A new high school focused on design and hands-on projects, while retaining traditional learning, will be coming to the San Mateo Union High School District next year.
Now that a petition has been approved, Design Tech High School Director Ken Montgomery and his team will go into a planning phase which would involve looking for a charter school location and developing curriculum. The San Mateo Union High School District Board of Trustees voted 5-0 to accept the petition for the 520-student charter school at a meeting yesterday. The petition will last five years.
“We’re thrilled,” said Nicole Cerra, the school’s curriculum director. “It’s been a very reasonable process and people have been really cooperative and been approaching this from the mindset of wanting to make this work.”
With good schools already in the district, Montgomery, who is assistant principal at Capuchino High School, previously said he still wants to provide students with another option. The petition had more than 300 signatures, more than the 75 signatures required for the school. It would open with a freshmen class in August 2014, then add on classes each year following. The educational model of the school emphasizes “knowledge in action and extreme personalization.”
“We do believe there’s still a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done about courses of study,” said Superintendent Scott Laurence.
In addition to the petition, the board approved directing staff to execute a memorandum of understanding with the school’s nonprofit public benefit corporation for the operation of the school and the performance of the promises appearing in the memorandum of understanding. The board also voted to come back and discuss whether to have a school board member serve as a voting member of the nonprofit’s board of directors. Trustee Linda Lees Dwyer said it would be unwise to have a trustee on the nonprofit board.
Board President Peter Hanley echoed Laurence’s thoughts about the challenges of opening a new school when he spoke to the Design Tech leaders.
“You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you,” he said. “It’ll be challenging, but it’s possible to do.”
Additionally, Montgomery noted it’s important to keep teacher’s salaries above $50,000, while Laurence noted there seems to be a tremendous amount of work for faculty and expressed concern there could be burnout.
Back in July, the school received $100,000 in planning grant funding from Next Generation Learning Challenges for help with costs associated with opening the new high school.
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