A Philadelphia education nonprofit wants to open two charter schools in Harrisburg next year, potentially giving parents another option of where to send their children.
American Paradigm Schools plans to apply for two charters by the end of the month and hopes to be open for the 2012-13 school year, said Stacey Cruise, the company’s CEO. One school would be located in central South Allison Hill and another in Midtown, probably near the 6th Street corridor. The exact sites have not yet been determined.
“American Paradigm Schools and our staffs are so excited to be here in Harrisburg,” said Cruise.
The schools would be K-4, expanding after several years to K-8. Each school eventually would have 675 students, Cruise said.
The 10-year-old company, which emphasizes technology, science and arts in its curriculum, currently operates two charter schools in Philadelphia. The Harrisburg school board must award the charters before the schools can open.
This fall, the school board also will be examining a charter school application recently filed by Mikayla’s Place founder Monica Archie, who wants to open the Archie Preparatory Academy Charter School. Currently, the city has just one charter school, the Sylvan Heights Science Charter School.
Harrisburg has had a mixed history with charter schools. One of the largest, the Ronald H. Brown Charter School, closed in 2005 after its five-year charter was not renewed.
The school was headquartered in the historic Moose Lodge at N. 3rd and Boas streets and occupied an entire city block. Those four properties, 916-922 N. 3rd St., went to tax sale last year and were bought by local real estate investor and developer Phillip Dobson, who paid $188,000.
Dobson then flipped them back for $320,000 to New York-based Mosaica Education, the for-profit charter school company that owned the buildings when Ron Brown operated there. After the school closed, Mosaica stopped making payments on the buildings, which were foreclosed on.
Mosaica has now put those four buildings back on the market, asking $3.9 million for the total of 40,000 square feet of space.
In 2000, Mosaica originally bought the buildings for $6.6 million, according to county property records, and then extensively renovated them.
The buildings, in the heart of the 3rd Street corridor, have been empty, boarded up and increasingly blighted since the Ron Brown school shut down in 2005.
