first charter school was founded in St. Paul, Minn., in 1992.
Around 7,000 such schools were operating in 44 states and the District of Columbia, according to pre-pandemic numbers from the National Center for Educational Statistics.
More than 3 million students in the U.S. have gotten their education from charters in recent years, the center said.
Any group in the Mountain State thinking about starting one up, however, needs to do its homework first, Andrew Saultz said.
Saultz, who teaches educational leadership at Oregon’s Pacific University, a small, private college near Portland, also studies equity and accountability issues in public schools and charter schools across the U.S.
“Accountability,” is the watch-word for the former high school social studies teacher, who was also twice-elected to local school boards on the way to his doctorate.
The idea of a charter school can be noble and lofty, he said — but a couple policy anchors wouldn’t hurt.
After all, the educator said, a school is still a school.
“I personally don’t buy into charters as being a great thing or a terrible thing,” he said. “But you need to have measurements and standards in place. It’s still about accountability.”
