Monday, June 23, 2014
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mollie Kessler School is closing as a charter school and will reopen next school year as a private school.
The new school will be in the same Wood Street location and serve the same population, students in first through eighth grade who have learning challenges.
“All who are age appropriate have re-enrolled,” said Erica Brown Fire, a counselor whom the board appointed as a spokeswoman.
The school also will retain a maximum enrollment of 60 to 65 students.
Brown Fire said the school’s board of directors believes the school will better be able to serve the needs of students as a private school.
“We decided that this wasn’t working anymore,” she said. “We feel like had to change our goals so many times. We had to a find a better way.”
Charter schools receive money from the state for each student that attends. As a private school, tuition will be charged although all of the school’s returning students have been awarded the John Peterson Scholarship for students with disabilities, Brown Fire said.
John Charlton, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education, said the school is working through the process of changing from a charter to a private school. It could take up to a year for the new school to receive its private school charter although schools are authorized to operate while their charters are being processed and finalized.
The Mollie Kessler School opened in 2002. Kessler opened the All Children Learn Differently Learning Center in 1973. In 1993, she added a full-time, private school.
The private school closed when the charter school opened in 2002, but the ACLD Learning Center which owns the Wood Street building where the school was housed continues to operate there. The Mollie Kessler School was a tenant of the learning center.
The ACLD Learning Center is a private entity while the Mollie Kessler School, as a public charter school, has a public board.
“We do psych-educational evaluations, after-school and summer programs, tutoring, offer mental-health services, advocacy,” Brown Fire said.
Children and families learn from the center about the support services available in their home schools, she said. The ACLD Learning Center also has an adult program, providing extra help to students attending Kent State University, Youngstown State University or Eastern Gateway Community College.
The ACLD board will oversee the private school as a separate facility. The name of the new school, at least initially, will be the ACLD School and Learning Center.