Juneau continues to look at Alyeska as a charter
Yukon-Koyukuk accepts the school's charter application
The Juneau School Board agreed Tuesday that district staff should continue to work with parents and staff from Alyeska Central School in preparing a charter school application.
"Go forth and talk," School Board Vice President Alan Schorr told Superintendent Peggy Cowan.
On Friday, the Yukon-Koyukuk School District, comprising 314 students in nine village schools, accepted Alyeska's application to be a charter school.
The plan at this point is to keep the staff and materials warehouse in Juneau, said Y-K Superintendent Christopher Simon in a phone interview from Fairbanks on Tuesday.
This is the last school year that Alyeska, the state-run correspondence school based in Juneau, will be operated by the state. The state Department of Education and Early Development on Friday requested proposals from school districts to take over Alyeska starting in July 2004.
Bidders may propose to run Alyeska as a charter, correspondence school or other type of public school, the agency said. Bids are due by Nov. 14, and the agency is scheduled to award a bid on Dec. 1.
The kindergarten through grade 12 school, which features a curriculum created by Alyeska's teachers, expects about 650 students this year and has a staff of 15 teachers and 11 support staff.
Some parents and staff at Alyeska have formed the Academic Policy Committee to run the school as a charter. Charter schools are public schools that hire their own staff and have their own budget with some oversight from a school district.
Parents "want a charter so that they have the most autonomy and have a vested interest in the direction of the school," Alyeska teacher and committee member Debbie Chalmers said.
The Academic Policy Committee approached school districts in Juneau, the Yukon-Koyukuk area, Wrangell and the Delta-Greely area. Wrangell and Delta-Greely haven't held hearings, committee members said Tuesday.
Juneau School Board members made no comments when they voted 6-0 Tuesday to devote more staff time to Alyeska's charter application. Board President Chuck Cohen was out of town and did not vote.
If the Juneau School Board accepts the charter application, the district would submit that as its bid, officials have said. Yukon-Koyukuk officials also will submit the charter as its bid.
Yukon-Koyukuk Superintendent Simon said Alyeska teachers' expertise and the school's curriculum will help the district meet the annual improvement goals and teacher-qualification requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.