By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
Pembroke group planning North Bryan charter school
Bryan Elite charter school
Bryan ELITE charter school planned for Pembroke.
Ted O'Neil
Updated: Apr 20, 2016, 7:34 PM
Published: Apr 20, 2016, 7:35 PM

A group of parents, educators and business leaders in North Bryan is putting together plans for a public charter school it hopes that it will open in Pembroke beginning with the 2017-18 school year.

Angel Williams, the group’s spokeswoman, said paperwork will be filed with the State Charter Schools Commission by its May 16 deadline.

Bryan ELITE, which stands for Educating Learners by Individualizing Their Education, plans to have a year-round calendar with a maximum of 30 students per grade in sixth through 12th grades.

“We aren’t looking to bash Bryan County Schools or teachers,” Williams said. “Education is tough. There are just a lot of people who are looking for an alternative.”

The school plans to have two classes at each grade level with a maximum of 15 students per class for a total enrollment of 210.

The curriculum will focus on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math). The founding board has three locations in Pembroke in mind where the school could be located. None of them, however, are current or former school buildings.

Registration is open until May 1 online at fs2.formsite.com/BryanEliteCharter2017/form1, and the group has a website, bryanelite2017.wix.com/bryanelitecharter, and Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/BryanEliteCharterSchool.

Williams said that if enrollment surpasses 210 by May 1, a public lottery will be used to determine which students are accepted. Signing up for enrollment, however, does not obligate parents to send their children to the school.

“We just want to make sure that anyone who is interested can sign up before the deadline,” she said. “If we get more than 210 before May 1, anyone who registers after that will have to go on a waiting list and won’t be eligible for the lottery.”

Enrollment opened Sunday and is already at more than 100 students, with about 20 percent from other counties. If the school receives authorization, it would be a statewide charter and available to students outside of Bryan County. A chart on the school’s Facebook page details the distance from surrounding areas to Pembroke.

Bryan County Schools Superintendent Paul Brooksher said he is curious to see the charter group’s full application.

“As of today, I know there has been interest expressed in beginning a statewide charter school that is physically located in the Pembroke area of Bryan County,” he said. “Currently, I do not believe they have approval from the state, nor have I seen their application, which should include their model for delivering instruction, finances, staffing and increased accountability measures. Considering my limited knowledge on their proposal for a statewide charter school, I think it is best that I don’t comment at this time.”

Williams said charter supporters had some initial discussions with Bryan County school system officials, but chose not to seek district approval in order to meet the state’s May 16 deadline.

A frequently asked questions section on the group’s website gives details on how the school would work, including a year-round schedule. The academic year would run from July 13 to June 7 and include the standard 180 days of instruction, with short breaks interspersed and longer breaks in late September, late December and late March. There also is a petition on the website people can sign to express support for the school.

Organizers are planning to have a staff of 22, including 18 teachers. All core-curriculum teachers are expected to be state-certified, and about 75 percent of the staff has been filled with verbal commitments. Names of staff members will be released if the school receives state approval.

If approved, the school would be run by a governing board of five or seven members that must adhere to the state Open Meetings Act. Funding would be on a per-pupil basis, but no local tax dollars could be raised. The State Charter Schools Commission says the average brick-and-mortar charter school this year receives $7,945 per student in state funding.

If the group’s application is rejected, Williams said the members will fine-tune the application and resubmit it for the 2018-19 school year.

Sign up for our E-Newsletters
Later yall, its been fun
Placeholder Image
Ted O'Neil
Updated: May 23, 2018, 6:03 PM
Published: May 23, 2018, 6:05 PM

This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

Latest Obituaries