The Gloucester Community Arts Charter School is going forward with plans to add another two grades next year, filling out its charter as a school serving kindergartners through eighth-graders.
For the 2012-2013 school year, the charter school will add both kindergarten and first grade. The school in the Blackburn Industrial Park began as a grade four through seven school in September 2010, then added grades two, three and eight last fall.
The expansion, which was targeted in the school's charter approved by the state's Board of Elementary And Secondary Education in February 2009, is going forward despite an appeal by 15 Gloucester city school parents of a lawsuit they filed challenging the state's granting of the charter in the first place,
But it also comes after an Essex County Superior Court judge dismissed the parents' suit, giving the charter a clear go-ahead.
The planned September 2012 expansion, school Executive Director Tony Blackman said Monday, brings Gloucester Community Arts Charter School up to the full number of grades planned in its charter.
Blackman said he believes the charter school should have a better outlook for attracting students, given the judge's dismissal of the parents' suit.
"Winning the lawsuit has taken a cloud off the future of the charter," said Blackman.
With that, and the two new grades, Blackman, said he's expecting about 200 students next year. That's 40 short of what the charter planned for when the state initially approved it. But he added that number is preliminary, as the school is just now kicking off its open houses and lotteries for the next year, with an open house this Saturday and the new year's first student placement lottery set for Feb. 15.
The students heading into the new grades, Blackman said, will be the first to run their entire kindergarten through eighth grade education in the charter school.
"Now we're accepting the first class who will do all of their elementary formative years in the culture of the school," he said.
While the charter expands, so does the amount it draws from the city's Chapter 70 state aid funding.
The school drew $660,000 in this fiscal year, but is set to draw around $1 million in fiscal 2013, which begins July 1 and for which the city and its school district are now budgeting.
The school's fiscal 2013 sending tuition, according the Department of Revenue's Cherry Sheet, is pegged at about $2.1 million, with the state reimbursing the city about $941,000, down from this fiscal year. Massachusetts charter schools are funded on a per-student basis; charter schools are public schools, but operate independently from local school committees, with their own boards of trustees.
Currently, 135 students are enrolled in the charter school's second through eighth grades. That's down about 60 from last year's initial expectation of 196 students. The initial drop in enrollment caused the school to adjust its budget, and cut about $200,000 from the school's spending plan.
With that came staff pay cuts and a change in the school's rent. The rent had also covered a build-out for the school at the original $444,742 per year lease. When that was cut to about $353,000, the school cut plans for the building expansion, which was for two additional classrooms to house kindergartners and first-graders.
Blackman said that, at least for next year, the school won't need the additional space. And by the time it does, he said, it will have enough money to do that.
"When we're up to 240, we'll have to re-configure the building internally, or add classrooms," he said.
Steven Fletcher may be contacted at 1-978-283-7000 x3455, or sfletcher@gloucestertimes.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevengdt.
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