While public and private school students get back to classes this fall, the organizer of a proposed charter school prepares for a possible opening in West Windsor one year from now. Barbara Taylor submitted an application to the state Board of Education asking for a charter for a high school that would concentrate on arts education. The school would fuse general studies with what students learn about their chosen discipline: music, theater, dance, or visual arts.
Mercer Arts Charter School, if it becomes a reality, will draw from WW-P, Hopewell Valley, Lawrence, Princeton, and Trenton. That equates to a pool of close to 10,000 students. Once students from those districts have enrolled, if there is still room, students from the rest of Mercer County will be invited to join. Taylor expects to start with an estimated 300 ninth and tenth graders, and anticipates that the school will have 600 students within four years.
The state recently re-organized the way it funds charter schools. In the past, a charter school would have gotten an amount that was fixed, and far lower than it will get in the future. Taylor says for this area it would have been $8,”500 per pupil, and by virtue of the state using a new formula, Mercer Arts Charter School, if it comes into existence, will get up to $15,000 per student.
The state now gives 90 percent of a district’s per-pupil cost to the charter school for every student that makes the decision to be educated there. Districts which could send students to Mercer Arts Charter School have annual per-student costs ranging from just over $12,000 to over $14,500. WW-P’s cost per high school student last year was $12,653. For each WW-P student that goes to Mercer Arts or any other charter school, the charter will get $11,387, and the public school keeps $1,265.
Mercer County currently has five charter schools for elementary education: Princeton Charter School, Trenton Community Charter School, Village Charter School, Pace Charter School, and the International Charter School of Trenton. The Emily Fisher Charter School of Advanced Studies is for grades 6-12, but according to the Mercer County Board of Education, only accepts “seriously disruptive students.”
This year, there are five applications before the board of education for charter schools. In addition to Mercer Arts, schools that seek to open are Paul Robeson Charter School for the Humanities, River City Charter School, Capital Preparatory Charter High School, and Learning is Everybody’s Business Charter School.
Charter schools can specialize in any of a number of areas of study. There currently is no option for families who want their child to have a full day of arts education in high school. Taylor, an art teacher in the Plainfield school district, believes the area is in need and support of the formation just this kind of school. “Most people are not aware of what a charter school represents. The more people know about it the more it becomes an option. I think that for people to be able to choose is a good thing,” Taylor says.
Taylor applied for a charter last year, and was rejected. She was asked to make changes to her application, and has submitted the second version, which contains far more detail than the first. She included the results of a needs study conducted by Braun Research on interest in the idea of the school, and outlined potential partnerships she has begun to form with area arts organizations, such as McCarter Theater.
The study and application revision was funded by a $30,”000 federal grant for repeat charter school applicants. The study found that most area families were supportive of the idea. Taylor says the volume of calls she received from placing newspaper ads supports the study’s conclusion, and she believes the school will become larger than she originally anticipated. She says she has had an outpouring of positive parental support for the idea. “It seems as if this is going to be a very popular school,” says Taylor.
Taylor has already named four potential teachers. She is still in search of a drama teacher, and says that it is difficult to find one who is both capable and certified. She hopes to have time to teach some classes, and she will be joined by Christopher Ireland, a music teacher from Bridgewater, Deborah Ford of South Orange, who will be the dance teacher, and Joann Lynch, from Monroe, a Special Needs teacher. Both of the former currently teach with her in the Plainfield school district.
Her goal is to assemble a teaching staff of both art and core curriculum teachers who share her philosophy: “Much of what people think of as training in the arts is technique, when to be an artist is really to engage the world.”
Taylor aims to teach young area artists to engage the world through an educational concept she has developed and plans to carry out in the Mercer Arts Charter High School. “One of the school’s innovations is to try to infuse art content within core curriculum content,” Taylor says. “The arts that the students are studying will inform the way we teach English, Science, Social Studies and Math. This has not really been done on a high school level before.”
Taylor’s proposal involves “arts infusion” with regular classes to have students in class from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. They will take part in core curriculum classes in the morning, taught by half-day history, English, and math teachers. The afternoon will be devoted to the students’ artistic medium. In the time between, morning teachers will meet with afternoon teachers to discuss and plan integrating their lesson plans to incorporate their traditional lessons with their artwork.
Though Mercer and Middlesex Counties have no similar schools at this point, New Jersey has an arts charter school. ChARTer-TECH High School for the Performing Arts, located in Somers Point, is available to students throughout Southern New Jersey. Taylor sees the Mercer Arts Charter High School as having a different approach to education than chARTer-TECH. “The arts infusion is something hey haven’t been able to address. It requires major staff development on the teachers. When its done well, I believe it will really increase student engagement in their core curriculum.”
Taylor is a visual artist herself and worked on the White House Conference on Children and Youth, helping form the nation’s educational policy during the Carter Administration. She lives in Princeton currently, and graduated from Mason Gross School of the Arts.
As an art teacher, she has explored making connections between what her students study in other classes, and what they create in her classroom. “It’s enlightening to look at the subject matter in terms of how it affects your art. In order to be any kind of good artist you need to be a literate artist.”
The school’s focus is to prepare its students for acceptance and success in a college arts program. Taylor believes in artists going to college rather than immediately entering the professional world after high school, even if they do attend a school as specialized as Mercer Arts might be. There will be no screening process, since it will be a publicly-funded school. Taylor expects students’ interest to be a natural, self-selection process.
Taylor says she’s due to get a definite answer on whether the state will accept the school’s charter in January. The approval will clear the way for the school to get municipal funding and to start classes in the fall of 2007. If the school is approved, Taylor will have one months’ time to get students enrolled, hire a teaching staff, and lease a space.
If the school is formed, and it is as popular as Taylor anticipates, the building that becomes the school will be an important part of its success. Taylor has several locations in mind, all of which are in West Windsor. The space has to fit a number of requirements.
Says Taylor: “We’re looking for 25,000 square feet. The primary thing that the department of education looks for is that its ADA (American Disabilities Act) approved. The township must grant us an educational certificate for us to lease the space.”
Taylor found a suitable spot near the border of West Windsor and Lawrence, but had to eliminate it because it was not built for wheelchair accessibility. Taylor’s ideal space “will be purposefully set up for five large classrooms, will have a performance gymnasium, a teacher’s lounge, a conference room, and we’re looking for parking to accommodate 100 cars.”
Since she cannot enter a lease until she knows whether the school’s charter will be approved, Taylor fears the space she’s found may not be available by the time the decision is handed down. For this reason, she won’t name the space specifically, and she continues to look for other possible locations.
Taylor has enlisted the help of one parent/founder from each of the townships that could send students to the Mercer Arts Charter High School. (The parent/founders include Euna Kwon Brossman of Plainsboro, the “Suburban Mom” columnist for the WW-P News, and Lawrence resident Jamie Saxon, Preview editor of U.S. 1, the News’ parent publication.)
Says Taylor of the founders who are helping her in her mission to open the school, “The founders bring a variety of backgrounds, and extensive connections to the arts community. Some founders are parents who are committed to developing an innovative learning environment that help children reach their highest academic potential. Some founders have well-developed connections with institutions of higher education and cultural organizations.””
For information and updates, visit www.mercerarts.org. E-mail BarbaraTaylor@MercerArts.org to be included in the list which will receive updates on the school, including the dates of information sessions this fall. Interested families can also contact the school by calling 609-921-7698.
