Crossway Community’s strong and diverse ties to community groups will help it survive time under the microscope as it prepares to open Montgomery County’s first charter school, the group’s executive director said this week.
Since the Kensington nonprofit organization began working with families in poverty in 1990, it has assisted with the African-American Infant Mortality Initiative to help provide home services for families, allowed 100 Fulbright scholars from around the world to do some gardening on its grounds and provided space for the Latin American Economic Development Corporation to host foreclosure prevention seminars.
Now, Crossway is close to gaining county and state approval for its proposed pre-K through third grade Community Montessori Public Charter School, to open for the 2012-13 school year.
“We’ve been an open system,” CEO Kathleen Guinan said. “We’ve always been an open system.”
The Montgomery County Board of Education had been scheduled to vote Thursday on the proposed school, for which recently retired Superintendent Jerry D. Weast recommended approval. But board members stalled over the key issue of which students would receive the highest priority to attend.
New Superintendent of Schools Joshua P. Starr subsequently recommended the board review the situation and vote on the matter July 25, which the board agreed to do.
“It’s a little too messy, frankly, right now. Or I shouldn’t say messy, I should say, unknown,” Starr said.
A Montessori school is designed to educate children through interactions with their environment. The learning atmosphere includes multi-age groups of students, allowing students to choose their activities with teacher guidance, and uninterrupted, lenghty blocks of work time.
A major goal for Montessori education is to mirror the real world, where people of different dispositions and ages work and socialize.
In a way, Crossway’s network of partnerships mirrors this educational model. Guinan said the fact Crossway was known and connected to a wide swathe of the community would make the charter school stronger in its initial stages.
“It’s a big tent, and we want to gather as many people as possible to really build the fabric of what is really the true American community,” she said.
Maryland law states charter schools must be open to all students in the school system.
However, board members were worried this would contend with what they said was a main goal of the charter school focusing on low-income, underserved students.
Under a proposal from school board member Patricia B. O’Neill (Dist.3) of Bethesda, the school system and Crossway Community, the nonprofit group that would run the school, would work together to create a designated geographic zone, called a “catchment area.”
Students in the catchment area, which could be designed to include low-income residents, could choose to attend Community Montessori. If the number of students applying exceeded the number of places, the school would conduct a lottery from among those students to determine who could attend.
If there still were places available after all the catchment students were accounted for, the process could be opened to all county students. If the number of these students applying exceeded the number of places, a different lottery would take place.
In its first operating year of 2012-13, the school proposed an enrollment of 122 students, expanding to 188 by 2015-16, the last year of the four-year charter.
The catchment area differs from a school boundary, in which students within the boundary are automatically assigned to the school. The school system’s French Immersion language program, for example, uses catchment areas to enroll students.
Board members agreed the school system and Crossway should create a proposed catchment area before the July 25 vote.
On Monday, board member Laura V. Berthiaume said the catchment area should have a solid mix of demographics, and it should be at least as large as a normal school cluster. She said her vote hinged on an appropriate catchment area.
“It is better to have a socioeconomic mix than not,” said Berthiaume (Dist. 2) of Rockville.
Board member Judith Docca (Dist. 1) of Montgomery Village said the thought the charter school wouldn’t truly add new services for low-income students.
“I believe we can do that with the schools that we presently have,” she said.
Board President Christopher S. Barclay (Dist. 4) of Takoma Park noted that no Montessori programs exist in the school system.
Four of the seven board members indicated support for the charter school application last week, with Berthiaume, Docca, and Michael A. Durso (Dist. 5) of Silver Spring suggesting they would vote against it.
“I think it provides a level of public school choice. I think choice is a good thing,” said Philip Kauffman (At large) of Olney.
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