A committee of the state Charter Schools Commission recommended late Monday that the school be approved, which will override the local denial by the Cherokee County Board of Education. The full commission will vote on the recommendation Thursday.
"We are expecting a school; we are hoping for a school; we expect the process to go fairly easily," said Lyn Carden, a member of the Georgia Charter Educational Foundation Board, which is made up of those supporting the charter school application.
Cherokee County Schools
Carden and others have campaigned hard to get a charter school started, but the board of education has turned them down twice and the state commission once. After their second denial by the board of education last June, foundation members applied again to the state Charter Schools Commission, which state legislators created because they believed school systems would be too likely to deny applications.
Charter schools are public schools open to any student at no additional cost, which are started by parents, nonprofits or a local school district. They may be approved by the local district, which entitles the school to get county school funds and gives the local school board limited oversight. If they are rejected by the local school district and later approved by the state commission, they receive state and federal funds plus a matching share of local tax dollars for the school, and the local school board loses it oversight.
Cherokee County Schools
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