The new Lionheart Classical Academy charter school in Peterborough held a lottery Saturday to determine its student enrollment for its inaugural year starting this fall, with 156 students chosen from a group of 206 who registered.
“It was terrific; it was definitely a moment,” said Kerry Bedard, executive director of the school. “We’re admitting our first students.”
The school will start with kindergarten through fifth grade, and the 206 registrations came from 122 families in 21 towns, Bedard said. The lottery went well, she said, including a “neat moment” where they were able to admit all of the fifth-graders who were registered without the lottery process, due to there being 37 registrations and 40 spots.
Those students who were not admitted have been placed on a waitlist, Bedard said. The administration will continue to monitor the list and admit students from the waitlist as possible, up until the beginning of school in the fall.
“We did have afterwards some parents, one family whose children were all on the waitlist as we went through, who were disappointed,” Bedard said. “Our message there is just, hang tight. We’ll take a look at what our enrollment process looks like and we’ll go back, if we have spots available.”
For now, Bedard said Lionheart’s administration is excited to take the next steps toward opening in the fall. The lottery was a crucial step, but only one of many, Bedard noted.
“What we’re definitely looking forward to is now starting to form our community. Now it becomes the paperwork exercise,” she said, at least for the parents of the school community, who will now have to officially enroll and provide official documentation for their children, as well as help the school figure out logistics like transportation and Individualized Education Programs for students with special needs.
“We’re even going to survey parents to start to get activities going, because we need to start to build that together, for Lionheart,” Bedard said.
The founders and administrators of the school will also be working on getting the facility ready for classes, including acquiring furniture. Another consideration Bedard pointed to was fundraising, and said that they are already working on planning a June event to go along with that.
But the biggest next step will be hiring, she said. Second-round interviews for teachers will be held this month, and other staff positions such as a school nurse are also being sought.
“Once the teachers are on board, what we’re most excited about is taking that curriculum that we have and making our plans for the year and doing some customization,” she said.
Lionheart will be using what is called a “classical education,” developed from a curriculum from Hillsdale College, a nondenominational Christian school whose curriculum is offered in many charter schools. According to Lionheart Principal Liz Wilber, what makes a classical education different is its basis in the concept of “core knowledge.”
“It just kind of goes through each subject and what should be taught at what grades,” she said. “It doesn’t have the extra add-ons that are maybe a more-modern thing.”
The subjects it focuses on are largely math, science, English and history, she said, along with music, art and literature. Lionheart plans to incorporate classes like physical education, as well.
“The whole approach is to teach the kids a lot of information, and the goals are for them to have a good understanding of the world as a whole and to be able to have good conversation with anyone they meet,” she said.
The mechanics of teaching at Lionheart will be rooted in what Wilber classified as “traditional” methods — tactics such as phonics, which teaches children how to read by teaching them the sounds that letters and letter groups make and using this as the basis for constructing words. This serves as an example, Wilber said, of the way classical education works.
“It’s about starting from the basics, the fundamental things, and then building up from those using the right rules,” she said.
Other considerations of classical education include an emphasis on “Western tradition,” as well as American history, which Wilber said were vital.
“We all have a desire to know who we are,” she said. “We are part of the Western world, whether we like that or not. We are Americans, and so we need to learn about our inheritance. All the knowledge, all of the contributions that people have made to get us where we are.”
In response to the potential concern that this and other components of the classical education method might leave out parts of the educational experience that exist elsewhere, Wilber said that it comes down to prioritization. It is a conversation that Wilber said has been happening between the administration and prospective parents, as well as some parents expressing concerns about what content will be caught.
“I think we all know what the hot-button issues are,” Wilber said, adding that Lionheart wants to work in tandem with parents and be transparent about what will be taught. “They are entrusting their children’s education to us, at least a part of it, and that’s a huge responsibility that the school takes on.”
As to whether any of this will be changed in order to be flexible for the new students, Wilber said she did not anticipate too much shift.
“We recognize that there will be a need to transition the students from where they’re coming from to what the curriculum we want is,” she said. “We’re prepared to do that.”
Bedard said this will likely include assessments to ascertain where incoming students are academically, something that will be addressed throughout the coming months, along with the other big steps toward opening in the fall.
“The fun part that we’re so excited about, too, is establishing those traditions for the school, because every school has their fun activities that they do,” Bedard said. “That’s part of why we’re excited now, to engage with parents and try to take a look at what it’s like at Lionheart for the first year.”