N. Raleigh charter set for gifted, challenged

A group of North Raleigh teachers and parents beat out a well-financed and well-organized private company for one of the state's last charter school openings.

The State Board of Education unanimously approved applications Thursday to give the state's final two charter slots to Endeavor Charter School in Wake County and Triad Math and Science Academy in Guilford County. The board shut out a company that wanted to operate a charter school in Duplin County.

"We had a high degree of confidence in those two applicants," said Howard Lee, chairman of the state board, which met this week in Ocracoke. "It was a close call. They all had good applications."

Endeavor and Triad will spend the next few months getting ready. If things are running smoothly, the state board will give final approval in March for them to open for the 2008-2009 school year.

Endeavor is the brainchild of Steve McAdams, a retired Forsyth County teacher, and his daughter, Christi M. Whiteside, and daughter-in-law, Maija McAdams, both teachers in the Wake County school system. The other members of the board of directors are a special education teacher at a private school, a church preschool director and two school volunteers.

"Being able to develop your own teaching philosophies, what teacher wouldn't want to do that?" said Maija McAdams. "It's a great feeling to say that I've developed something that will help students."

Maija McAdams, a teacher at North Forest Pines Elementary School in North Raleigh, said Endeavor's organizers applied for a charter to take advantage of the flexibility possible under the program. Charter schools are publicly funded but are free of many of the regulations that traditional public schools must follow.

The General Assembly capped the number of charter schools at 100, with 98 now in operation. The schools are supposed to offer innovative instruction.

Endeavor is targeting academically gifted students who have learning disabilities. School founders say they're in a better position than the overcrowded Wake school system to provide the individual attention and smaller class sizes those students need. Endeavor would also stress public speaking skills.

Maija McAdams said she doesn't anticipate problems filling the school, which would eventually serve students in kindergarten through eighth-grade and operate on a year-round calendar.

She said the school does not yet have a location.

How it was decided

With three applicants and only two openings, someone was going to lose.

Endeavor's leaders argued that one reason they should get the charter is because of the crowding and rapid growth in Wake County's school system.

Wake already has 13 charter schools, the most of any county, and leaders of the other groups said their applications were more deserving. Duplin County has no charter schools.

"We shouldn't be awarding a charter just because there's none in an area," Lee said.

Lee said the board had some concerns with the application for the Duplin Charter School, which would have been run by the Roger Bacon Academy, a nonprofit that runs two charter schools.

Lee said board members were concerned about Duplin's use of "direct instruction," a method in which teachers follow scripted lessons that dictate exactly what can be said in class. He said they were also concerned about requirements that families sign forms acknowledging that they could be removed from the school if they didn't meet academic standards.

"There were enough weaknesses that it was simply less deserving because the other two schools had strong applications," Lee said.

Mark Cramer, headmaster of the Roger Bacon Academy, said he is disappointed not to get the charter. But he said the group is not backing down on direct instruction, which he credits with helping achieve high test scores.

"It works, so we're still going to use it," Cramer said.