Meeting on Proposed Charter School Set

With $45,000 in state and private grants, organizers of a new charter school for the west San Fernando Valley will hold a community meeting Wednesday to discuss ideas for a campus site, develop educational plans and gauge overall interest.

“It’s so important to involve the community in the beginning,” said Toby Bornstein of Woodland Hills, who has taught elementary and middle school for 35 years.

Bornstein hopes to open the Multicultural Learning Center by fall 2001 with 265 students in kindergarten through fourth grade. Eventually, the school would accommodate 360 children from kindergarten through eighth grade.

Bornstein said she would like the school to have an ethnically diverse student body, and she is trying to find interested Latino families.

Charter schools operate outside many state and school district guidelines and control their own budgeting and curriculum.

Although the school plan is still being developed, the school would integrate writing, reading, science, math and art education around a theme, such as pollution, Bornstein said, which would change over time. Bornstein would be the school’s director.

The school would have a dual-language immersion program, in which every student would become bilingual in English and Spanish by the fourth grade, she said.

They also would be required to complete community projects, such as recycling newspapers or growing a garden.

Bornstein said she hopes to submit a charter-school petition to the Los Angeles Unified School District next spring. Ultimately, the school would need approval from the Board of Education.

Wednesday’s meeting will start at 7:15 p.m. at Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills, 5601 DeSoto Ave. For more details, call Bornstein at (818) 888-6670.