New charter middle school prepares for opening

Date: 3/20/2012

March 21, 2012

By G. Michael Dobbs

news@thereminder.com

SPRINGFIELD — The city's newest charter school has selected its first class of fifth graders and will begin preparing its building for the school year that starts in August.

Rachel Romano, the executive director of the Veritas Preparatory Charter School, told Reminder Publications that 81 current fourth graders were selected as the first class of fifth graders for the new middle school at a lottery conducted on March 15. There were more than 320 applicants, creating a waiting list for any spots that might open up before school begins, she added.

Romano said the response has been "really heartening."

The school will add a class each year and will eventually have students in grades five through eight.

The school will be located in a former nursing home at 370 Pine St. in the Maple High Six Corners neighborhood.

Romano said the success of the application process and lottery confirmed "what we've known is there is a real demand for parents for a high quality middle school."

Veritas will be a college preparatory middle school, she explained, where she said the goal would not be students asking, "Am I going to college, but where am I going to college?"

The school will have a longer school year, beginning on Aug. 20 and will feature a longer day from 7:30 a.m. to 4:20 p.m.

Romano was a teacher in the Springfield public schools for six years and left to be a principal at a charter school in Framingham. After her service there, she spent one year studying 25 high performing charter schools in order to come back to Springfield to create a new middle school. Veritas has been two years in the making.

"We're replicating the better practices of those schools," she said.

When asked about features the school will have, Romano said that labs and art rooms have been shown not to be "drivers" to help enrollment or student performance.

She said that instead the school would have "incredibly smart, hard working teachers who will prepare students to read and perform math at or above their grade level.

"This will be a 'no excuses' school," she said.