Charter School Now Looking at Private Property

A proposed new charter school that Capistrano Unified School District had scheduled to share space at two existing schools is now searching to lease private space, the executive director of Oxford Preparatory Academy announced at the CUSD’s board meeting Tuesday.

At last month’s board meeting, hundreds of parents and teachers from Aliso Viejo Middle School and Journey School, an existing charter that leases part of the district’s closed Foxborough Elementary campus, having to share space with Oxford. 

“It is not our intention to disrupt current programs in the district,” said Sue Roche, Oxford’s executive director. “We are committed to finding a facility that works for everyone.”

The school board has not yet approved the Oxford Preparatory Academy, which anticipates it will draw 501 students from other Capo Unified schools when it opens in September.  State law requires the district to offer space to lease to charter schools that serve district students.

Roche said the district has extended Oxford’s deadline to find suitable space for its program, which anticipates drawing 501 current CUSD students, until April.

“We will leave no stone unturned in our attempt to find an equitable solution,” Roche said to the board.

The original plan called for Oxford’s elementary students to share the Foxborough campus with Journey School. To make room, the district was going to require Journey to give up about half of the 17,940 square feet it currently uses for its program.

In addition, Oxford’s middle schoolers would occupy five classrooms and share common facilities at Aliso Viejo Middle School. But parents and teachers said they doubted there was enough room.

School officials estimated it would cost the district $700,000 to house the Oxford Preparatory Academy’s programs, which use Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences approach to education, which emphasizes using the arts and imagination.

Speaking to the board during its open, public-comments portion of the agenda, Donna Smiggs, a fifth-grade teacher at Castille Elementary in Mission Viejo, said she doubted Oxford’s offerings were that different from what the district is already offering.  She said she was also troubled at the board’s cost and appearance of elitism.

Smiggs said she visited the neighborhood that surrounds the Chino campus. She discovered that  many neighbors mistakenly thought the school was privada, no publica (private, not public). “Many of these families thought the school was for the wealthy.”

Lanän Clark, a parent from Mission Viejo who plans to send her children to Oxford, said the school already has “applications of interest” from 2,000 families.

“Our desire is for a public school open to all students regardless of their ethnicity or income,” Clark said.