Once more, Santa Rosa Charter School searching for a permanent home

Santa Rosa Charter School, the city’s first charter school, is again looking for a permanent home.

Housed for now at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, in two high-raftered halls that amplify the daily din, the school is adjusting to its third location in a decade while trying to find somewhere to settle.

School leaders currently are looking at four Santa Rosa properties that could become what they call “a forever home.”

“They would be appropriate for us to either build on or land in,” said Pam Lee, a founder of the school. She declined to identify the sites because negotiations are ongoing.

The fairgrounds site acts as the headquarters for Santa Rosa Education Cooperative, which includes a 40-student preschool, a childcare center and the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade charter school. The school has a minimal administrative tie to the Santa Rosa City Schools district, and is funded by the state on a per-pupil basis. Its lease at the fairgrounds expires at the end of the academic year.

“I call this transitional housing,” said Kathy Hayes, a parent of two eighth-graders and the school’s assistant director of special projects. “I don’t think the staff, the parents, the students want to be in transitional housing forever.”

Around her on Thursday was evidence of the school site’s somewhat makeshift status. Low shelves and tables separated instructional areas. A 5-foot-high panel screen carved out a tiny teacher’s lounge in the corner. Fourth- and fifth-graders had a read-aloud period sitting on the floor in a short passageway leading to the adjoining building, so as not to disturb a group of sleeping 2- and 3-year-olds.

Since the charter school was founded in 1995, the cooperative has moved four times. The moves have taken a toll.

Since June, when it finished its year at Hilliard Comstock Middle School, where it had been located since 2007, enrollment has slipped from 187 to 117, said LaDonna Moore, the school’s administrator.

This academic year alone, the school has had to move five times out of one or another of the two halls it occupies to accommodate needs for the county fair. About 15 families have withdrawn students this school year, she said, daunted by the imperfect facilities.

“It can be discouraging for sure,” said longtime preschool director and teacher Catherine McCracken- Jones. “We work really hard to have a tight-knit group and we’ve all had to rise to the occasion to stick together and not be scared.”

Still, Moore said, the school has weathered adversity before. And it has a community of parents devoted to its structure, and its program of inquiry-based learning and positive discipline, a child-rearing approach that steers away from punishments and emphasizes experiential learning, democratic principles and mutual respect. She is confident it will land upright.

“We are survivors,” Moore said.

The school had been working with county fair officials on the possibility of a permanent site elsewhere on the property. But fair officials two weeks ago said they could not reach a decision in time for the school’s needs because they are evaluating their own use of the facilities, Moore said.

Interim Fair Manager Katie Fonsen Young did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

The charter school is unlike others, such as the Cesar Chavez Language Academy that displaced it from the Comstock campus, or Santa Rosa Accelerated Charter School, in that it is an independent charter, rather than a dependent one. While the Santa Rosa school district authorizes it and oversees its finances, the school has its own board and operates independently. That has advantages in terms of the way the school can construct its curriculum, but comes with disadvantages, too.

For example, Moore and Lee said they were hopeful that the school would be able to share in the proceeds from two Santa Rosa City Schools district bonds that voters approved last year.

“We have a strong, pretty vocal parent community and we put a lot of energy behind supporting the bonds,” Moore said.

But district officials said Thursday that Santa Rosa Charter School and others of its type won’t be receiving bond funds, news that elicited dismay at the fairgrounds.

“That’s disappointing for certain because it was my understanding that the (independent) charters were included - but if they’re not, we’ll have to find another solution,” Moore said.

Staff Writer Jeremy Hay blogs about education at extracredit.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach him at 521-5212 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jeremyhay.