MALDEN — Richard Alcorn has big plans for the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School in Hadley. But for now, those plans will not exceed a maximum of 584 students.
The executive director joined nearly 50 school community members Tuesday in a 200-mile round trip to appeal a state decision denying the school’s request to nearly double its student body.
A Peter Pan bus carrying them left Hadley in the wee hours of the morning, arriving at the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Malden headquarters just before 9 a.m. Holding “embrace innovation and diversity” signs, schoolchildren filed into the meeting.
Alcorn said the trip was intended to speed up a desired outcome in which the Chinese charter school would be authorized to expand to 968 students in kindergarten through Grade 12. However, the board Tuesday declined to overturn State Education Commissioner Mitchell D. Chester’s decision to deny the expansion request.
In making his decision, Chester said that the school has not yet reached the number of students it is currently allowed. The decision, he said, could be revisited in the school’s next charter renewal, which will be determined in early 2017.
But the delay is a major disruption to the plan by school officials for a high school program. Alcorn said before the meeting that the school building is “maxed out” in terms of space, with its current enrollment of about 430 students. That is roughly 150 short of the existing maximum number allowed.
This leaves the school in what Margaret McKenna, a member of the state education board, called a “chicken and egg” scenario: The school is struggling to add more students — proving the need for expansion — because it has run out of space.
Two students spoke during the meeting, each stressing the pivotal role the school has played in their lives.
“Chinese is the center of the education,” said rising 10th-grader Benedikt Nuesslein, 14, of Amherst.
He continued by saying that in 2015 President Obama set a goal that 1 million U.S. students would be learning Chinese by 2020. Alcorn previously has noted the importance of the language in the global economy.
Rising 10th-grader Simon Quinn, 15, of Springfield, made his public remarks in Mandarin. After several minutes of fluent delivery, Quinn, a student who started at the school in first grade, translated his speech to English.
“PVCICS is really small right now, and we don’t have a lot of choices for extracurricular activities,” he said. “If we had more students, we could have more options.
“And if the school had more students,” he continued with a grin, “I might even be able to find a date.”
School Principal Kathleen Wang said an increased number of students would allow expansion of the middle school program, as well as the building of a new high school similar in scale to Sturgis Charter Public School in Hyannis, which has been used repeatedly as a model to strive for by the charter school in Hadley.
“One of the greatest challenges facing all charter schools is the acquisition of suitable facilities,” she said.
To secure a new high school building, Alcorn said, he needs more students to make that project financially feasible. Additionally, he noted, the school’s parents want a “real plan” encompassing “years from now” for their younger students.
Board member Michael Moriarty said he recently visited the school and could “visually very clearly recognize the idea of having a separate high school facility.”
Moriarty said there is no question that a new high school building was a “pretty important thing for this school to really operate to its highest level.”
When some board members asked whether a decision could be “fast-tracked,” concerns were raised over whether that might set a bad precedent.
Cliff Chuang, senior associate commissioner at the department, said he has strong reservations about proceeding without “a full look at the demand issue.” He also said the rules have been set very specifically to eliminate a chaotic process.
“This is not a single school issue,” he said. “We’ve attempted to create, through policy, a level playing field in terms of timelines and expectations.”
Other board members, including Mary Ann Stewart and Donald Willyard, said they were not in favor of overturning the commissioner’s decision.
When no action was taken to reverse the decision, the Hadley school’s group let out a sigh.
Education board spokeswoman Jacqueline Reis said “the door is still open for the school to file a new amendment request or to incorporate an expansion request into their charter renewal. She added that “whether the board would expedite either of those is unclear at this point.”
School parent Hannah Ekwere of Amherst did not expect Tuesday’s decision. She said it feels like the board has discounted evidence of need in favor of procedure. “We need permission to grow in order to grow,” she said.
Although school trustee Rosalie Porter was also disappointed, she believes the board seemed willing to consider the expansion.
“They may get over the idea that process is the most important thing on earth and warm to the idea,” she said, adding that she hopes the expansion is not delayed much longer.
Amy DiDonna, a lawyer representing the school, said, “We as a community are going to put our heads together to try to figure out how we can best demonstrate what we know to be true,” she said. “Which is, that the growth demand is there.”
Sarah Crosby can be reached at scrosby@gazettenet.com.