Decision due in Sept. on charter school bids in Somerville, Lowell

The proposal for the Somerville Progressive Charter School is among seven - two from this region - recently submitted to the state for new charter schools, which are independent public schools. There is also a proposal for the Collegiate Charter School of Lowell.

The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education plans to decide by mid-September which of the groups it will invite to file full applications by Nov. 7. The agency will decide Feb. 28 which, if any, charters to grant.

The proposed K-8 Somerville school would open in September 2012 with an enrollment of 180, growing over five to seven years to a capacity of about 425 students, according to Selena Fitanides, coordinator of the 30-member founding group.

Fitanides said the proposal would offer Somerville a “fully progressive school,’’ which she described as a school that is “very student-centric, really focused on the individual and tailoring the curricular and instructional needs to that individual.’’

The school would focus on “serving the needs of children in Somerville whose first language is not English, the children of fairly recent immigrants,’’ she said. More than 50 percent of students in Somerville’s public schools speak a first language other than English, according to the group’s literature.

Noting that children from immigrant families - particularly those from Spanish-speaking backgrounds - make up a growing segment of school populations nationwide, Fitanides said: “We need to find a better way to educate those kids. . . . Our current system is not well suited to addressing their needs. We are losing a lot of these kids because they are dropping out of school.’’

Following the group’s belief that bilingual students are more likely to succeed academically if they become fully fluent in their first languages, the school would offer those students the chance to attend daily after-school enrichment programs in Spanish, Portuguese, and French.

Native English-speaking students would also have the chance to participate in those immersion programs to bolster their foreign-language skills.

The school would also offer a strong focus on building science, technology, engineering, and math skills, and feature innovations that would include extended learning time, collaborative learning in mixed-age groups, and the participation of the full school community in decision making.

Somerville School Superintendent Tony Pierantozzi said he is still evaluating the proposal but has some “serious concerns.’’

Pierantozzi said the district will be implementing a plan this fall to make the Healey School a “fully progressive school’’ with many of the same innovations - including extended learning time - that the proposed charter school would offer. A portion of the school has offered those features, but as of September, the whole school will.

“The public school system has a progressive school, but I’m not sure we need another one in Somerville,’’ he said.

Pierantozzi said that the district is already meeting the needs of bilingual students, noting its bilingual program at the East Somerville Community School.

In response, Fitanides said the Healey school would not meet all her group’s standards for a “progressive’’ school, noting for example that it would not have a “democratic’’ governance structure. She also questioned if the district would implement all its planned progressive features.

Fitanides said the bilingual program at East Somerville differs from what her school is proposing - students there receive instruction in Spanish during the school day, whereas her group’s language programming is offered after school.

Pierantozzi said another of his concerns is that the proposed charter school would not reflect the demographics of the whole city if its students come primarily from well-educated, relatively affluent families.

Fitanides said that the charter school would attract those families because of “the excellent options’’ it would offer. But she said the group also plans an aggressive effort to attract students from recent immigrant backgrounds who would not have such advantages.

“Our challenge is to go out and recruit kids who really need this education, who can’t be home-schooled, whose families have no chance of affording excellent private schools,’’ she said.

The proposed charter school in Lowell would open in the fall of 2013 with 540 K-5 students, and grow by a grade a year until reaching full capacity as a K-12 school with 1,200 students. The school would be managed by Sabis Educational Systems, a Minnesota-based for-profit firm that operates schools in 15 countries. Among them are eight charter schools in the United States, including a K-12 school in Springfield and a K-8 school in Holyoke, according to Jose Afonso, director of business development for Sabis.

The school’s founding group applied unsuccessfully for a charter last year, but at the encouragement of state officials, is trying again with a revised plan this year, Afonso said. “We feel we have submitted a much stronger application this time.’’

Sabis uses an educational approach that emphasizes preparing students to enter college. Afonso said evidence of the success of that approach, which includes such features as a longer school day and the use of software to track each student’s performance, is that 100 percent of the seniors in the 11 graduating classes at its Springfield school have been accepted to at least one college.

Afonso said the school would “provide families in Lowell with access to a private-like education within a public school context.’’