Grace Stewart is a 5th-grade Homeschool student who has been attending Springs for two years. Her favorite class is “Countries and Cultures,” taught at the Riverside Learning Center by Marina Poulson. Outside of Springs, she is taking a class to learn Mandarin, shared her teacher, Nikki Dewispelaere. Other activities and interests include equine therapy, Minecraft, Girl Scouts, and DJing. Nikki notes that Grace has also improved her ELA academic achievement.
High School Learning Centers are “a great place” to take core classes or attend the Study Zone in a supportive and engaging environment, believes Sherri Kemp, Homeschool Director of High School Learning Centers. She explained, “Our core classes are smaller in size, allowing students to engage in collaborative learning and receive personalized instruction from our excellent teachers’ hands-on activities, such as interesting science labs, making learning fun and challenging.”
Students at the Del Rio Student Center are learning about the Elements of Art, focusing on “line” and “shape”, reported teacher Monica Peralta. TK and K worked on making different kinds of lines. First and 2nd used geometric shapes to create their own robot. Third through 5th learned about using lines to add texture to their drawings of animals and began using foreground, middle ground, and background. Sixth through 8th used organic shapes to create fold-out landscapes with foreground, middle ground, and background.
Springs’ Otay Ranch Academy for the Arts (ORAA) teacher Jeannette Fetterhoff created a life-sized Zuri zebra mascot for the school. She researched zebras before beginning, then created it with such materials as cardboard, aluminum foil, and paper mâché. She painted it with rainbow stripes and put it on a platform with astroturf and presented it to Principal Brynne Dukes.
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Noah Arevalo, a senior in Springs’ Journey program, participated in the online Harvard Undergraduate Venture TECH Summer Program. He learned about startups and technology through lectures, workshops, and hands-on sessions incorporating MBA-level case studies. He participated in Zoom calls with guest speakers Mark Cuban, Lila Snyder (CEO of Bose), Josh Silverman (CEO of Etsy), and Ted Sarandos (co-CEO of Netflix). He was also assigned to a 6-week internship with the startup TouchPoint Legal, where he worked with a team to conduct user research, build an MVP, and ultimately present to the company founder.
Charter schools are independent public schools with rigorous curriculum programs and unique educational approaches. In exchange for operational freedom and flexibility, charter schools are subject to higher levels of accountability than traditional public schools. Charter schools, which are tuition-free and open to all students, offer quality and choice in the public education system.
The charter establishing each such school is a contract detailing the school’s mission, program, goals, students served, methods of assessment, and ways to measure success. In California, charters are granted for five years. At the end of the term, the entity granting the charter may renew the school’s contract. Charter schools are accountable to their authorizer, and to the students and families they serve, to produce positive academic results and adhere to the charter contract.
Like traditional public schools, charters receive state funding based on a formula for each child enrolled in the school. Many charters also do additional fundraising to obtain grants and donations to pay for programs that are not fully funded by state or school district formulas. When lawmakers passed the Charter Schools Act of 1992, California became the second state in the country (after Minnesota) to enact charter school legislation. The intent was to allow groups of educators, community members, parents, or others to create an alternative type of public school.
For more information, please watch this brief video from California Charter Schools Association
CloseSprings Charter Schools are parent choice schools where the community is our classroom. Our mission is to foster the innate curiosity of our students, empower their parents, and promote optimum learning by collaboratively developing a personalized learning program for each student.
Eagle = Choice, Freedom, Initiative
River = Community
Book = Empowering Parents (Knowledge is Power)
Torch = Curiosity, Passion for Learning
Hands = Collaboration
Keys = Personalization, Unlocking the Student’s Potential
Oak Branches = Continuous Lifelong Learning
