School Board Approves New City Charter High School

By Carla M. Collado
Staff Writer

School board approval Tuesday has paved the way for the opening of a new charter high school in downtown Long Beach this fall.

The Long Beach Unified School District Board of Education unanimously approved a three-year charter for the Colegio New City Charter High School, part of The New City School system that already runs two K-8 campuses (at 1230 Pine Ave. and 1637 Long Beach Blvd.). NCS schools are known for promoting an individualized approach to education, emphasizing bilingualism and multiculturalism, creative expression, reasoning, health and community engagement.

They form a close-knit community, with just 360 students total at both K-8 campuses this year.

“We have always dreamed of having a high school,” said Stephanie Lee, NCS co-founder and director.

NCS opened its Pine Avenue campus in 2000 and its Long Beach Boulevard campus in 2007. The Colegio New City Charter High School will be located next door to the latter at 1633 Long Beach Blvd.

Lee said the new high school is scheduled to open in August 2008 with 75 freshmen. The school gradually will expand over the years to a maximum capacity of about 400 students in grades 9-12, she added. Demolition of four storefronts and a warehouse started last week to make way for the new school.

“It’s going to be a very fast building process,” she said.

The high school curriculum will include college prep “A-G” courses, foreign language options of Spanish and Mandarin Chinese — students at the K-8 campuses take a dual-language English/Spanish immersion program — personal fitness for all students, block courses in which teachers “team teach” and weekly student mentorships. Freshmen will mentor K-8 students, sophomores and juniors will do mentorships in the community (job shadowing or apprenticeships in the education, medicine and technology fields, for instance) and seniors will do mentorships with the City Council and area representatives to state and national government officials, Lee said.

“We want them to be active participants in their democracy,” Lee said. “Universities want students with high skills and work (places) want students with high skills…. We really see our high school as a natural outgrowth of K-8.”

The new high school will have three or four full-time teachers, some part-time teachers and others will be shared with the next-door K-8 school.

It will cost about $2 million just to open the Colegio New City Charter High School (including construction and educational materials and equipment), Lee said.

Funding comes from two parts — through ongoing fundraising and loans already received from the Charter School Growth Fund and the Raza Development Fund, among others, and once the school is up and running, it will qualify for block grants from the state, she explained.

The charter approved by the LBUSD is good from May 7, 2008, through June 30, 2011. NCS typically gets an initial charter of three years and then renewed charters of five years from the school board, said James Suarez, LBUSD assistant director of special projects who oversees charter schools.

(Charter schools are publicly funded and independently run, but school districts approve and oversee their charters.)

“We have a really great relationship with the Long Beach Unified School District,” she said. “We have a really good track record and our students do really well, so they trust us.”

Suarez said the district supports NCS’s good track record of positive student achievement and its sound financial plan, among other things.

“We’ve got a really excellent relationship,” he said. “We’ve had many years of success (with them).”

He added that all charter schools have qualities that make them unique and expand options for students in public schools.

“It does provide an alternative for parents who have students that match the uniqueness of the schools,” Suarez said.

Lee also said the rest of the Long Beach community, from city leaders to residents, has been very supportive of NCS since it opened its first campus.

“Long Beach is a really great place to operate a school,” she said. “We’ve been really successful here.”