School Offers New View

Community Partners Charter High School Offers a New View
Lynanne Fowle -- Published in Fuquay-Varina Independent July 6, 2005

As many of us prepare for or recover from our vacations and other summer activities, one school in Holly Springs is already gearing up for the fall. While many schools and teachers take the summer off, the staff at Community Partners Charter High School (CPCHS) uses the summer months to review the year’s successes and challenges, retool their curriculum, and plan kick-off events for August.
“Why do we do this?” asks school director Lynanne Fowle, “Many of us work 12 months out of the year to make sure we take what we’ve learned with the kids over the course of the year and use it to improve our program for the following year.” Community Partners Charter High School was created in 2000 to provide a unique instructional program for grades 9-12 in southwestern Wake County, and after five full years of operation, it still offers a very unique approach to high school. The only public high school in Holly Springs, CPCHS provides a private school atmosphere without the private school tuition and serves students in the surrounding communities of Apex, Cary, and Fuquay-Varina, as well.

Personal, flexible, and challenging for students of all ability levels, CPCHS takes the North Carolina standard course of study and finds consistent ways to apply core academics to the real world. Courses are also taught in integrated, thematic units at each grade level as part of the school’s philosophy that the adult world is an integrated without artificial bound aries.

“We spend a lot of time together as a faculty planning units that, for example, teach students world history with world literature and connect it to biology and geometry,” science teacher J’Nai Willingham explains. “You won’t find those things separated in the adult world and we need to prepare our students for that world.”

To kick off their unique program, CPCHS plans excursions for all CPCHS students at the beginning of the academic year. Excursions are two-day trips that introduce students to some aspect of their curriculum for the year. Students explore museums, hike parks, or participate in events that relate to coursework they will be covering later in the year.

They also participate in team-building exercises and ice breakers to help them prepare for all of the projects they will be working on together once they are back in the classroom. These excursions are a long-standing tradition at the school and have been a huge factor in student success. Although planning is still in progress, this year’s excursions will probably include a trip to Williamsburg, a trip to Washington, D.C., a hiking and naturalist excursion to a and local state park, and white-water rafting for the seniors.

Other unique features of the charter school are its belief that student clubs and athletic teams should be part of the academic program, its weekly schedule that reserves four days for formal instruction and one day for club meetings, seminars, guest speakers, and community service activities, and its use of community resources to fill gaps in elective offerings and provide an internship for every student.

“We have developed relationships with a number of businesses and civic organizations, including the Holly Springs Chamber of Commerce and the Holly Springs Rotary Club, to help provide opportunities for our students in the community,” Fowle shares. “We help out as much as we can through volunteer efforts, and we gain invaluable opportunities for our students to explore the world of work while they prepare for higher education.

Other features of the school include the philosophy that any student can play on an athletic team regardless of ability (CPCHS teams have done very well in conference championship tournaments), the use of portfolios to assess student growth in both academics and personal development, a community service requirement of 30 hours or more each year per student, and a large number of electives offered through a student club system with parents, teachers, and community members serving as club advisors.

Although very different from traditional high school programs, the staff at CPCHS is proud of its curriculum, its instructional methods, and its focus on preparing students for both college and life in the real world. Although the school does not offer traditional AP and honors courses, Ms. Fowle stresses that 95% of the school’s graduates have gone on to postsecondary education and that all have done very well in the college arena. “People are conditioned to think a program is only challenging if it requires lots of hours in a classroom with lots of homework to reinforce what is happening in that classroom,” Ms. Fowle explains. “A truly challenging program is one that motivates students to explore material and discover its relevance to the world around them, and requires students to think critically and learn how to solve problems regardless of the content that is being taught – and that’s what we do best.”

Community Partners Charter High School begins its academic year on August 16th and is still looking for 9th and 10th graders to join them this Fall. Parents are encouraged to call 567-9955 for information or check out the school’s website at www.cpchs.org. Students interested in playing volleyball or soccer this Fall should contact the school before August 1st.