Local Charters Schools Take Applications: New School in Gooding Sets May 6 Deadline

By Andrea Gates, The Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho

Feb. 8–Two charter schools are taking applications for fall enrollment in Gooding and Twin Falls.

North Valley Academy in Gooding, the area’s newest public charter school, is taking applications until May 6 for its first school year, to begin in the fall. The charter school will lease space at the Idaho School for the Deaf and Blind.

One-year-old Xavier Charter School in Twin Falls, which currently has 260 students, is accepting applications until March 31.

Charter schools can set their own enrollment deadlines, said Idaho Charter School Commission Program Manager Tamara Baysinger.

Xavier Charter School serves kindergarten through eighth grade and it’s petitioning the Idaho Charter School Commission to add ninth grade, or 30 additional students for next year. Baysinger said the commission will likely hear that request on March 6.

Both schools are publicly funded and operate under the Idaho Charter School Commission, independently of local school districts surrounding them.

They first need to enroll students within their school districts, but if quotas aren’t met they can open up enrollment and hold a lottery where priority is first given to school founders’ kids, then their siblings and finally non-siblings.

At Xavier, kids already enrolled this year have first priority for next year, and the application is just a formality, said the school’s principal Cindy Fulcher.

Kids expelled from another school, public or private, could be rejected by charter schools and any other public school, according to the Idaho State Department of Education.

Xavier made an enrollment mistake last year, and got a letter of defect from the charter commission in September after a parent said the school threatened to reject her special-needs children.

The school now serves “less than 10″ special needs kids, has contracts with two special needs providers and it’s trying to hire a half-time special needs teacher, said Fulcher.

The school’s enrollment mistake was a topic of conversation at a Jan. 10 charter commission meeting, where commissioners discussed the need for new charter schools to understand they can’t turn away special needs kids. What Xavier did last year showed a lack of understanding, commissioners said.

North Valley Academy will try to stay clear any enrollment problems.

“Everybody’s welcome,” said Infanger.

Enrollment lotteries at the schools will be held during public meetings, school officials said, and applications are available online.

Andrea Gates can be reached at 735-3380 or Andrea.Gates@lee.net

For applications: www.northvalleyacademy.com, or http://www.xaviercharter.org

—–

To see more of The Times-News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.magicvalley.com

Copyright (c) 2008, The Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.