Missouri approves new midtown Kansas City charter school

A group of midtown Kansas City residents, seeking a diverse, high-achieving grade school for their children, got a thumbs-up Tuesday from state education officials to open a new charter school to fit their order.

The new school, proposed by Citizens of the World Charter Schools-Kansas City and sponsored by the Missouri Charter Public School Commission, had been working toward state approval since 2013.

On Tuesday the State Board of Education authorized Los Angeles-based Citizens of the World to go forward with plans to open schools in Kansas City.

“We are ecstatic,” said Luke Norris, president of the Citizens of the World Kansas City board of directors. Norris, who joined the grass-roots group of parents who pushed for the charter, lives with his wife and 1-year-old daughter in the Hyde Park neighborhood in midtown.

To get state approval, the group worked closely with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to make changes in the group’s proposal pertaining to board governance policy.

“Granting the charter is a validation of all the community’s hard work and motivation to bring another public school option to the community,” Kristin Droege, Citizens of the World Kansas City’s executive director, said in a statement Tuesday after the vote. “What’s clear is that families are choosing to stay in Kansas City, and we’re committed to providing students with an excellent learning experience that will guide them to their full potential.”

Part of the driving force behind development of the school had to do with young parents feeling that they needed better school options to continue living and raising children in midtown.

The parents formed a group called the Midtown Community Schools Initiative. Though many are in the middle- to upper-income bracket, they said they wanted an ethnically and economically diverse school for their children that reflects the world they live in. At the same time they wanted a school that would maintain high academic standards.

“There are a growing number of young families in midtown, and we believe Citizens will provide them with schools committed to diversity and an excellent education,” said Paul Friedrichs, a midtown parent who hopes to send his 2-year-old daughter to one of the new schools someday.

The Midtown Community Schools Initiative selected Citizens of the World Charter Schools to manage their school and convinced the Missouri Charter Public School Commission to make their school the first one for the two-year-old commission to sponsor.

“I knew when I heard from the parents and community members that this school was a match for midtown,” said Peggy Taylor, one of the six commissioners.

Citizens of the World has three schools in Los Angeles and two in Brooklyn. About 60 percent of the students attending Citizens of the World schools are children of color, half qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and a quarter are English-language learners.

The Kansas City plan calls for opening two kindergarten through first-grade elementary schools in August 2016, adding a grade each subsequent year. The charter expects to start with just under 300 students and reach about 1,800 students after expanding to all 13 grades in 12 years.

Eventually, the charter group expects to operate four schools, including elementary, middle and high schools, at a full capacity of 1,750 students in the area bounded by State Line Road to the west, Prospect to the east, Union Station to the north and Brush Creek to the south.

The charter school leaders said the group’s immediate priorities include identifying affordable facilities and continuing to engage families and local leaders.

“We hope to share a definite location with the community by early December,” Droege said.

In Kansas City there are 19 charters, not including Citizens of the World. Before Tuesday, the last charters to open schools in Kansas City were the Academy for Integrated Arts and the Crossroads Academy of Kansas City, which both started in the 2012-2013 academic year.

This story was originally published October 27, 2015 at 1:50 PM with the headline "Missouri approves new midtown Kansas City charter school."