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Cottage Grove charter school embraces home-schoolers.


Byline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard

COTTAGE GROVE Cottage Grove, village (1990 pop. 22,935), Washington co., SE Minn., near the St. Croix River; inc. 1965. There is farming (cattle, sheep, corn, and soybeans) and manufacturing (chemicals and machinery).  - Home-schoolers interested in a classical curriculum and a place to call "school" have a new option this September.

The Academy for Character Education, or ACE, will open its doors Sept. 5, holding group classes one day a week at rented space in a downtown church, providing in-home tutors and supplying students with a classical curriculum they can follow at home.

"With just a one-day-a-week commitment, (parents) don't feel like it takes away from their parental rights," ACE Administrator Starr Sahnow said.

Students may also draw from accounts should they wish to take community lessons such as piano or dance as electives.

According to according to
prep.
1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.

2. In keeping with: according to instructions.

3.
 the ACE Web site, a classical education draws on the educational heritage in Western civilization Noun 1. Western civilization - the modern culture of western Europe and North America; "when Ghandi was asked what he thought of Western civilization he said he thought it would be a good idea"
Western culture
.

A child's early years - called the `grammar' stage - focus on absorbing facts and laying the foundations for advanced study.

In the middle grades, the "logic" stage, children learn to think through arguments, and in the final years they complete the `rhetoric'

stage, where they learn to express themselves. Latin will be a requirement at ACE, and this year's schoolwide focus of study will be the ancient world.

Character education also will be a key component, with students held to high expectations for attendance, achievement, behavior and citizenship.

The South Lane School Board approved the ACE charter in a 5-2 vote in February 2006. ACE will be South Lane's third charter school, although the school board last week reaffirmed a July decision to terminate the charter for one of those.

Blue Mountain School, which offers a democratic, unstructured environment for its 55 students, intends to appeal to the state Board of Education and will stay open pending the outcome.

South Lane Superintendent Krista Parent said she and her board have long supported innovative alternatives for local students, and saw ACE as an avenue for partnering with the district's home-schooling families.

"They've been really good to work with," she said of ACE organizers.

ACE is an offshoot of the Home Scholars Academy The Scholars Academy is a four-year public high school institution located in Conway, South Carolina at Coastal Carolina University. The school was established as part of Horry County Schools for gifted education in 2003.  in Oakridge, a home-schooling resource center that opened as a private alternative program in 2000.

In 2005, the state Department of Education reinterpreted the rules governing programs such as Home Scholars and Eugene's HomeSource, which also serves home-schoolers.

With reduced funding and more stringent requirements for student referrals, Home Scholars successfully sought a federal charter school planning grant and considered applying for sponsorship with one of the three districts with which it had contracts for student referrals at the time: Oakridge, South Lane and Lowell.

"The only one who was positive and really wanted to find a way to support their home-school home·school or home-school  
v. home·schooled, home·school·ing, home·schools

v.tr.
To instruct (a pupil, for example) in an educational program outside of established schools, especially in the home.
 community was South Lane," said Ranell Curl, ACE board chairwoman.

Under charter school law, ACE must have at least 25 full-time students Full-Time Student

A status that is important for determining dependency exemptions. An individual enrolled in a post-secondary institution may be eligible for certain tax breaks.

Notes:
The full-time status is based on what the individual's school considers full time.
.

Sahnow said she's already registered about 45 full-time students in kindergarten through grade 12 and a similar number of part-timers. The school can take 50 of each.

About 70 percent live in the South Lane district, she estimated, with others coming from Creswell, Oakridge, Lowell and other nearby communities.

On Tuesday morning, about two dozen students reported to the center, at First Christian Church First Christian Church can refer to:
  • First Christian Church, Winfield, Kansas Website
  • First Christian Church, Athens, Alabama
  • First Christian Church, Little Rock, Arkansas
  • First Christian Church, Lonoke, Arkansas
 on Sixth Street, for an hourlong hour·long or hour-long  
adj.
Lasting an hour: an hourlong television episode.

Adj. 1.
 class on Greek mythology Greek mythology

Oral and literary traditions of the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes and the nature and history of the cosmos. The Greek myths and legends are known today primarily from Greek literature, including such classic works as Homer's Iliad and
.

Sahnow has asked would-be instructors to come in over the summer for a "trial run" at teaching, with parents there to observe.

This time, it was 18-year-old Beth Tendick - a Home Scholars alum alum (ăl`əm), any one of a series of isomorphous double salts that are hydrated sulfates of a univalent cation (e.g., potassium, sodium, ammonium, cesium, or thallium) and a trivalent cation (e.g.  who will be ACE's office manager and who hopes to substitute teach - under the microscope.

Tendick read from a text about the Trojan War Trojan War, in Greek mythology, war between the Greeks and the people of Troy. The strife began after the Trojan prince Paris abducted Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta. When Menelaus demanded her return, the Trojans refused. , and had students fashion their own Trojan horses It may never be fully completed or, depending on its its nature, it may be that it can never be completed. However, new and revised entries in the list are always welcome.
  • AIDS
  • Beast Trojan
  • Bifrost
  • Generic8.
 out of construction paper, straws and wagon-wheel-shaped pasta.

Dixie Hansen of Cottage Grove was one of several parents who observed from the sidelines Sidelines

Hypothetical position referring to noninvolvement in a stock; merely watching.
. Her two daughters, ages 9 and 13, are enrolled full time for fall.

"We were originally thinking about part time but the more the girls heard about it, they got kind of excited and wanted to do it," said Hansen, who said she was home-schooled herself.

She was a bit reluctant to abandon the girls' official home-schooled status; as full-time charter school students, they are no longer considered registered home-schoolers under state law.

"I was always in control," she said. "We pick and choose what we do."

But Hansen was reassured when she learned that ACE will grant parents leeway lee·way  
n.
1. The drift of a ship or an aircraft to leeward of the course being steered.

2. A margin of freedom or variation, as of activity, time, or expenditure; latitude. See Synonyms at room.
 to use alternative curriculum on a limited basis, so long as it aligns with state standards.

Katie Hansen, 13, said she's excited about taking classes with some of her friends.

"I think it will be different, but I think it will be really fun," she said.

Only one other charter school, Columbia Family Charter School in Scappoose, follows a similar model, with students cobbling together the required "seat-time" through a combination of on-site classes and in-home instruction.

ACE will be one of 80 charter schools up and running in Oregon come this fall, eight of them in Lane County. Charter schools are independent, publicly funded schools of choice that are subject to most, though not all, of the policies governing regular public schools. For instance, only half of their teachers must be certified.

FOR MORE INFORMATION Go online to www.aceclassicaled.org
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Title Annotation:Schools; The Academy for Character Education, with a classical focus, meets one day a week
Publication:The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR)
Date:Aug 23, 2007
Words:863
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