SOUTHEAST MULLS GARDEN SCHOOL CHARTER PROPOSAL

Kay Mantia thinks a charter school is just what her St. Louis city neighborhood needs.

She is president of the board of directors of the Garden School, a proposed charter elementary school that would be situated near the Missouri Botanical Garden.

The Missouri Botanical Garden would help develop the math and science curriculum, as well as provide horticulture knowledge.

The proposal also envisions using the neighborhood's Tower Grove Park for recreational and special activities and making use of the St. Louis Science Center.

Advised by state Sen. Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau, Mantia and her group have asked Southeast Missouri State University's Board of Regents to charter the school.

Mantia said her group was interested in seeking a charter from Southeast because public colleges in the St. Louis area have been reluctant to approve charter schools.

"We were interested in going outside of the city," she said.

Although her children are grown, Mantia said the proposed charter school could help keep families from moving out of the Garden District neighborhoods.

"Currently, a large percentage of families in these neighborhoods send their children to parochial or private schools. As costs become too expensive, those families tend to move out of the city to a neighboring school district," the Garden School application points out.

Mantia said the Garden School would provide the area with a good neighborhood school.

Mantia said the Garden School hopes to open in fall 2001 with 150 students in five grades: kindergarten, first, second, third and sixth grades.

The school would then expand again in 2002 and 2003. By the third year, the school would have students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Total enrollment would be limited to about 300 to keep class sizes down.

Mantia said the school plans to enroll children who live in the neighborhoods that surround the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Mantia's group currently is looking for a building to use as a school. "We have already made some site visits to places," she said. "We know that any building we get in this area we are going to have to renovate."

Charter schools are public schools. They operate largely with state funding.

The Garden School proposes spending $1.19 million in its first year of operation. Spending is expected to climb to more than $2 million by the third year.

This is the second charter proposal to come before the regents this year. In April, the regents granted a charter for the Lift for Life Academy, a St. Louis middle school.

That school, housed in the same building as the organization's weightlifting gym, is scheduled to open Thursday with 60 sixth-grade students. Southeast officials have been invited to the opening.

It will be the first of four charter schools slated to open in St. Louis this fall, said Carla Scissors-Cohen, who serves on the Lift for Life board.

Lift for Life Academy accepts students from throughout the St. Louis School District. Scissors-Cohen said there has been plenty of interest in the new school.

"We've got kids on a waiting list," she said.

As occurred with the Lift for Life application, Southeast's charter committee plans to review the Garden School application.

The application officially was filed with the university on Aug. 1. Under state law, Southeast has 60 days to act on the charter request, meaning the regents must make a decision by October.

The seven-member review committee, headed by former Sikeston superintendent Robert Buchanan, is slated to discuss the application at a meeting Wednesday.

By Sept. 6, the committee hopes to submit any written recommendations to the Garden School board for review. The review committee wants the Garden School board of directors to provide a revised application by Sept. 12.

By Sept. 20, the review committee hopes to make a final recommendation to university officials as to whether to grant a charter.

Officials acknowledge it is a tight timeline, particularly since the review committee didn't receive the application until Aug. 14.

But Southeast Provost Jane Stephens said the review will be helped by the fact that most of the members of the evaluation committee were involved in the earlier review of the Lift for Life Academy application.

The committee includes education faculty at Southeast, including two former superintendents. The superintendents of the Poplar Bluff and Fredericktown school districts also serve on the committee.

Stephens said the university takes the review process seriously. "What we want to do is provide a good learning environment for children," she said.

Stephens said she doesn't expect Southeast to be swamped with requests to charter schools. "We have no reason to believe there will be another application beyond this one," she said.

The university won't be involved in the day-to-day operation of any charter school or in funding such schools. But Southeast does have oversight responsibilities for any school it charters.

Dr. Shirley Stennis-Williams, dean of Southeast's College of Education, said the review committee will handle oversight duties. The exact process has yet to be spelled out, but the charter school would make an annual report to the state and the university.