Doors Open Early at Charter Prep High School
- July 8, 2010
It’s nearly six weeks until the first day of school. However, students are already attending classes at the Livermore Valley Charter Preparatory High School (LVCP). Many students are hitting the books and meeting their new teachers and classmates at a voluntary summer school program that will last through the end of the month.
“We are thrilled and excited to be starting this new high school and offering choice to the families of Livermore. It’s been a lot of work to get here,” said Bill Batchelor, executive director of the Tri-Valley Learning Corporation (TVLC), which administers both LVCP and the Livermore Valley Charter School (LVCS), a K-8 school.
For the school’s organizers, LVCP’s opening day on August 24 has been a long time coming. The LVCS community began discussing the possibility of a charter high school in May 2006; the State Board of Education approved the petition for LVCP in its current form in July 2009.
LVCP is still accepting students through its rolling open enrollment process. Open enrollment closes on the fifteenth of each month; Batchelor expects that all students who apply by July 15 will have a spot. “Based on how enrollment has been progressing, we will likely be full or very close to full by August 15,” he said.
In June, LVCP principal Dr. Jeffrey Watkins and the LVCP staff welcomed prospective parents and students as well as interested community members at two Open House events. “Everyone at LVCP is going to college. That is the expectation we have,” said Watkins. “How many schools can say this?”
The school has five full-time teachers: Mike Burstein, physical education; Kelly Radimer, mathematics; Justin Guerra, English; Angela Tang, academic counselor and world languages; Colin Dean, music and technology; and Rashida Haveliwala, social sciences. Susan Huebner is the office manager. Staff biographies can be found on the LVCP website (www.lvcphs.org).
LVCP will offer three foreign languages initially: Spanish, taught by Tang as a regular class, and Mandarin and Cantonese through an online language lab with Tang as a facilitator available to practice spoken Cantonese and Mandarin with students.
At the Open House, Batchelor described LVCP’s College Pathways program. “This replaces the Advanced Placement class model, where you take a class and at the end of the year take a test to earn college credit,” he said. “We plan to offer junior and senior level classes that are college accredited so our students can graduate with at least a year of college credit. This will require extra work on the part of the students, but there will be support.”
All of LVCP’s teachers hold masters degrees, so they have the capacity to teach college-accredited courses. By the 2012/13 school year, when the incoming freshman are juniors, LVCP will have partnership agreements with a number of colleges, meaning the students can earn college credit for those schools through high school classes. The partner schools include Las Positas Community College, California State University (East Bay, San Jose, San Francisco, and Stanislaus), University of California (Berkeley, Davis, Merced and Santa Cruz), and Stanford University.
Batchelor added that the program is not directed only at higher-achieving students, but at everyone. “We will have before and after school tutoring available,” he said. “There is a lot of research behind this model that shows that it works for all students.”
He also explained the technology plan for LVCP, which he described as a cornerstone of the school. All students will have a laptop computer or similar device that will be loaded with all of their textbooks and have Internet capability and a wireless provider. “We have to understand that today’s students learn in a vastly different world,” he said.
LVCP’s class sizes will be between 22 to 25 students and can never exceed a student/teacher ratio of 27:1, according to the school’s charter. LVCP will open with a freshman class of 110 students; in the second year, the school will expand to 270 students per grade level. At capacity, the school will serve 1,080 students in grades nine through twelve.
One misconception about the school, according to Batchelor, is that there will be no athletic programs. “We plan to participate in every sport for which we have enough student interest to form a team,” he said.
The Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District provided LVCP the Portola Elementary School site as its facility according to Proposition 39 guidelines, which stipulates that local school districts provide charter schools that reside within their boundaries with substantially equivalent facilities. Portola became available earlier this year when the Livermore Board of Education voted to close that elementary school, move those students to Junction Avenue Middle School, and convert that school to a K-8 facility.
“It is amazing to have a Prop 39 facility like this,” said Bachelor. “It’s probably the best facility of any charter school in the state.”
Bachelor said TVLC plans to purchase property in the near future, with the goal that the incoming freshman will graduate from that site. LVCS will eventually move to the new site.
For more information on LVCP, including enrollment, visit www.lvcphs.org.