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Charter school for Black kids, low-income set to open 2021

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A new charter school hopes to open in Asheville, North Carolina, promising ambitious gains for Black and low-income students, reports the Citizen Times. PEAK Academy — which stands for Prepare and Empower to Achieve through Knowledge — is a proposed school that, if approved by the State Board of Education, would open in August 2021. According to its application, PEAK plans to begin as a K-2 school before expanding one grade per year through eighth grade. With 40-44 students per grade, PEAK hopes to teach around 400 students at capacity. Charter schools are publicly funded but autonomous from the districts in which they reside. Untethered from district school boards, charters design their own policies on everything from instruction to services to dress, while largely allocating money as their boards see fit. PEAK looks to aggressively address race and income-based academic disparities among Asheville students. Throughout its application, PEAK rebukes Asheville City Schools and the broad gap in academic outcomes between the district’s White and Black students. The gap, which PEAK called “deplorable” in its application, widened over the 2010s. In 2018-19, ACS Black students scored below Black students statewide in every tested category. “Time and time again, Asheville City School board members, officials and staff have made public statements that blame everything but instruction and disparity in expectations for the low achievement levels of African American students: from poverty to parents to violence in neighborhoods,” PEAK’s application states. If approved, PEAK would seek a location within the ACS district while looking to draw students from surrounding Buncombe County as well.

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