Coburg charter school gearing up

COBURG — One school might have closed here for good last month, after a string of almost 15 decades of public schooling that dated back to the Civil War. But the new one that opens in the same building come September has the whole town of Coburg talking and ready to celebrate tonight with, what else, ice cream.

“It’s quite a movement,” said Terry Hoagland, executive director of the new Coburg Community Charter School. “It’s nice to be a part of it. It’s exciting to be a part of it.”

The charter school’s board voted Monday night to approve the hiring of five full-time teachers at annual salaries of $32,000, one teacher each for grades one through five, and a half-time kindergarten teacher at $16,000 a year.

At least a couple of the new hires are among the 68 teachers who were laid off by the Eugene School District last month, said Molly Lajoie, the charter school’s principal.

The selected teachers were chosen from about 125 applicants, she said.

Tonight’s ice cream social at the school will give the community a chance to meet the new teachers and find out more about the school that is still enrolling students for the 2011-12 school year.

Coburg Elementary School, which dates back to a one-room schoolhouse that opened in 1862, was one of four elementary schools closed by the financially struggling Eugene district last month.

But thanks to the efforts of many in this community of about 1,000, an application for a public charter school at the same site was approved by the Eugene School Board on Feb. 2.

How it’s funded

With 116 students, Coburg Elementary School was the school district’s smallest school.

But about 110 students already have registered for the new K-5 charter school, said parent volunteer Mollie Smith, who was named 2010 Coburg Citizen of the Year after spearheading the charter school effort.

Charter schools in Oregon receive public funds under a written agreement — a charter — that outlines student performance goals and educational services the school will provide.

They are independent legal entities governed by their own boards of directors, and are excluded from many state statutes and rules. Charter schools receive 80 percent of state per-pupil funding from the sponsoring school district, which retains the remaining 20 percent.

That means, instead of the estimated $5,825 per-student funding regular public schools will get in 2011-12, the Coburg charter school will get about $4,700 per student.

The rest, to pay salaries and the $24,000 in rent for the building from the Eugene district, will have to be raised.

And much of it already has been.

About $67,000 has been raised so far: An auction this spring brought in about $42,000, the city of Coburg contributed $10,000 so it can use the building for community activities, and the parent-teacher organization formerly associated with Coburg Elementary, but now with the charter school, has raised $15,000, Smith said.

Shooting for 120 students

The charter school hopes to have at least 120 students signed up by September, and could hold as many as 150. Classes are capped at 25 students, and kindergarten already is full, Smith said.

Why the 25-student cap?

“Because that’s part of our mission,” Smith said Monday, sitting in the school office with Hoagland, a longtime Oregon teacher and administrator who has come out of a brief retirement to help lead the school, and Lajoie, who comes to the school after 12 years with the Bethel School District as a speech and language pathologist. “We think it’s really important for kids to have a small learning environment.”

The closure of Coburg Elementary School directed that school’s students, and most of its teachers, to Gilham Elementary School in northeast Eugene.

But many Coburg families have opted to enroll their students in the charter school, Smith said.

However, about 40 of the students signed up so far have come from elsewhere, from Eugene and nearby Harrisburg, and even as far away as Veneta and Mohawk, which saw its Mohawk Elementary School shuttered this year by the Springfield School District.

The value of small

Mindy Hayner, a 1995 Sheldon High School graduate who attended Coburg Elementary in the 1980s, was one of several parent volunteers who were busy sorting through book donations Monday for the charter school’s library.

Her daughter, Maddy, had attended Coburg Elementary since kindergarten and will now enter third grade at the charter school in September. Hayner’s son, Sawyer, is one of the 25 signed up for kindergarten.

Hayner and her husband, Matt, live in the Bertha Holt Elementary School neighborhood, Eugene’s largest elementary school with more than 500 students, but they wanted their children to have the same rural school experience that Mindy had as a child.

“I really value the smallness of this school,” Hayner said. “And it’s important for the community to keep a school here.”

The goal is to expand the school to K-6 for 2012-13, to K-7 in 2013-14, then K-8 in 2014-15, by having the upcoming year’s fifth-grade class continue on before entering high school.

That could expand enrollment to 225.

A full kindergarten class each fall during the next three years should allow that to happen, Smith said.

“That shouldn’t be a problem, since we’re offering full-day kindergarten,” Smith said.

Most Oregon school districts, including Eugene and Springfield, offer only half-day kindergarten.

The charter school will have a half-time kindergarten teacher, but also plans to hire an educational assistant to lead the kindergartners in the afternoon for those parents who choose to have their children attend all day.