The Chester Fund for Education and the Arts, a private foundation also known as The Chester Fund (TCF), recently announced its plan to apply to open a charter school in the Chester Upland School District. 

The proposed charter school would ultimately serve students in Kindergarten through 12th grade, building on the successes of Chester Upland School of the Arts (CUSA). The school will be called Chester Charter School of the Arts.

The Chester Fund for Education and the Arts is a nonprofit organization founded by Swarthmore College music professor John Alston, who is dedicated to providing Chester’s disadvantaged children with a first-rate, arts-enriched education that will prepare them for college and success in life. Alston is also the Founder and Director of the acclaimed 120-voice Chester Children’s Chorus. 

In 2008, TCF formed a partnership with the Chester school district to create CUSA, with TCF providing private funds for arts and technology programming as well as teaching assistants in every grade and an extended-day program for the older children. This year CUSA will serve 275 Chester children in Kindergarten through 5th grade.

“Last year CUSA had such a terrific year; the school has made so much progress both through social and academic performances,” Alston said. “The school’s fourth-graders made a twenty percent gain in reading proficiency and fifteen percent gain in math. They improved their results as third graders last year. Then in the middle of the summer, all of our staff was furloughed.”

CUSA was the latest school in the Chester Upland School District ravaged by massive reductions in the school district budget as a result of the state government’s cuts in education funding.

In the wake of these events, CUSA’s educational programs have been compromised and all but two of the classroom teachers have been laid off due to teacher-union seniority rules. 

The inability to protect staff and programming was the key reason TCF decided to terminate the partnership, effective the end of the current school year (June 2012), and apply to open a charter school.

“The principal team has told us proudly that the new teachers in the building are wonderful teachers,” Alston said. “I’m glad we have extraordinary teachers in the building and after teaching with each other for one year or five years together they will be even more extraordinary. The issue is we don’t know where these teachers will be after next year; we don’t know if they will be in our building or somewhere else in the Chester Upland School District.

“The advantage of being a charter school is that you have more control over your budget and you always know a year in advance what our budget will be,” he said. “We deeply appreciate the partnership we’ve had with the district over the last three years, but also realize that to continue educating Chester children, we have to be able to design our own programs and hire and keep the best teachers. The only way to accomplish this is to apply for a charter school.” 

The process has begun for the new charter school. There are currently six different locations that that are being tossed around for the school, but a definite location has yet to be determine.

The charter school will open in September 2012 pending approval of the charter application. All students in the district will be eligible to attend.

“The children’s education must come first,” said Maurice Eldridge, board chair of TCF. “We are saddened by what has happened, but we are excited about our future charter school.”