Pre-School ON HOLD - While We Work to Open the Lake Worth Classical Academy

Time rushes forward, and here we are in 2014!

I tried to acquire a property late last year for a pre-school. But the owners of the properties that would have worked really well did not wish to sell. So with time slipping by I proceeded with a plan for a new K-12 charter school in Lake Worth. The school is to be called the Lake Worth Classical Academy. It will offer a rigorous classical curriculum that uses intensive phonics to teach reading, the Singapore Math program to teach deep understanding of basic math and will introduce children to the best books written in the English language through a Great Books program. All subjects will be organized around an in-depth and chronological study of history from the Ancients to our Modern Era.

The school is inspired by, and will follow the same curriculum as the Great Hearts academies in Arizona, which seek not only high academic achievement, but to produce students with "great hearts" as well.

The school will open in August of 2015 with four grades: kindergarten, first, second and third.

One grade will be added every year until the school is a full, K-12 academy.

We are hoping to rent space in the downtown Lake Worth area to house the school, and are optimistic that we will be able to rent a suitable, convenient and attractive facility.

More on the Lake Worth Classical Academy's curriculum and operations:

• All students will begin studying French in Grade 1, with an emphasis on speaking -- conversation, poems, songs, stories, etc.
• All students will study Latin in Grades 4-6 and Ancient Greek in Grades 7 and 8 while continuing with French.
• All students will begin playing a strings instrument in Grade 4 and will form an orchestra in middle school.
• The upper grades (5-12) will follow a college-prep series of courses that will prepare them for work at the top colleges and universities in the country.
• Class sizes will be limited to 18 in each class.
• No electronics will be allowed in the classrooms.
• Parents will be asked to restrict their child's TV/computer time at home to 1 hour a day.

Students at all grades can be expected to perform at least 20 percent higher on state reading and math assessments, as do students of the Great Hearts academies, and in high school will have average SAT scores well above the national average of 1500. (The average SAT score of Great Hearts students in 2013 was 1830).

But the school will not overemphasize test scores. Rather, its principal, teachers and all staff will encourage students to embrace a love of learning for its own sake, to delve deeply into their studies of history and reading of great literature not for any prize to be earned at the end, but out of a love for what is true and good.

Status: I am submitting the charter application by the early deadline of May 1, and will re-submit it on August 1, the regular deadline. By September, we will find out whether we have been approved by the Palm Beach County School District. If approved, we will begin to accept applications in January of 2015.

(We, who is we?  I have been working with a small group of local parents of young children on plans for the school. Once the school is approved, we will transition to become a Governing Board, along with two business professionals, one in Broward County and the other in St. Johns County, who believe in classical education and are dedicated to helping open our classical school here in Lake Worth.)

For more, see LakeWorthClassical.org.

Thank you,

Margaret Menge
founder, Lake Worth Classical Academy

Could This Be the Place?



This sweet little house on Federal Highway would make a perfect little pre-school. The two lots to the south of it are planted with frangipani trees. There's a huge mango tree to the left of the frame and as you can see, there's quite a bit of shade. This is very important, as everyone in South Florida knows. If you have shade, you can be outside on even the hottest day and not suffer. And my vision is of a pre-school where children can spend a lot of their time outside, not just a half hour in the morning and a half hour in the afternoon. That is not enough. I'm looking into the possibility of buying this little house. So stay tuned...

Hold On...

Fewer postings lately don't mean this isn't happening! It just means things are on hold for a few months while I look for the right property. We need a space that is in a commercial or mixed-use zone and also one that has four or more parking spaces and a large enough outdoor space. And...the outdoor space must have at least one mature tree.

One possibility is 818 North Federal Highway, which the bank just foreclosed on. It should be back on the market in a few months, but will likely be a cash-only sale. There are other possibilities, and I'll be watching the listings to see if any would work. So... check back periodically if you're interested, or e-mail me at margaretmenge@yahoo.com. I'd love to hear from you.

New location

The deeper I got into county health regulations and city building codes and the more I thought about the kind of space we need for this special little school, the more I realized that there was just too much that needed to be changed at the church (floor, ceiling, walls, yard) And that even with an unlimited budget, we could not create the kind of space there that I was envisioning in a few months time. I talked to Pastor Dillon and he understood.

So now.... I'm going to work towards buying a building early next year that has some more elements that we need: great floors, a shaded yard and parking. I've been looking at this building, below, for many months, and just recently realized it might work for a pre-school. I went over to look inside today and low and behold, the realtor tells me it was a school in the 70s. So boy. That's great. I would just need $170,000 or so in cash to buy it as a bank won't finance it given that it needs a new roof. So, ok. This poses a challenge. But there must be a way.

Could this be the location of our new pre-school?
It has a lovely shaded yard, and a teacher apartment attached in back.

Zoning Approved!

The city of Lake Worth's zoning department has signed off on our establishing a school at Calvary United Methodist Church, saying the 1979 letter found in the building file proved that the church had been given approval to establish a school, and that other documents provided evidence that the building was used as a school. So that's great. Now we just have to go through the city's building department, the county fire department and the county health department. These are going to be harder.

Old Blueprints Tell Interesting Stories

Calvary United Methodist Church, as seen from First Avenue South

I told the city of Lake Worth last week, in the course of making a case for allowing a school at Calvary United Methodist Church without having to seek a Special Land Use Approval, that the classroom we'll be using is one of several classrooms added on to the church building intended as a school and used as a school at various points.

But this wasn't the whole story, I realize now, and not the strongest argument.

In looking over old blueprints over the last few days, I realized that the old church building on the corner of First Avenue South and Ocean Breeze included many classrooms and other areas that constituted a school. So it's not that there was a school added on to the back of this beautiful historic church in mid-century. The school was part of the original building. This building was meant to house a school!

The school must have been going strong, because in 1953 many more classrooms were added. In blueprints from the 1990s, a total of 10 rooms are marked as classrooms, in addition to a nursery, an office (a school office, presumably), a fellowship hall, kitchen, rec hall, 'heritage room,' library and chapel. This is a full-blown school, for sure! It just hasn't been used as a school in a very long time -- since 1980, as far as I could tell from sifting through the building file.

Verdict: The Tree Must Come Down

Tree expert number two was out to look at the eucalyptus tree in the back yard of the church today and said without a doubt, it needs to be chopped down.

 

The tree, said arborist Patrick Snyder (in pic below) has been dying for a very, very long time, and needs to be cut down to the stump. And this is not going to be a small job, I could see as he measured the trunk. It's more than four feet in diameter. The nice thing, he noted, is that once the tree comes down, we have a blank slate.

 

Yes, I said, and we plan to fill it with trees and paths and a garden and a sandbox and so many things. The eucalyptus branches can be borders for sandy paths and can be used to build a sandbox. And the tree trunk can be sliced and used for stairs, or as part of a foot path. Who needs pavers?