Author: Jason Johnson

When a student at the Acceleration (ACCEL) Day and Evening Academy told Superintendent Jeremiah Newell he was nervous at orientation, Newell asked, “What’s to be nervous about? We’re just building an entire school from the ground up!” That combination of nervousness and excitement has been a background theme for teachers and administrators as ACCEL prepares to open the doors of Alabama’s first tuition-free public charter school Aug. 21. With targeted enrollment of 300 students, ACCEL has billed itself as being focused on the individual needs of students both in and out of the classroom — an idea spurred by successful programs launched by its parent company, the nonprofit Mobile Area Education Foundation (MAEF). ACCEL has already seen students enroll from public, private and home-based institutions, but CEO Carolyn Akers said MAEF had to paddle against a current of opinion in national discussions about the role charter schools should play in public education. “You hear people talking about ‘creaming kids,’ where they’re taking children off the top of other school systems and putting them into charter schools, but that was never our design here,” Akers told Lagniappe. “Our purpose has always been to meet the needs of those students for whom the regular public school system has just not worked.” New to Alabama, charter schools are publicly funded but operated by independent organizations. They’re bound by a contract that sets specific academic...