Local angle
An Evergreen Public Schools teacher is the first person to apply to open a charter school in Clark County. Yelena Ovdiyenko filed a proposal for Bilingual Charter Academy, a K-5 language immersion school, for the 2015-16 school year. Her plan is to enroll between 150 and 250 pupils in the school’s first year.
Ovdiyenko teaches English language learners at Covington Middle School. Previously, she taught ELL and Russian at Evergreen High School.
SEATTLE — Seven groups have submitted proposals to open charter schools in Washington, in the second round of a new process to bring these independent public schools to the state.
Three times as many applications were submitted last year. The chairman of the statewide Charter School Commission says the fewer applications do not show a decrease in interest.
Local angle
An Evergreen Public Schools teacher is the first person to apply to open a charter school in Clark County. Yelena Ovdiyenko filed a proposal for Bilingual Charter Academy, a K-5 language immersion school, for the 2015-16 school year. Her plan is to enroll between 150 and 250 pupils in the school's first year.
Ovdiyenko teaches English language learners at Covington Middle School. Previously, she taught ELL and Russian at Evergreen High School.
“It’s not really a great surprise to me that the first round was bigger,” said Steve Sundquist, chairman of the commission. “People see it’s a significantly challenging road, as a consequence, that narrows the field.”
Four applications have been made to the statewide commission, compared to 19 last year.
Three other applications have been submitted to the Spokane School District, which is authorized to approve its own charters. Spokane also received three applications last year.
In January, the statewide commission voted to approve the first seven applications for charter schools. Another school was approved through a separate process in Spokane.
Washington’s first charter school is scheduled to open this fall in Seattle. A private school, First Place, is reopening as a charter school in Seattle.
The seven other approved charters plan to open in fall 2015.
Tuesday was the deadline for the second round of applications.
The four proposals to the commission include a bilingual academy in Clark County, a blended learning school in Sunnyside in Central Washington, a branch of Green Dot Public Schools in south Seattle, and a school in Gig Harbor in Pierce County that would serve both special needs students and others.
The Spokane district hopes to make its decisions on this round of applications by the end of September.
