New Charter Middle School Launching In La Mesa

LA MESA – In education circles, the middle school years – grades six, seven and eight – are known as particularly challenging. Large schools, more complex academic work and the onset of adolescence often send good elementary students on a race to the bottom. Beginning in September, La Mesa parents will have a new choice for tackling these years.

Two long-time educators have been awarded a state charter to begin a new middle school, which they will open in a church basement on Jackson Drive and will instantly create some competition in local education circles.

The school, to be known as College Preparatory Middle School, will be open to all public school families and admission will be on a first-come, first-serve basis. As with all public schools, there is no tuition. The school will open in September with grades six and seven and will add a grade eight next year. They expect 200 students this year and eventually the school’s directors want to educate 300 students in a sort of focused, back-to-basics style that will emphasize developing the academic skills needed to attend college. Classes will not exceed 20 students, the directors pledge.

“I think what we will have is a unique ability as a charter to bypass some of the things that larger districts have to do to compromise to meet all these competing needs,’’ said Christina Callaway, one of the two co-directors. “We will make local decisions that are to the benefit of our students that meet our students’ needs in a more focused way.’’

Callaway said all the school programs will emphasize reading to learn, to master the language skills in each academic area that will develop the students’ skills with college preparation as the stated focus.

“You will see content literacy everywhere in our program, from physical education to math and science,’’ she said. “It is imperative that we have teachers who are well versed in teaching reading in the middle school years.’’

Callaway has 16 years of experience in education. She has worked in the Grossmont Union High School District and in the Jamul-Dulzura District. Her co-director, Mitchell Miller, is also an experienced educator with training as a psychologist as well. The two worked together in the Jamul-Dulzura District and established themselves as innovative educators.

Miller said their approach involves educating “the whole child,’’ engaging the family to assure that the child is supported, not distracted by outside challenges. Miller said he and Callaway were able to raise the API scores (the annual benchmark testing for public schools) from 774 to 798 at Oak Grove Middle School. They expect their reputations and contacts to fuel early enrollment and they expect students from throughout East County. According to the school website, students will be required to wear uniforms at this school.

Miller and Callaway have worked for more than a year to meet the stringent state requirements for developing the charter and building the organization that can operate the school.

Interestingly, one of the key requirements is that the charter school has a sponsoring district – an established school district and board of education that will help the state and county school boards oversee the charter’s performance. For College Preparatory Middle School, the oversight district is not the local La Mesa Spring Valley District. Miller said the local district has been challenged by financial issues and suggested they look elsewhere for the oversight. So CPMS is chartered under the Mountain Empire School District centered in Pine Valley.

“Mountain Empire has a history of understanding charters,’’ Callaway said. “We just chose to go that direction.’’
Charter schools were created as a way of fostering innovation in public education. Helix High School is a charter that operates under the Grossmont Union High School oversight, a relationship that has had some recent stormy years.

There can be tension between charter and traditional public schools because students drawn away from those traditional schools bring their state funding with them to the charter school.

While students from throughout San Diego County can attend a charter like CPMS, geography plays a big role. That could mean more competition for nearby La Mesa Middle School, Parkway Middle, and Spring Valley Middle. In addition, this could be a new and cheaper alternative for parents who send their children to local private schools like The Warren-Walker School (whose elementary operation in La Mesa feeds to a middle school in Mission Valley) and Mt. Helix Academy.

One local public school educator said the launch of charters can concern the traditional schools, but many also see them as spurring the traditional schools to look anew at their operations.

“Competition is good,’’ he said.

Among the biggest challenges charters face is finding a location.

CPMS, like many charters, has turned to a local church that has facilities that are generally not heavily used during the school week. The school will open in the Church of Christ’s basement facilities at 5150 Jackson Drive, just a block north of La Mesa Boulevard.

“It was perfect for us,’’ Callaway said. “They were doing renovations already and we could operate there during the week.’’

Miller said there are eight classrooms, a computer room and a great room for school meetings that will make up the bulk of the school’s facilities to start. He said the church has expressed an interest in hosting an expansion as the school grows.

Clearly, as a small school, CPMS won’t be able to offer as much music and sports as a traditional school. Callaway said they will be looking to forge local partnerships with the community to develop a range of after-school programs – choir, karate, other forms of enrichment. But she said the school’s academic focus will be part of its strength – a “focus on basics,’’ close monitoring of student progress and maintaining smaller class sizes as a way to combat the struggles middle school students often experience.

Awarded the charter in March and having cleared other regulatory hurdles in May, the directors are working quickly to hire new teachers (a task made easier by recent layoffs in other schools) and to get word out to parents about this alternative.

The school has planned a series of informational meetings, beginning on Wednesday, July 28, at the church basement facilities from 6 to 7 p.m., for more information go to the school's website at http://MyCPMS.net.