By Tom Dalton and Amanda McGregor
Staff writers
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SALEM — The School Department will submit a tentative proposal Monday to the state for its own charter school downtown to serve about 100 dropouts and students at risk of dropping out.
In a city with extended-year and two-language middle schools, Salem Community Charter School would break more ground locally.
The school day would start at 11 a.m. and go to 6 p.m., forgo the standard freshman-to-senior grade structure, provide instruction in various settings, from one-on-one to groups and work with a number of community resources, including the YMCA and Boys & Girls Club of Greater Salem, which would offer physical education classes.
The proposed charter school, officials admit, is a response to a threat this past school year by an outside group that wanted to open an independent charter school in Salem for at-risk students.
"That was a spur to look at this problem and do something about it," said Salem schools Superintendent William Cameron. "I think Mr. Guinto ... has identified a population we are not serving well."
Robert Guinto of West Roxbury, the driving force behind the proposed but ultimately unsuccessful Road to Success Charter High School, said this week that he plans to reapply to the state to open a charter school for needy students from Salem and Lynn.
The charter school being proposed by Salem school officials will target a serious school problem: the high dropout rate and the large number of students who fail to graduate.
"Even with a number of excellent programs in place," the 31-page prospectus states, "Salem is not meeting the needs of a substantial number of disaffected students, and new measures must be taken."
The Salem dropout rate for 2008-09 was 4.3 percent, considerably higher than the state average of 2.9 percent, according to figures from the Department of Secondary and Elementary Education.
Between 2005 and 2009, a total of 242 student failed to graduate from Salem High, the prospectus states. In other words, only about 75 percent of students graduate in four years.
"This program is certainly targeting a (significant) bracket of students that are slipping through the cracks," said School Committee member Kerry Ann Martin.
Last night, the School Committee unanimously approved the preliminary proposal the School Department will submit to the state on Monday.
After reviewing it, the state Department of Secondary and Elementary Education will announce in September if Salem should formally apply for a charter. If the city gets the go-ahead, the School Department will have until Nov. 1 to submit a more detailed proposal.
If all goes well, following hearings and extensive review next winter, the School Department could open the new charter school by September 2011.
At this point, however, the city still has a lot of questions to answer.
Some of those were raised last night during the School Committee's brief meeting. Mayor Kim Driscoll and board members Jim Fleming and Kevin Carr all asked about the cost of a new school.
Cameron said the minimum expense will be $500,000.
Several officials noted that, with a city-run charter school, the School Department at least will have some control over costs, which it won't have if an independent charter school opens in the city with direct funding from the state.
School board members said there is a lot they like about this proposal, especially the working relationships with community partners like Salem State, Salem CyberSpace, the Plummer Home for Boys, Children's Friend and Family Services, and the North Shore Medical Center.
The school's "founders" include a number of community members: Deborah Amaral, executive director of the Salem YMCA; Mary-Lou Breitborde, associate dean of education at Salem State; Lucy Corchado, president of The Point Neighborhood Association; Linda Saris, co-founder and director of Salem CyberSpace; and Diana Resciniti, a 2010 graduate of Salem High.
Although school officials say they want to put the school downtown and not inside a current school building, they have not yet considered or even visited specific sites.
The superintendent said the Salem proposal mirrors a charter school in Boston.
"I believe this is a sound proposal," Cameron said, "based on a model the Department of Education already supports in the city of Boston."
Meanwhile, Guinto has not given up his hope of opening a charter school in Salem.
The state did not grant a charter to Road to Success at the close of last year's application cycle.
Guinto said the group has eliminated Peabody from the original proposal and knocked down the size of the school from 400 students to 320 students.
The school would still aim to serve students with limited English, those involved with the Department of Children and Families, homeless students and pregnant or parenting teens, according to Guinto.
"The bar is much higher for Salem and Lynn — they're in the bottom 30 of the state," Guinto said.
Guinto said he is coming back with a stronger proposal that addresses rules set outside the state and some of the concerns and feedback the Charter School Office provided last time around.
"They want to see people on the board that have actually run school in leadership positions," Guinto said.
Guinto said he is not prepared to announce the name of the board members, but he said the school would partner with a Peabody social service agency called North American Family Institute, and that a leader of a Salem social service agency for people with disabilities is joining the board.
During the last application cycle, when Road to Success made it to the final round, the state identified a number of concerns with the proposal, ranging from curriculum to student recruitment, as well as inadequate staffing levels and a failure to assess local demand for the new school.
In response to the Salem Public Schools' proposal to start its own charter school, Guinto said he is not opposed.
"I'm very happy for them to do that," Guinto said. "My school is not going to solve their problems by itself, so if they do a piece, I do a piece, and another charter school does a piece, whatever it's going to take to improve."
Salem Community Charter School
Mission: lower the dropout rate
Student body: 100 students ages 15-21
Location: downtown Salem
School year: September through July
Daily schedule: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Evaluation: projects, portfolios, standardized tests
Physical education: at Salem Y, Boys & Girls Club
