AUGUSTA, Maine — Four groups have submitted applications to start Maine’s next charter schools and now will work with the state to determine whether they’ll be allowed to welcome students next year.
Tuesday was the application deadline for charter schools that want to open at the start of the 2016 school year. By the close of business at 5 p.m., the last two groups dropped off their materials in Augusta. The last application was delivered at 4:58 p.m. at the office of the Maine Charter School Commission, according to a commission staff member.
The commission will ensure those applications are complete before reviewing them and discussing in-depth plans with applicants to determine which, if any, schools will be allowed to open.
There are only three slots left for new charter schools. The state’s charter school law, which passed in 2012, limits the number of schools to 10 in the first 10 years.
Acadia Academy, Snow Pond Arts Academy, Inspire ME Academy, and Peridot Montessori Charter School dropped off applications on Tuesday. Each includes 600-800 pages of information, according to the commission.
Snow Pond Arts Academy would be based in Sidney at the site of the New England Music Camp and serve high school-age students, primarily from Central Maine. It would focus heavily on the arts but also provide core academics. The 78-year-old music camp, through co-director John Wiggin, is leading the push to start the school.
Acadia Academy would set up a school in the Lewiston-Auburn area to serve pre-kindergarten through sixth graders. The applicants say their school will focus on students who benefit from hands-on approaches to learning. The charter school commission rejected a previous application from the group in 2014.
Inspire ME Academy, which would serve students in grades 4-8, would be located in York County. The push for that school is being led by Renee Morin, a longtime Maine charter school advocate who also applied in 2014. That application was denied because the commission felt the proposed school’s financial plan needed more vetting.
Peridot Montessori would be located in Hancock County and take pre-K to eighth-grade students. The group behind the school is Stanwood Educational Foundation. Montessori education is based on the idea that students learn best in an enriched, supportive environment through exploration and creativity expressed in hands-on activities.
Sheepscot Bay Charter School filed a letter of intent earlier this summer notifying the state that it hoped to file a full application by the deadline. The group withdrew before Tuesday’s deadline, according to the commission. Sheepscot would have been a high school based in Wiscasset at the former primary school.
Each of Maine’s seven public charter schools is running at or near full enrollment allowed by the state, according to the Department of Education. That puts the total enrollment at Maine charter schools at more than 1,500. There are about 184,000 K-12 students in the state.
None of the proposed charters this year are virtual schools, which educate students online. If any are approved they would be the first bricks-and-mortar charters OK’d in Maine since 2012.
In the most recent Legislative session, lawmakers changed the way public charter schools are funded. In the past, sending local school districts had to write charter schools a check for each student in that district who decided to attend a charter. School districts, the state, and charter schools agreed that this way of operating was inefficient and overcomplicated.
Now, the state will treat charters more like individual school districts, funding the charter schools directly for the costs of educating their students.
This week, the state’s second virtual charter school — and the only charter approved for 2015 — Maine Virtual Academy, began educating its first crop of students. The other virtual charter is South Portland-based Maine Connections Academy, which opened in 2014 and graduated its first seniors at the close of the last school year.
The physical charter schools are Baxter Academy for Technology and Science in Portland, Fiddlehead School of Arts and Science in Gray and Harpswell Coastal Academy, each of which opened in the fall of 2013.
The state’s first charters, Cornville Regional Charter School and Maine Academy of Natural Sciences in Hinckley, welcomed their first students in the fall of 2012.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.