Grace College is being considered as a charter school provider by a school corporation in Indiana. A story in Wednesday’s Greene County Daily World explains that the Dugger Union Community School Corp., Dugger, Ind., is approaching Grace College to be their charter school provider. A portion of the story appears below. Click here to read the complete article.
DUCS takes new direction with Grace College
The direction that the Dugger Union Community School Corp. is looking at for a charter school next year has changed since January.
The new hope for DUCSC is Winona Lake-based Grace College and Seminary.
“They are going to be the actual authorizer of the school,” DUCSC Board President Kyle Foli said. “We would be on our own. This would be our own personal charter.”
Grace College will hold a public hearing to consider the charter school application for DUCSC in the Dugger high school gymnasium on May 13 at 5:30 p.m.
Foli said his organization is no longer pursuing a charter through the Indiana Charter School Board, which rejected an application from DUCSC last year. As recently as January, he advised during a board meeting that the school corporation would again file with ICSB.
“We are not pursuing the ICSB,” Foli said Tuesday. “We sat down and looked at them both, and we felt Grace College was a better fit for us.”
During the January board meeting, DUCSC introduced Vicki Snyder, a partner at Evansville-based Signature Consulting, to the community as someone helping them through the charter process with ICSB. Snyder had previously been executive director at the Signature School in Evansville, which had been ranked as high as fourth nationally as a charter school and first in Indiana.
Although ICSB is out of the picture, Foli said Snyder has continued to help DUCSC retain a new charter.
“Absolutely, Vicki Snyder has been standing shoulder-to-shoulder with us,” he noted. “She’s an awesome lady. I can’t say enough good things about her.”
Foli added that the application to Grace College “has been reviewed by a lot of people, and it’s 10 times better than last year.
“When we were putting the application together for ICSB, we found out about Grace and contacted them, too,” he continued. “They were very excited, basically, and asked us to submit (an application) to them.”
The public hearing before Grace board members and officials on May 13 will resemble last year’s hearing before the ICSB.
Click here to read the complete article.