Milford Could Get Its First Charter School

MILFORD, MA — A proposal to bring a charter school to Milford is in front of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and an assistant principal at a Milford middle school is the one pushing it forward. Leading Edge Charter School is one of four charter schools proposed for the state and, if approved, would be the first charter school in Milford and the third in the MetroWest.

The proposed school would house grades kindergarten through eighth grade and serve up to 270 students. the target opening year is listed as 2020. According to the application, Nadine Clifford, an assistant principal at Stacy Middle School, is listed as the developer and founder. Clifford was in the running to become principal of Stacy Middle School but the job was given to Tahon Ross. Ross served as an assistant principal at a Washington, D.C. school.

The Milford charter school would serve kids from Milford, Bellingham, Blackstone-Millville, Hopedale, Medway, Mendon-Upton, and Uxbridge. The other three charter schools hoping to open are located in Lynn and Westfield.

Commissioner Jeffrey C. Riley will decide by mid-September which applicant groups to invite to submit full proposals for new schools. Those final applications will be due by October 16, 2019, and the commissioner will then decide which finalists to recommend to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education for consideration at their February 2020 meeting.

"We will review these prospectuses and expansion requests carefully and will consider their strengths as they relate to opportunities that they would offer students,” Riley said in a statement.

There are currently 82 charter schools in Massachusetts serving over 45,000 students, which is almost 5 percent of all public school students in the Commonwealth.