A new charter school application has been approved for Buffalo. WBFO's Focus on Education Reporter says the SUNY Board of Trustees' Charter Schools Committee has said yes to the Elmwood Village Charter School 2-to open.
"We actually wanted to replicate what we have here at Elmwood Village," said Liz Evans, Founder and Operations Manager at the Elmwood Village Charter School.
Evans tells WBFO News they are working to open a second location in the city school district by September by 2017.
"We want to create another small school rather than making the school larger. We want to know all of our kids and all of our families. We're going to start off in 2017 with K-to-2, two classrooms at every grade level and going all the way up all the way up, slowly year by year, until it is a K-through 8," explained Evans.
The current K through 8th grade charter school has experienced success with students outperforming the city district in state Math and English tests by double-digit margins.
"There's no magic bullet, but one of the reasons that I feel like we've done well by our students is we have a strong social-emotional learning program here throughout the school called responsive classroom and it gives kid a sense of belonging and community and builds trust between the teachers and the children. The children are very involved in building their community," replied Evans.
Elmwood Village Charter has a longer school day and school year than the district, providing an extra hour a day of instruction, leading to higher performance in math and reading.
With Math Common Core assessments underway this week, Evans tells us they're not seeing high opt out numbers this week with only less than 3-percent refusing this week's state math exam.
