Mobile County’s only charter school is set to grow. The Alabama Public Charter School Commission has approved an expansion plan that will let ACCEL Day and Evening Academy begin enrolling middle school students, adding grades 6 through 8 to a campus that has so far served only high schoolers.
ACCEL opened in 2017 inside the former ITT Technical Institute building on Cottage Hill Road, becoming the state’s first public charter school. Since then it has focused exclusively on grades 9 through 12, building a program around roughly 300 students who officials describe as being at risk of falling behind or dropping out. The newly approved expansion will let the school reach students years earlier, before many of the challenges that charter organizers say derail teenagers ever take hold.
Under the plan approved this week, ACCEL expects to bring in up to 100 middle schoolers by the 2020-2021 school year, with that number growing to as many as 165 the year after. School leaders say the addition will not change the model that has defined ACCEL since its founding: small class sizes, flexible scheduling, and instruction built around each student’s individual needs rather than a single fixed pace for the whole classroom.
ACCEL grew out of an effort by the Mobile Area Education Foundation, and the school was co-founded by MAEF’s chief executive officer, Carolyn R. Akers. In a statement following the commission’s vote, Akers said the middle school addition reflects years of work by the school’s board, faculty and staff to widen access to a style of teaching she believes better serves struggling students. She said the goal has always been to prepare young people for what comes after graduation, whether that is college, technical training or a job that can support a family, and that reaching students in middle school will let the school step in before problems compound.
Academically at-risk students remain the core focus of ACCEL’s mission, and supporters of the expansion argue that intervening during the middle school years, when many students first begin to disengage from traditional classroom settings, gives counselors and teachers a better chance of keeping them on track toward graduation. The school’s emphasis on social and emotional support alongside academics is expected to carry over directly into the middle school program.
ACCEL was not the only charter school action to come out of the commission’s meeting. Commissioners also signed off on the creation of a new Capstone Charter School in Tuscaloosa and approved an expansion of University Charter School in Livingston, part of a broader pattern of growth for Alabama’s still-young charter school system.
No firm date has been set for when middle school applications will open, but families interested in the program are expected to hear more details from ACCEL and the Mobile Area Education Foundation as the school finalizes staffing and space at its Cottage Hill Road campus ahead of the first middle school class.