YOUNGSTOWN Charter school builds on its success

'They're definitely what we'd like to see out of the community school movement,' a state official said.
By RON COLE
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Ask Clint Satow about the most successful charter schools in Ohio, and he's likely to tell you about a couple of Catholic nuns in Youngstown.
Satow, head of the Ohio Community School Center in Columbus, says the Youngstown Community School on the city's South Side operated by Sisters Jerome Corcoran and Mary Dunn is a model for how to start, operate and expand a charter school.
"When the state wants to get together a group of community schools to talk about the issues, they always call Sister Mary and have her come to Columbus," Satow said.
"It's a very well-respected school."
The nuns build on that success this week when the school breaks ground on a new $4 million classroom building.
The two-story structure on Essex Street, which school officials hope is ready for the start of next school year, will house 10 classrooms as well as a computer lab, media center and multi-purpose room.
The school will sit next to the Millcreek Children's Center, a pre-school operated by Sister Jerome that also houses 120 YCS kindergarten, first- and second-grade pupils.
In new building: Those pupils will move into the new building, and the school will add third-grade classes next school year and fourth-grade in 2002-03.
In all, the school will serve 240 kindergarten to fourth-grade pupils, most of whom are black and live on the city's South Side in families below the poverty level.
"The school has filled a niche in Youngstown that needed to be filled," said Charles George, an accountant with Packer Thomas Co. and president of the YCS board of developers.
"The types of students they're serving thrive under the environment that they have created."
The nuns' reputations on the city's South Side date to the 1970s.
Sister Jerome is a former elementary and high school teacher and supervisor of schools for the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown.
In 1976, she opened the Millcreek Children's Center on Glenwood Avenue. The center, which serves about 60 children ages 3 to 5, moved to its current location in 1993.
"Her commitment is like Mother Theresa," said Edward Hulme, manager of member services for the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber of Commerce and a member of YCS's board of developers.
Expansion wanted: Sister Mary, principal of St. Patrick School on Oak Hill Avenue for 20 years before joining YCS, said parents of the pre-school children for years had asked to expand the school.
"So, when the community school law passed in 1997, we just got on the bandwagon," Sister Mary said. "It was the answer to what the parents were asking for."
Community schools, commonly called charter schools, are publicly funded, nonreligious and tuition-free schools approved by the State Board of Education that operate independent of the local school board.
YCS, which is not affiliated with the Catholic church, receives about $4,050 annually in state funds for every pupil enrolled, Sister Mary said.
YCS and Eagle Heights Academy on Market Street were among the first 15 charter schools to open in fall 1998.
YCS started with 40 kindergartners and added 40 first-graders in 1999-2000 and 40 second-graders this school year. Classrooms are limited to 20 pupils, and each classroom has two certified teachers.
Results: The results have been good: 96 percent pupil attendance, 40-percent passage on all five parts of the first-grade state proficiency test, above average scores on national standardized tests for kindergartners and a waiting list of about 45 children to get into the school.
"They're definitely what we'd like to see out of the community school movement," said Mark Sebastian, a consultant in the Ohio Department of Education's Office of School Options.
"The school has had a positive impact on the community."
Unlike their public school counterparts, Ohio charter schools are not eligible for state funds for facilities. That means any money for facility improvements must be raised privately.
"It's a major obstacle for a lot of these schools," said J.C. Benton, state education department spokesman.
Sister Jerome said YCS will borrow $4 million. Fund-raising efforts started late last year have garnered $500,000, and the school has received $1 million more in pledges. That leaves $2.5 million to raise.
Harder to raise funds: Sister Jerome, who helped raise nearly $2 million to build and then add onto the preschool building, said raising funds for poor inner-city children is increasingly difficult.
"And yet, I have always been able to get the contributions that we really have needed for the work we're doing for children," she said.
Sister Jerome and Ron King, business manager at Eagle Heights Academy, said they and other charter school advocates are trying to get funds included in the state budget for charter school facilities.
A group of pastors led by the Rev. Gary Frost of Rising Star Baptist Church bought the former South High School building in 1997 and opened Eagle Heights in 1998.
King said the school has raised $1 million in private funds to renovate the 90-year-old building.
But the academy, which enrolls 868 pupils in kindergarten through eighth grade, will run out of room next school year, when it plans to add a 120-student ninth grade, King said. He said the school likely will buy modular classroom units to house the new students.
But Eagle Heights plans adding 10th grade in 2002-03, and 11th and 12th grades the following two years, which will require even more space.
"It's probably the greatest need for any community school," King said about facilities. "What you run into is one of two things -- either you can't find a facility or if you find a facility, it's older and needs quite a bit of upgrade."
The academy considered leasing the former Stambaugh Elementary School on the city's West Side, but King said the building required $750,000 in renovations.
King said school officials are looking at all available space on the South Side, including other closed or soon-to-be closed public school buildings.
Ideally, the academy would like to build a new school near the building on Market Street, but that would mean acquiring adjacent property and raising millions of dollars, he said.
"We just need to look at all of the options right now," he added.