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Charter Schools Considered: School Board Member Hosting Keyswide Meetings

Posted on: Wednesday, 22 February 2006, 12:00 CST

By Alyson Matley, Florida Keys Keynoter, Marathon

Feb. 22--It's been a couple of years since a former Monroe County schools superintendent proposed establishing a collegiate high school in Key West, but School Board member Duncan Mathewson is again asking Keys parents if they're interested.

Friday, Mathewson pulled together a few interested parents in Marathon to get a read on their view of a charter high school. He plans to hold a similar meeting in the Upper Keys.

"This cannot be just a Key West project," he told the Keynoter Tuesday. "It has to be done in each high school. I'm trying to see whether or not the concept is something that parents will support."

The idea would be to create an alternative school in conjunction with Florida Keys Community College that would allow students to pursue an associate's degree at the same time they're working on their high-school diploma through dual enrollment.

"This is a parent-driven project," Mathewson said. "It's all up to what they want and what they think. I'm involved in this as a parent. I have 11-year-old twins who are getting closer and closer to Coral Shores, and I'm concerned."

Mathewson says a committee pursuing the idea has come up with a two-prong approach: The dual enrollment for advanced students who plan to go on to college and another program that would help kids whose grades may not get them into college improve.

"I'm interested in high-achieving students who are bored and unchallenged, these are the ones that drop out and go into home schooling," he said. "These are two paths with one goal: The collegiate program and a pre-collegiate program for those students that do not reach that academic level of achievement who would like to get better grades and move into the collegiate program."

In 2004, about 60 families showed up for a joint meeting of the Florida Keys Community College board of trustees and the School Board to weigh in on the idea of a charter collegiate school. At the time, the School Board was unanimously opposed to creating the school. Mathewson, who was active in creating the Big Pine Neighborhood Charter School, was not yet serving on the School Board.

Mathewson says creating the charter schools would not take away from existing schools.

"We've got a lot to do to raise the classroom achievement of our high-school students," he said. "We would probably look to see that at least half the students come from private schools and home schooling so that we'd be adding as many as 40 or 50 new students to the school system."

Frank Butler was the champion of the collegiate school. He was a member of the college board who died last year.

"Our board tabled it at the November meeting," said Lydia Estenoz, spokeswoman for the college. "Now we're waiting for an appointment" to fill Butler's seat.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Florida Keys Keynoter, Marathon

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Source: Florida Keys Keynoter, Marathon, Fla.

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