Charter schools learn from past mistakes
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Aug. 5, 2010 -- "My only challenge is to meet and satisfy expectations," said Cengiz Karatas, principal of the Gateway Science Academy. "There's a question: 'What if you fail? What if you're like other charter schools?' Well, we're coming in and we're not going to fail," said Karatas, who continues to prepare the new school for opening Wednesday morning. (Laurie Skrivan | lskrivan@post-dispatch.com)
If anyone represents the state of St. Louis' charter school movement, it's Patrice Coffin, who walked the halls of a south St. Louis school building recently and surveyed the renovation work.
In 2008, she left the building as principal of Paideia Academy, a school rife with infighting, poor test scores and ordered by the state to close. Now, Coffin is returning to the building as principal of Carondelet Leadership Academy, one of four charter schools opening in the city this year.
As the St. Louis charter school experiment enters its second decade, people such as Coffin are trying to revitalize a movement that in many ways hasn't lived up to lofty expectations. They're starting new schools they hope will have a better chance of success.
At Carondelet, old walls have come down, new ones have gone up. The building, at 7604 Michigan Avenue, which will hold kindergarten through fifth grade this fall, is getting a $1 million overhaul.
"We're opening a brand new school with a clean slate," Coffin said.
If the past is any indication, hundreds will fill the classrooms of Carondelet and the other new charter schools, just like the thousands who have already flocked to the nontraditional public schools.
Almost 10,000 city children attend charter schools — more than a third of the number who attend St. Louis
