Carolina Journal’s Barry Smith reports here on the explosion of pubic charter schools that provide seats parents are demanding as alternatives to the traditional public school classroom. The metro areas are seeing the bulk of the new charters, but rural areas could see charters in their future too.
Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, which operates the N.C. Public Charter School Accelerator Program, is working to get some of those charter schools placed in rural counties.
Kwan Graham, who co-directs the accelerator program, is working on applications for two schools in Pitt County and one in Warren County. PEFNC also is proposing new schools for Durham and southeast Raleigh.
“The goal of the N.C. Charter Schools Accelerator Program is to help facilitate the opening of high quality charter schools in some of our most underserved communities, specifically communities in which there has been a record of low academic achievement,” said Christopher Gergen, who has experience in charter school administration in other areas and has been retained by the accelerator program.
“North Carolina is really at this interesting point of development,” Gergen said. “With the charter cap lifted two years ago, it really opened opportunities for charter schools to be located in underserved areas.”
Graham noted that even with 26 charter schools approved to open this fall, 44 counties in North Carolina have no charter school.
Thankfully, North Carolina is now a leader in empowering parents and offering educational choice. The Leftists don’t like our state’s progress, however, and they’re even using the court system to try to take away opportunity from low-income kids and kids with special needs. Shameful.
