Charter school serves behavioral, academic needs
Editor's note: This is part one of a two-part series looking in-depth at the Manitowoc County Comprehensive Charter School. Part two, which will be published next Sunday in print and online, will address students' behavioral and academic results after attending the school, and administrators' hopes for the school's future.
MANITOWOC - If Angela Beeman realized one thing as her son went through his first years of school, it was that the traditional school setting just wasn’t working for him.
Dawson Beeman started displaying behavioral problems in kindergarten - running back to the car when she dropped him off at school, for example. By the time he got to second grade, he threw tantrums and would run away from school.
At school, Dawson was "more or less just a body in a room," his mom said. "He shut down completely."
He wasn’t able to grow academically or socially, she said. Other kids at school didn’t want to be his friend.
For a while, he was in a mental institution in Wauwatosa, she said, and then went to a group home.
Then, Manitowoc public schools staff told her about the Manitowoc County Comprehensive Charter School, a countywide program scheduled to start in fall 2007.
Dawson became one of the school’s first students as a third-grader that fall, and as a fifth-grader