“As parents and students entered Imagine Foundations 2 Public Charter School in Morningside on Monday for the start of the school year, the first things they saw were college pennants lining the hallways.
School officials said the pennants are part of the new charter school’s curriculum of instilling in students a tradition of college education. The school, which serves kindergarten through second grade, is slated to expand by a grade annually to eighth.
The new charter school is in the building that once held Morningside Elementary School, which was closed in 2009 as part of the county’s school consolidation plan.
The Imagine Morningside school is open to residents countywide, but enrollees had to be accepted to the school via lottery in the spring.
Patrick Crain, the Maryland regional director for Imagine Schools, described the school’s curriculum, which is based off of the Imagine Foundations 1 charter school in Upper Marlboro, as having a ‘rigorous college-prep focus.’ The Upper Marlboro campus opened in 2007 and each year has met Adequate Yearly Progress, the state benchmark for student achievement.
‘As they look around the halls at [pennants] for Harvard, Yale and Princeton, they’re already getting exposed to it,’ Crain said. ‘Part of it for young kids is just openly discussing what college is, and what needs to happen for them to get there.’
Principal Hope McGuire said in the long term she plans to institute policies that keep parents involved and informed. McGuire came to Imagine after working as a “teaching assistant principal” at a school in North Carolina before being laid off due to budget cuts.
She said she is sending weekly emails to parents about news and activities around the school, and that she is promoting availability to parents via an open-door policy.
‘A main goal for this school is to unify the community, since we have a mixed population of private school students, homeschoolers, some from [Joint Base Andrews] and the community,’ McGuire said.
Darrick Latimer, 38, of Camp Springs said he enrolled his sons Darriem and Dylan, who will be entering first grade and kindergarten, respectively, because of recommendations from a friend whose child is enrolled in the Upper Marlboro Imagine campus. Latimer said he was particularly excited about the school’s college-prep atmosphere.
‘It’s needed,’ Latimer said. ‘A lot of times in the African-American community, the focus is on graduating from high school, but we have to have a next step and say, ‘After high school, there’s college.’ It gives them something to strive for.’
Elaine White, 40, of Morningside said she was excited her first-grader, Joseph White, would be attending school in Morningside, as her older son, now in eighth grade, attended Morningside Elementary School before it closed.
‘I was actually on the executive board for the PTA at Morningside Elementary, so I’m definitely hoping to be a part of this school too,’ White said.”
Article was published on August 22, 2011 by Gazette.net