New Hampshire’s number of operating charter schools is now at 30, and eight of them – mostly new ones – are getting federal grants this month in the latest round of distribution from the state’s charter school grant competition.
Coastal Waters Chartered Public School in Exeter, which opened in August, is getting $1.3 million, while the recently-approved North Star Academy, which plans to open in the Lakes Region in either 2023 or 2024, is getting $1.1 million. Birches Academy in Salem, which has been operating since 2012 is getting $550,000 and Robert Frost Charter School in Conway, which opened as a K-8 school in 2012 and is expanding to include high school this year, is getting $218,975.
The remaining four schools are start-ups that have not yet received charter school approval from the State Board of Education, and are being given between $1 million and $1.5 million each to get their schools off the ground. The names of the start-ups will be made public when they submit their final applications to the State Board of Education later in the fall, according to the NH Department of Education.
The funding comes from a $46 million grant the state received from the federal government in 2019, intended to increase the number of charter schools in the state over a five-year period. New Hampshire was one of three states to receive grant awards through the charter school program in 2019, alongside Alabama and Washington.
Currently, about 5,256 students attend public charter schools in the state.
“This program is expanding public school choices for New Hampshire children and is offering students an unconventional path to success,” said education commissioner Frank Edelblut. “Start-up costs are often an insurmountable hurdle for new charter schools, but this federal funding helps provide more options for Granite State families seeking something different for their children.”
Edelblut has been a longtime advocate of charter school expansion in the Granite State to offer different education options to families. The charter school expansion has been controversial, with proponents agreeing that it offers greater choices and critics saying it drains badly needed funds and enrollment from the state’s public schools.
Six new charter schools have been approved by the state since 2020, including Northeast Woodland in Conway, Gathering Waters in Keene, Coastal Water in Exeter, Heartwood in Jefferson, Lionheart Classical Academy in Peterborough and North Star Academy in the Lakes Region.
Lionheart, which opened this fall, teaches a “classical” curriculum developed by developed by Hillsdale College, a conservative, non-denominational Christian school in Michigan. The school is part of Hillsdale’s Barney Charter School Initiative, which seeks to establish charter schools around the country to teach American classical education.
The recently-approved North Star Academy, which is coming soon to the Lakes Region, is being launched by a group called the Institute for Classical Culture. It will also be a Hillsdale College curriculum school.