: RANDALL CHASE, Associated
Press Writer
DATELINE: DOVER, Del.
BODY:
While Delaware students
prepare to begin a new school year later this
month, members of
Wilmington's Greek community are already doing their homework.
Community leaders are busy
laying the foundation for Odyssey Charter
School, an elementary school
where students will be taught in Greek.
Odyssey, scheduled to open in
the fall of 2006, will become one of only a
handful of Greek-immersion
charter schools in the country, but officials
with a Washington, D.C.-based
Greek-American heritage organization say
many people hope to change
that.
"They want to see this
happen on a national level," said Basil Mossaidis,
executive director of the
American Hellenic Educational Progressive
Association, which is working
with Wilmington residents on the Odyssey
project.
George Chambers, a member of
AHEPA's Wilmington chapter and president of
the Odyssey school board,
says the idea for a charter school began with a
phone call from an education
ministry official at the Greek embassy in
Washington.
At the time, Chambers was in
charge of an evening Greek school focusing on
language instruction at Holy
Trinity Greek Orthodox Church. The education
ministry official called to
ask if Chambers knew that the Greek government
was offering to send
credentialed teachers from Greece to U.S. schools
where Greek was taught
full-time.
With the No Child Left Behind
Act authorizing federal seed money to
support charter schools,
Chambers and other members of Delaware's Greek-American community
saw an opportunity. The Red Clay district school board voted in May
to approve Odyssey's charter, and is expected to vote soon on selling the
Odyssey group 15 acres near the Pike Creek shopping center.
While the Wilmington area's
Greek community numbers about 850 families,
the charter school is not
targeted exclusively at students of Greek heritage
and officials expect them to
account for only about 10 percent of the
enrollment.
Instead, officials say
knowledge of Greek, one of the root languages of
English, can benefit all
students, especially in developing language
skills and comprehension.
Odyssey officials say a survey sent out to about 3,500
families in the Pike Creek
area last year showed overwhelming support for
their plan.
"It is all about the
education of our youth; that's independent of
heritage, language,"
Chambers said.
"We have the ability to
give the Greek language viability for generations
to come," he added.
"It's a new and very positive way of having the language
become an integral part of
people's lives."
Odyssey will start with an
initial enrollment of about 140 students in
grades K-2. Officials plan to
add a grade each year until they reach fifth
grade and a final enrollment
of about 350, when they will look at
transitioning from modular
buildings to a brick-and-mortar facility.
Student recruitment is
expected to begin later this fall.
In addition to a core
curriculum of traditional subjects, Odyssey students
will take Greek language
classes and a daily review of math lessons in
Greek. Chambers said the
school will have a full complement of certified
teachers offering instruction
in the core curriculum, and that the
certification process likely
will be offered to teachers coming from
Greece as well.
The school is modeled on the
Archimedean Academy in Miami, Fla., where
math and reading scores of
third-graders rank near the top among all Miami-Dade elementary
schools.
Florida is also home to the
Athenian Academy in Dunedin, which became the
first Greek immersion charter
school in the United States in 2000. The
academy has been plagued
recently by financial and administrative
problems, and briefly lost
its charter earlier this year. Nevertheless, its
embattled board president
succeeded in gaining approval in another county for a
second Greek charter school,
whose scheduled opening this year has been delayed.
Meanwhile, the Socrates
Academy is scheduled to open later this month in
Charlotte, N.C. Like Odyssey,
Socrates is based on the Miami school, which AHEPA
turned to in developing a guide for opening similar schools
nationwide.
Mossaidis said AHEPA is
working on plans for a charter school in
Washington, D.C., and has
received expressions of interest from Pennsylvania and California.
The group is focusing on states with laws that are friendly to the
charter school movement, he said.
"This may not work in
Oklahoma, this may not work in Idaho, but it
certainly can work in these
urban areas that face challenges," Mossaidis said.
In Delaware, which already is
home to 13 charter schools, Odyssey is one
of four new charter schools
scheduled to open next year.
Larry Gabbert, director of
the state Department of Education's charter
school office said roughly
7,000 of Delaware's 120,000 public school
students, or roughly six
percent, are enrolled in charter schools, one of
the highest percentages in
the nation.
