Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: What was the first charter school?
Charter schools are independent public schools which are exempt from many of the state and local regulations which govern most public schools. These exemptions grant charter schools some autonomy and flexibility with decision-making, such as teacher union contracts, hiring, and curriculum. In return, charter schools are subject to stricter accountability on spending and academic performance. The majority of states (and the District of Columbia) have charter school laws, though they vary in how charter schools are approved. Minnesota was the first state to have a charter school law and the first charter school in the United States, City Academy High School, opened in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1992. The prevalence of charter schools has increased with the support of the Obama Administration. Under the Administration, the Department of Education has provided funding incentives to states and school districts that increase the number of charter schools.
The first American schools in the thirteen original colonies opened in the 17th century. Boston Latin School was founded in 1635 and is both the first public school and oldest existing school in the United States. The first free taxpayer-supported public school in North America, the Mather School, was opened in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1639. Cremin (1970) stresses that colonists tried at first to educate by the traditional English methods of family, church, community, and apprenticeship, with schools later becoming the key agent in "socialization." At first, the rudiments of literacy and arithmetic were taught inside the family, assuming the parents had those skills. Literacy rates were much higher in New England because much of the population had been deeply involved in the Protestant Reformation and learned to read in order to read the Scriptures. Literacy was much lower in the South, where the Anglican Church was the established church. Single working-class people formed a large part of the population in the early years, arriving as indentured servants. The planter class did not support public education but arranged for private tutors for their children, and sent some to England at appropriate ages for further education.
The earliest schools in Toronto were in private homes, often run by members of the clergy. Public funding for schools began with the establishment of the Home District Grammar School. Notably, it was not governed by an elected school board. Voting for the city's first elected school board took place in 1816 following the passage of the Common School Act. The board, as per the regulations of the act, had three members: Eli Playter, Dr. Thomas D. Morrison, and Jesse Ketchum. The board governed the Common School at York which was located on the same grounds as the Grammar School. However, this lasted only four years before the school and its associated school board were shut down in favour of the creation of the Central School which was placed under the control of an unelected board and marked an attempt to bring public schools under Anglican religious control. Control of this board in Toronto was then subsumed under a provincial Board of Education in 1824, itself merged into the Council of King's College, a body charged with obtaining a university for the province.
Wellington was conceived in 1979 by a group of entrepreneurs with the goal of creating the first coeducational, independent school in Columbus. These entrepreneurs were Ken Ackerman, Harry K. Gard, Bob Holland, Len Immke, George Minot, Dave Swaddling, Dave Thomas, Jack Ruscilli, and Jeff Wilkins.
They spent three years refining plans, raising money, finding a property, and recruiting teachers and students. In 1982, The Wellington School opened with 137 students and 19 employees as the first co-ed independent school in Columbus. The first graduating class was in 1989 with 32 students. In 2010, the new 76,000 square foot building opened. In 2012, the Little Jags preschool program for 3-year-olds began.
The Fletcher Johnson Educational Center, a charter school with 1,500 students in Washington, D.C., introduced the TM program for schools in 1994. Its principal, George H. Rutherford, is a member of the DLF's Board of Advisors. The Ideal Academy Public Charter School began its program with the approval of the Washington, D.C. Board of Education in 1997. The 2005–2006 pilot project at Ideal Academy was conducted along with research to document the effects of the program. The Nataki Talibah Schoolhouse] in Detroit began using the program for students in the fifth through eighth grade in 1996 and was featured on the Today Show in 2003. The school has since been classified by the Skillman Foundation as a "High-Performing Middle School". Over the years, the program at Nitaki Talibah has been funded by various foundations including General Motors, Daimler Chrysler, the Liebler Foundation and the DLF. The program at the school has been researched by Rita Benn of the University of Michigan's Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research Center.
Schooling for children living in poverty was a concern of many of the Chief Inspectors of the TPSB, including Inspector Hughes. He and others campaigned for the passage of legislation to allow for the creation of industrial schools, similar to those created in England. In the meantime, a class for expelled students was created in a church mission run by theAnglican Grace Church. The space was provided for free by the church and the class was staffed by the TPSB, who provided Esther Frances How who would go on to be widely remembered for her work at the school. Although the Ontario Industrial Schools Act was passed in 1874, industrial schools were not built in Toronto until 1887 when the province provided funding to support the construction of such schools. The first two industrial schools in Toronto were the Victoria Industrial School for Boys and the Alexandra School for Girls. The schools were both part of the Industrial Schools Association of Toronto.
In 1867, the public school moved to what was then the County Building on Third Avenue between James and Jefferson, the site of today's Prefontaine Fountain. A year later, the school moved to Yesler's Pavilion (later Yesler's Hall) at present-day First and Cherry. A year later the school moved again to a temporary building (called Bacon's Hall after its first teacher, Carrie Bacon) located at the site of the present King County Court House. In 1870 the first "permanent" school building, the Central School, opened on Third Avenue between Madison and Spring Streets. It originally had two classrooms; a third was built in its attic in 1881.
