Badamkhand Batbold
BU News Service
A new charter school is under construction in East Boston. Excel Academy Charter Schools is the developer behind the latest middle through high school that is currently being built.
The 70,270 square foot building is located at 413 Bremen Street. The school was originally scheduled to be completed last summer. However, this delay has not stopped the Excel Academy team from enrolling their first ninth grade class earlier this fall at a temporary location.
Eastie welcomed its first charter school, also by Excel Academy, in 2003. Today, the neighborhood is home to three charter schools. Two of the three are Excel Academy middle school only charter schools that have a combined enrollment of 452 students. The third charter school is the K-8 Edward Brooke Charter School with an enrollment 475 students.
Amanda Aguilar, 28, a nurse’s aide at East Boston Health Center, has sent in an application to enroll her three young children in a charter school.
“The classrooms aren’t as crowded and the teachers have more time to spend with each child,” Aguilar said.
Charter schools have an open lottery system for enrollment which means Aguilar must wait and hope her children are accepted. However, not all local residents support of charter schools like Excel Academy.
“I think it is appropriate for some students and not for others,” said Mary, 73, a retiree who did not wish to disclose her last name.
She would prefer her grandchildren either went to public school or private school, but absolutely not a charter. She said that she accepts charter schools “as an exception, not as a rule.”
Another Eastie resident echoing her opinion against charter schools was Rosa Montes, 53, who worked in the fast-food industry prior to becoming disabled.
“Charter schools seem to have the best teachers, the best schools, they get the best everything. Then the [public] schools don’t get anything,” Montes said. “There shouldn’t be no charter, there shouldn’t be this or that. They should be all the same. We all have the same kids, same problems, ” she said.
