Corvallis School Board will consider charter school recommendation

By KYLE ODEGARD

CORVALLIS GAZETTE-TIMES

A Corvallis School District review committee has recommended against creating a charter school at the recently closed Inavale School.

"It will be up to the board to make the final decision," said Jim Hogeboom, assistant superintendent.

The committee, as well as residents trying to create Muddy Creek Charter School, will make presentations at Monday's Corvallis School Board meeting.

Public testimony will be collected during a board meeting Dec. 14, and then the board may make a decision Jan. 8.

The district closed Inavale School in June because of declining enrollment and to save operating costs. If a charter school is formed there, it would operate under some oversight from a sponsoring school district.

The review committee held the last of its four meetings on Thursday.

Committee members, who voted against the proposal 7-2, had concerns with the amount of time that would be devoted to reading and math instruction, the impact on Lincoln School, to which many Inavale students transferred, and the expense of the charter school, which could be as much as $160,000 annually.

"When we have a tight budget like we have, that's a significant amount of money," Hogeboom said. "That could be two teachers, or less money to buy textbooks."

Meanwhile, the addition of Inavale students has positively changed the culture of Lincoln School, which went from having 74 percent of students on free or reduced lunches to 69 percent this year.

"The more kids in poverty you have in a school, the more it negatively impacts their achievement. You don't want the whole school in poverty," Hogeboom said.

Former Inavale students attending means more positive role models in classrooms, more parent involvement and a healthier school overall, he added.

The district also is trying to create an innovative middle school program at Lincoln.

Many residents in the area around Inavale School, located on Bellfountain Road south of Philomath, would argue that having the charter school would outweigh any negative impacts.

"It was a very distressing thing to lose our school and community center," said Kathleen Westly, whose son went to Inavale, but now goes to a school 15 minutes away.

But people from Corvallis, such as Payton James-Amberg, also took children to Inavale, and are involved in the effort to create a charter school.

"I was attracted by the rural setting of the school, and the community aspect of the school," James-Amberg said.

If the charter school proposal is denied, charter school proponents could appeal to the school board or the state board of education, Hogeboom said.

Half of the review committee is made up of district employees, while the other half is comprised of members of the public picked for their fiscal or school curriculum expertise.