Meanwhile, in 1873 the two-room North School opened at Third and Pine, and in 1875 the school district had purchased at 6th and Madison, where the Sixth Street School, also known as Eastern School, opened promptly in a temporary building and grew into successively larger and better-built buildings in 1877 and 1883. The latter, an "elegant wooden building" with an imposing "French mansard roof, clock tower, and tall central belfry" superseded the old Central School as well as the North School. From 1884, it was known as the Central School. Classes extended through 12th grade, and the first class graduated from 12th grade in 1886. However the school burned in 1888.
The Freedmen's Bureau opened schools for children in the area after the establishment of Freedmen's Town. The Texas Legislature authorized the creation of public schools for Freedmen's Town by 1870. By 1872 most of the students and teachers who were at the bureau schools, which were closing, left them to attend the state-managed Gregory Institute, named after Edgar M. Gregory, an officer in the Union army in the U.S. Civil War and the assistant commissioner of the Texas area's Freedmen's Bureau. The school, which first opened in 1872, was the first school for freed slaves in Houston. Mike Snyder of the "Houston Chronicle" said that it was "perhaps" the first school for freed slaves in the State of Texas. By 1876 the school became a part of the Houston public school system. The Edgar M. Gregory School, a elementary school, opened in 1926. It was vacant from 1980 until its re-purposing as a library. When it was vacant, it had broken windows, a leaky roof that allowed rain to pour into the facility, and pigeons living in the facility. In 2009 the facility was re-purposed as a research library.
From 1864 to 1916, three high schools opened under the school district. The first was Indianapolis high School (later renamed Shortridge High School in 1885) in 1864, as the city's first public high school. The school opened in the Marion County Seminary Building, although it was later moved to its present location. The second school was Manual Training High School, later to be known as Emmerich Manual High School, and it was opened in 1895. In 1916, Arsenal Technical Schools, which had opened four years earlier on the grounds of a former U.S. Civil War Arsenal, was incorporated into Indianapolis Public Schools and became Arsenal Technical High School.
However, over the last quarter of the 20th century the school itself began to decline. The building began showing signs of aging, at the same time as financial shortfalls led to maintenance being deferred. Within it, educational achievement began to decline as disciplinary problems rose. By the end of the century it was on the state's Persistently Dangerous Schools list. Pressure from parents in Arbor Hill led to the establishment of private charter schools in the area, and enrollment at Philip Livingston began to fall as that option became available to parents.
American Indian Model Schools (AIM Schools) is a charter school system based in Oakland, California. Started with the American Indian Public Charter School, a middle school in the late 1990s to serve Native American students, in 2007 it expanded to include another middle school and a high school. The main campus is in the Laurel area and includes American Indian Public Charter School (AIPCS), a middle school of grades 5-8, and American Indian Public High School (AIPHS), a high school (9-12). AIPHS students can also take select classes at Merritt College. American Indian Public Charter School II (AIPCS II) has grades K-8 at a second campus located in Oakland's Chinatown. By 2012 the student population of the AIM schools had become 90% Asian American.
The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) granted the charter to the school system and oversees it. The American Indian Model School system has its own school board and internal policies.
The first school in the village was an iron building, originally constructed in 1906 in Forest Town near Mansfield Woodhouse and moved in 1924. It housed 120 pupils, and a further 100 were housed in a corrugated iron extension added in 1925. Soon, 70 children were taken to Carlton-in-Lindrick each day, and 90 infants were taught in the room above the Co-op. The first five classrooms in a permanent school were available from 1 September 1926, and the "Tin School" was abandoned in January 1927 when the new school was completed. An infant school was built on the same site, and was completed by September 1928. The infant school catered for 388 children, the junior school 360, and the senior school 384, although some pupils went to one of the Retford schools if they passed their 11+ examination. The older school, or "Tin School", as it was and is popularly referred to in the village and surrounding areas, was partially demolished between 2003 and 2004, and fully gone by 2007.
The Katz School tracings its beginnings to the introduction of business education to the university in 1907 as the Evening School of Economics, Accounts, and Finance. Classes met in the Fulton Building on Sixth Street in Pittsburgh. Three years later in 1910, the School of Economics (named for the London School of Economics) was formally set up on Pitt's Oakland campus. In 1916, the school became one of the 17 founding members of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).
There is a strong alternative school movement. The Toronto District School Board has many alternative schools. The oldest is ALPHA Alternative School, which opened in 1972. There are also private alternative organizations.
