Montague Elementary Marks Charter Status

Amid a spirit of optimism and resolve, the entire school community of Montague Street Elementary gathered Friday morning to celebrate a transformation that administrators said would help make the school one of the finest in the state.

Earlier this year, Montague--now Montague Charter Academy--became the Los Angeles Unified School District’s 14th charter school. The mostly Latino campus joins Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in San Fernando and Fenton Avenue Charter School in Lake View Terrace as the third elementary school in the northeast Valley to make the transformation in the past five years.

On Friday, crisp blue and white school uniforms and colored balloons were the order of the day as speakers such as Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar) and Principal Diane Pritchard sandwiched words of encouragement around musical performances put on by students at the pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade school.

“We think of ourselves as a community-based school where the parents and the teachers work together,” Pritchard said.

“It takes a communitywide effort to provide excellence in education.”

Based on the idea that individual schools and not centralized bureaucracies know what is best for their students, charter campuses control their own budgets and are exempt from many state regulations governing public schools.

Jacqueline Elliot, curriculum advisor at Montague, said teachers and administrators met after school every day for several months to prepare Montague’s bid to become a charter school.

“As a charter school, we are an independent, free-thinking educational institution,” Elliot said. “It’s no longer what the district says or what the state says. We can do whatever is best for our school community.”

Cardenas, who said the charter system is not right for all schools, supported Montague’s bid because of the level of commitment from parents and teachers at the school.

“They really took responsibility and proved how hungry they were for reform,” Cardenas said.