"Starting this fall, a new option will be available for middle school students in Albemarle County who are seeking a non-traditional school environment.

After several years of planning by co-founders Sandy Richardson and Bobbi Snow, the Community Public Charter School will open its doors. About 20 students have completed the enrollment process and another eight to 10 are expected to by the time school starts.

The charter school will only have a sixth-grade class the first year before being expanded to include seventh- and eighth-grade classes in ensuing years. Burley Middle School will house the charter school for at least the first year.

The school is still accepting applications for the coming school year.

According to Snow, the charter school is meant to provide an alternative environment for students who may have struggled in school for a variety of reasons. The curriculum, designed in cooperation with county school officials to meet state standards, will be arts-infused.

“There are students who have unique academic needs or maybe just are not ready for a large middle school environment,” she said. “There are some who might need a smaller environment, an arts-infused environment or a family environment. That’s what this school will be.”

There are currently three public charter schools in the state of Virginia, including Murray High School in Albemarle County. The charter middle school, however, will be the first that will have charter status from day one. The others were converted into charter schools.

Snow and Richardson developed the idea for a charter public middle school when they both worked at Tandem Friends School a while back. In 2005, their charter school proposal received a $450,000 grant from the U.S. Depart-ment of Education.

The co-founders first took their proposal to the Charlottesville School Board in February 2005. After looking into the proposal, however, the city board declined to approve it.

“The timing was terrible,” Snow said, referring to turnover on the School Board, as well as the controversy surrounding former city Superintendent Scottie Griffin, who resigned in April 2005.

Shortly after the city shot down the proposal, Snow and Richardson were contacted by several people in the county who were interested. The pair got in touch with county school administrators and began to retool the proposal for the county.

“The administration in the county has been extremely supportive of us from the start,” Snow said.

The county School Board approved the proposal last July.

Don Vale, head of the county school division’s instruction department, said the charter middle school will help the division make progress toward two of its goals — serving all students in the division one at a time and closing the “achievement gap.”

“We want to teach students to become citizens of the 21st-century global community and economy,” he said. “This school will provide an alternative to students who have not been successful in a traditional school setting.”

Under the terms of the contract that the school signed with the county, the school division will provide busing and classroom space, as well as some of the charter school’s teachers.

Fundraising is under way to pay for additional teachers and the arts-infused component of the curriculum, Snow said.

Snow and Richardson worked with guidance counselors, fifth-grade teachers, principals and family support staff to identify children with good academic potential but who were not thriving in school.

“The [charter school] is not for everybody, but I think there are some students who will thrive there who may not have in a traditional classroom,” said Ashby Kindler, the principal at Stone-Robinson Elementary School.

Since it is public, there will be no cost to attend the charter school.

Snow said that the charter school’s curriculum includes more hands-on work and physical activity and less textbook-based activities than the standard county curriculum. Arts will be used as a means of learning, especially in history and the social sciences.

Emphasis will be placed on mastery learning and taking full responsibility for one’s actions, according to Snow.

“We’ll work to create an environment of joy and connection to each other,” Snow said. “It’s not a punitive model. It’s about buying into a system of making good choices.”" (Barney Breen-Portnoy, The Daily Progress, May 22, 2008)