New group seeks to establish Granville's third charter school
Sep. 17—OXFORD — A group called Acuity Public Schools recently petitioned the N.C. Department of Public Instruction for permission to set up a charter school in Granville County.
The school hopes to open in July of 2023. Initially, its plan calls for enrolling 300 to 350 students beginning with grades K-5. It plans to become K-8 as more students sign up. The school would operate year-round and include free uniforms and transportation.
Acuity says it will serve low-income families and students who are significantly behind academically.
"We've noticed that a lot of charter schools that are opening in the surrounding county and North Carolina are targeting students that are a little bit advanced and above [or] on grade level, and there's not a lot out there to cater to students who are significantly behind," said Joshua Batchelor, the school's CEO and would-be founder. "This is a problem, especially in the Oxford/ Granville County area."
Batchelor says being new to the Oxford area, he wants to partner with the Granville County Public School system to work together for the students.
"It doesn't matter how many Acuity schools you see in North Carolina in any community or county, the purpose of that school is also to work with the public schools that are there," he said, adding that the goal is never "to take all of the students."
"The goal should be if you are going to be an innovative school inside of a county, [to see] what techniques or what are you doing that the public schools can use to deliver the same results for their students," Batchelor said.
The school will be free to all and will have open enrollment, parents will be able to apply online. It is first come first serve, and all students from Granville County will be accepted.
As of right now, no applications are being accepted until the state Office of Charter Schools and DPI make a decision on the petition.
The Granville County school board agreed to write a letter opposing Acuity Public Schools' petition.
School board Chairman David Richardson said the board had a couple of reasons for its opposition, including that there already are a lot of charter schools in the area and that some of the programs Acuity says it will have are services the public schools already offer.
State legislators "established the purpose of charter schools [as being] to expand choices and innovations programs that aren't currently available in the public schools," Richardson said. "Looking at the application submitted by Acuity, it's very short on those specifics and doesn't really talk about the proposal of what they want to do."
Granville County has two charter schools already operating within its borders, Oxford Preparatory School and Falls Lake Academy. Two other charter schools, Henderson Collegiate and Vance Charter School, are nearby in Henderson.
State and local governments allocated per-pupil funding for charter schools and traditional K-12 school systems based on their enrollment. All three of the Tri-County's traditional K-12 school districts — the Granville County Public Schools, the Vance County Schools and the Warren County Schools — have downsized as enrollment has flowed to charters. Another wave of downsizing remains pending in the Granville system.
GCPS officials have said students from Granville County are attending 37 different charter schools in North Carolina.
