Parents Push Plans for Newport-Mesa Charter School

A group of parents in the Newport-Mesa Unified School district asked trustees Wednesday to allow them to open a charter school next fall.

The Mesa Leadership Academy, which would be housed at an unused Newport-Mesa facility, would offer students in kindergarten through third grade what parents call “a more comprehensive and meaningful education” than they can find at their neighborhood elementary school, said Byron de Arakal, a member of the group behind what has been a two-year push for a charter school.

“What you have here is a group of parents who feel that the education code is shackling a lot of teachers,” de Arakal said.

If approved, the 320-student academy would be the county’s seventh charter school, and the first in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

At the Mesa Leadership Academy, education would be built around in-depth study of works of literature, as well as volunteer service. Instead of working on math, history, science, and English as separate subjects, children would relate them all to a book, de Arakal said.

“Let’s say we were doing ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ ” he said. “From a history standpoint, they would study how the Old West came about.”

Charter schools are public schools, funded with public money and open to all students in the state.

But they are exempt from aspects of the California education code because they are assumed to have a special educational purpose. School board member Martha Fluor said she is looking forward to reading the proposal.