Building Successful Partnerships: How One Charter School is Making a Difference

Format

Poster Presentation

Location

Harborside Center East and West

Strand #1

Academic Achievement & School Leadership

Strand #2

Family & Community

Relevance

We believe our proposal fits two of the conference strands--“Head” and “Home.” We will illustrate how our successful partnerships have fostered academic success within a population of drop-out and at-risk students. We will also demonstrate how we partner with existing organizations within the community to bring our high school program in and meld it with their programs to strengthen the existing organization.

Brief Program Description

This presentation is designed for school districts, agencies, or community leaders looking for an innovative way to integrate educational practices into an existing at-risk program for high school students or those looking to create a successful at-risk high school diploma program within their community.

Summary

Provost Academy Georgia’s mission is to offer a historically underserved population of students with a flexible, individualized, virtual high school experience. Over our three years, we have seen tremendous growth in our student population, especially for our most at-risk students. In 2013, we began partnering with residential organizations to offer academics within their organization in order to afford students an opportunity to earn an accredited, high school diploma when they may not have been able to attend a traditional high school. This has blossomed into statewide partnerships with the Department of Juvenile Justice and the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program, and with Marietta City Schools in suburban Atlanta, among other groups. Our model is to work around the existing program, realistically assess students where they are, and build an educational platform that addresses those students’ unique needs—essentially building a community around the student where all parties are committed to success of the student. Our presentation will show how we incorporate Provost Academy in three different settings: Youth ChalleNGe as our residential model, Department of Juvenile Justice as our Agency model, and Marietta City Schools, as our district partner model. Each has a unique format and showcases how flexibility and individualization is key to the success of an alternative educational partnership. We will discuss challenges, as well as success stories to our journey. At the end of our presentation, we will be happy to take questions from the group

Evidence

Youth Challenge Success: 34 out of 56 high school graduates (61%), 20/22 remain enrolled in school (91%) Marietta City School Success: This is our first month of operations, but we slotted for 30 seats, and have 51 students enrolled right now! Department of Juvenile Justice Success: offering over 100 students the chance to remain in high school who would otherwise have to attempt a GED or not receive an education. Overall success: tremendous growth in 2 years, 5 partnerships with more on the horizon, over 100 graduates in 13-14SY

Biographical Sketch

Gale Stein- Director of Agency Partnerships, Provost Academy Georgia.

B.S. and a M.Ed. in Secondary Education, Social Sciences from Kennesaw State University. Ms. Stein was an educator and administrator for 12 years in public, private, and alternative education settings before coming to Provost. Ms. Stein has taught college courses within the University System of Georgia as well.

Penelope Pugh-Program Coordinator, Savannah GACG

B. S. in Mathematics from Savannah State University. Ms. Pugh is the Program Coordinator at the Graduation Achievement Center in Savannah, Georgia. She began her teaching career 16 years ago as high school teacher. Most of her years teaching were spend at Title 1 schools working with “at risk” students”.

Keyword Descriptors

partnerships, charter, educational models

Presentation Year

2015

Start Date

3-3-2015 4:00 PM

End Date

3-3-2015 5:30 PM

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Mar 3rd, 4:00 PM Mar 3rd, 5:30 PM

Building Successful Partnerships: How One Charter School is Making a Difference

Harborside Center East and West

This presentation is designed for school districts, agencies, or community leaders looking for an innovative way to integrate educational practices into an existing at-risk program for high school students or those looking to create a successful at-risk high school diploma program within their community.