School Committee Approves Application for Public Charter School

The on Thursday unanimously approved an application for the creation of a public charter school designed to provide a leg up for students who are at risk of dropping out.

The application will now be submitted by Superintendent William Cameron to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for approval.

School Committee member Nate Bryant said the city is hoping to open the public charter school by next fall in time for the 2011-2012 school year. The school would be funded by the Salem school budget, along with outside funding sources.

"Typically these students have struggled in a public school setting," Bryant said. "We have a pretty high percentage of students who aren't completing high school."

The function of a charter school is to provide a particular population of students with competency-based learning in an innovative way, he said.

The new charter school would be a different animal from the , which is independent of the public schools, with its own board of directors.

"I'm not convinced that what they provide is any different than what we provide," Bryant said of the Salem Academy Charter School. "But it's another option."

He said the school committee is "confident this can work." But he acknowledged that funding can be difficult. "I don't want to say we're counting pennies, but we don't have a lot of money."

Some portion of the school's budget would have to come from fundraising, Bryant said.

The school department will be examining a short list of potential sites for the new charter school, including properties at .