One of the oldest churches in Chicago, First Unitarian Chicago was founded July 29, 1836 and is currently located at 5650 S. Woodlawn Avenue. Its founding was in part the result of a small group of Chicago Unitarians with the minister Charles Follen. Its first building was constructed in 1841 on what is now the site of the Picasso statue in Daley Plaza. The building, twice enlarged before it burned down, held the first church bell in Chicago placed there in January 1845.
In the 15th century were founded two of the first banks in the world: the Bank of Saint George, founded in 1407, which was the oldest chartered bank in the world at its closure in 1805 and the Banca Carige, founded in 1483 as a mount of piety.
As of 2017, the system includes three schools, American Indian Public Charter School (AICPS), middle school with grades 5-8; American Indian Public Charter School II (AIPCS II), K-8; and American Indian Public High School (AIPHS), a high school (9-12).
The AIM system was established in 2007, expanding to an additional two charter schools: another middle school and a high school. The schools were recognized for academic performance, but controversy was generated by Chavis's discipline system and treatment of both students and faculty. He resigned in 2007 but retained influence at the schools.
Anne Arundel County Free School is a historic school building at Davidsonville, Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The first Free School of Anne Arundel County was established by an Act of the General Assembly of colonial Maryland in 1723. It was built somewhere between its contractual date of 1724 and 1746 when it was under full operation with John Wilmot as schoolmaster. The existing abandoned building is 49' x 18', and consists of six rooms on two floors. It was built "as near the center of the county as may be, and as may be the most convenient for the boarding of children." The county then included what is now Howard County. It remained in operation until 1912 when the movement toward consolidation forced the closure of many early school buildings. It is the only surviving schoolhouse erected in Maryland in response to the Maryland Free School Act of 1723.
The Caldecott Comminuty began its life in 1911 when Leila Rendel and her friend Phyllis Potter set up their own nursery school based on the progressive ideas of Margaret McMillan and Leila's aunt Edith Rendel who was an active critic of the English Poor Laws, a pioneer girls' club leader and a militant suffragist. Their school was located at Cartwright Gardens in St Pancras and mainly catered to the children of women working in a nearby matchbox factory. An admirer of Randolph Caldecott's children's book illustrations, Rendel named the nursery school in his honour and adorned its walls with a frieze of his pictures. Rendel's grandfather, Alexander Meadows Rendel, provided them with an endowment and further donations were received from her large circle of family and friends. By 1914 the school was well-established with a written constitution and Percy Nunn as its chairman. Princess Louise served as its president.
In 1991, Minnesota opened the first charter school. California followed suit in 1992. As of January 2007, over 3,600 charter schools, with more than 1 million students, were operating. As of the 2013-2014 school year, 42 states and the District of Columbia have successfully passed charter school legislation; the eight remaining states that have not yet passed charter school legislation are Montana, Kentucky, Alabama, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Virginia. Over half a million students are enrolled in charter schools in California, giving the state the highest rate of charter school enrollment in the nation; however, given the size of the California population, this amount corresponds to only eight percent of all students enrolled in California public schools. In comparison, the District of Columbia has 42 percent of its public school students enrolled in charter schools, with Arizona following behind at 18 percent; these are the two highest rates of charter school enrollment among public school students in the nation.
Originally the school operated under a four-year charter from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). It began with 80 students; Mitchell Landsberg of the "Los Angeles Times" said that the figure is what "most charter experts would say is too few to be financially sustainable." The school began in the basement of an American Legion hall. The school was denied usage of that site, and at the last minute, it had to move into a site in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley for its second year. This led to a lot of students leaving the school, and the school's bus transportation costs became very high. The original LAUSD charter would later be renewed for one year.
In 2003 however, the school community began discussing the possibility of opening a high school and later began discussing applying to become a charter school. In early August 2005, the school applied to the Orleans Parish School Board to become a charter school. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the school’s charter application was granted and the school added grades 9 through 12. Lusher Charter High School opened its doors for the first time on January 17, 2006 with 48 students and only 9th and 10th grades and six high school only teachers (one for each subject: math, science, social studies, English, French and Spanish). The high school was housed at the Carrollton Courthouse with the middle school for its first semester. Due to space limitations at the Carrollton campus, both the middle school and high school had to find a new home. In August 2006, both schools moved to their new campus, the defunct Alcee Fortier High School, on Freret Street.
In 1747 the first Irish Charter School was opened in Ardbraccan. Irish charter schools were operated by "The Incorporated Society in Dublin for Promoting English Protestant Schools in Ireland". The Charter Schools admitted only Catholics, under the condition that they be educated as Protestants. These schools were intended, in the words of their programme, "to rescue the souls of thousands of poor children from the dangers of Popish superstition and idolatry, and their bodies from the miseries of idleness and beggary." The Ardbraccan school, like the others, focused on training girls for domestic service in the houses of the gentry and aristocracy, while training boys in agriculture and gardening. As with the other schools, the charter school in Ardbraccan failed and eventually closed down.