Ursuline campus to reopen as Roseland charter school

The Santa Rosa campus that was home to Ursuline High School — a 130-year-old all-girls school that closed its doors amid controversy last May — will reopen next year as a charter school headed by the fast-growing Roseland School District.

Roseland will use the main administration building on the Ursuline Road campus to house approximately 60 seventh graders beginning in the fall of 2012. The operation will expand to eighth graders in 2013-14 and will eventually serve seventh through 12 graders, according to Roseland and Sisters of Ursuline officials who unveiled the plan Monday.

Santa Rosa City Schools officials said it is too early to determine the impact on their middle school population.

The Roseland district's accelerated middle school and high school have waiting lists every year and the district is in the middle of an all-grades expansion to accommodate a steadily increasing student population.

"When we started the year, we had about 100 students that we were not able to serve," Roseland Superintendent Gail Ahlas said of the middle and high schools. "That's hard on our staff, hard on our families."

The Roseland district has more than doubled its attendance numbers in the past two decades, growing by more than 1,200 students to its current enrollment of approximately 2,300.

That is in stark contrast to the community served by Ursuline High School, which fell steadily before the sisters announced the closure to its 281 students in its final year — down from 400 in 2000.

When the three nuns who make up the Sisters of Ursuline Corp. announced the closure of the school last November, they immediately said they were committed to opening a charter school based on "social justice and serving a much more diverse population of Sonoma County."

They approached officials in Roseland and operators of other charter schools before touring Roseland's facilities in recent months, according to Sister Christine van Swearingen.

"We thought, &‘Why are we going to start another school when this school already had its methodology down pat, and secondly, they need more space. So why not just have them come over and occupy this space?" van Swearingen said.

The sisters of the Ursuline Corp., who operate under the Ursuline Sisters of the Roman Union, United States, own 57 acres of wooded land that houses both the school buildings and meeting space and retreat facilities.

Neither van Swearingen or Ahlas would disclose any details about the finances of the impending lease or rental deal, but Ahlas described them as comparable to what the Roseland district charges outside agencies to use buildings on the district's existing campuses.

"I would say it's average," she said of the rates being charged by the Sisters of Ursuline.

Cardinal Newman High School, a formerly all-boys Catholic school immediately west of the Ursuline property, began enrolling girls for the first time this year after Ursuline said it was shutting its doors.

To accommodate the additional students, school officials secured a multi-year rental agreement with the Ursuline sisters for the use of eight "Quad" classrooms, the gym, the art classroom, the covered eating area and the softball field.

Van Swearingen said she envisions the new school's eventual enrollment to meet Ursuline's one-time peak of 400 students. Cardinal Newman school officials said they are currently only using about a third of the Ursuline campus and they did not expect any disruption.

Cardinal Newman President Mike Truesdell said the addition of middle schoolers will likely not require any significant adjustment. St. Rose Catholic School, a K-8 school that matriculates 82 percent of its kids into Cardinal Newman, is adjacent to the high school.

"We are used to students of all ages, K-through-12 right here on our campus," said Truesdell.

Cardinal Newman Principal Graham Rutherford said that rumors of a deal with the Roseland school district were confirmed Monday during a 4 p.m. meeting with van Swearingen and Roseland school officials.

"My sense is that working with an established charter is probably a more effective plan for the Ursuline Sisters to use their campus in a way they'd like to use it," said Rutherford. "They got the rooms there. I think they think it's a good partnership."

The new Roseland school, which will be discussed by school board members on Wednesday, is expected to offer an accelerated curriculum much like that offered at Roseland Accelerated Middle School and Roseland University Prep, where students are required to complete college preparatory courses in order to graduate.

Amy Jones-Kerr, RUP's founding principal and now the operation's executive director, will become principal at the new school.