A new Stop Six charter school has been meeting with child care centers. Here’s why
.png "A rendering shows the exterior of the Rocketship Public charter elementary school that will open on the Stop Six neighborhood on East Berry Street.")
Community leaders, administrators and advocates gathered at the future site of a yet-to-be-named charter elementary school in the Stop Six neighborhood Wednesday after years of planning, and a sometimes contentious approval process that concluded in June.
SaJade Miller, a former Fort Worth ISD administrator and principal who is serving as the superintendent for Rocketship Public Schools Texas, spoke about his vision for providing a top-class education to benefit the community and school district as students move on into middle and high school in the district.
“There is a unique character and spirit in this community, and I am thrilled to be a part of it once again, but on behalf of ... Rocketship, Texas,” he said. “We are building a true community school, by parents, for parents that will holistically meet the needs of our students.”
The school, which is being constructed at 3520 E. Berry St., will be a two-story elementary school with 22 classrooms, two learning labs and a gymnasium.
Rocketship Public Schools is a charter operator based in California with school programs in Washington, D.C., Tennessee and Wisconsin. They have plans to operate more schools in Texas, but the location opened in Fort Worth is the first.
Christina Hanson, the founding principal for the campus, grew up in the neighborhood and said the campus will offer residents an educational experience that is integrated into the community, with special attention to parent involvement.
“I’ve always had a heart to serve,” Hanson said. “And the entire 15 years I have spent in education has been spent here serving my community, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Community relations efforts started early, with meetings happening when the school first sought to be recognized by the State Board of Education in 2019.
Partnering with child care providers
The charter school also reached out to future partners when they first entered the community.
Angela James Davis ran into a Rocketship employee at a Christmas party in 2019, and shared that she worked at a child care center, Sunrise Early Learning and Development Center.
“The next thing I knew she just showed up at my door with all kinds of literature, welcome packets and more,” Davis said. “She asked what I would like to see.”
Through direct outreach like that, monthly meetings and phone calls, representatives from the school have made it a point to form relationships with early learning centers around the school.
Miller, the superintendent, said the need for a community-wide commitment to education became clear when he worked at the campus and administration level at Fort Worth ISD.
“I realized that it’s really a larger ecosystem that really impacts achievement at all levels,” he said. “That’s why we are strategically partnering with the early child care centers.”
There are 22 early learning centers within three miles of the new campus, and Miller said school officials have met with all of them.
“We know by name and face all of them, and we will support them with professional development, with resources and with support, so that we can ensure that students at the earliest level have what they need to be successful,” he said.
That early intervention will also benefit students when they transition from the charter school back into the school district when they go to middle school, Miller said.
Some providers, like Tabitha Alford, said they had rarely heard from officials from any school district, let alone received offers of help for curriculum and professional development before the charter entered the neighborhood.
“It is important because you want to make sure that when children leave childcare, that they transition to a school that is going to continue their education,” Alford said.
Davis said the charter school has helped refine her skills with family engagement, something that is important to the community.
Dimitri Demps, who runs the Faith Academy Learning Center LLC in the neighborhood, said that the early collaboration will benefit the community in the long run.
“We have our own curriculum, but it is very important that we work with schools so when our 3-4-year-olds transition to 5-years-olds, we get to watch them grow,” she said. “Rocketship is part of what we stand for, and a team that we want to be a part of to bring them to the next level.”
Demps said she also has a relationship with Fort Worth ISD, and doesn’t view the new addition of Rocketship into the community as a competition.
Future plans
While Rocketship Public Schools Texas has plans to operate other elementary schools in Tarrant County, Miller said there are no plans to expand beyond fifth grade in the Stop Six neighborhood.
“By design, we are a pre-K to five model only,” Miller said. “Because we want to work with (school districts). We’re not trying to create a parallel school system, we are trying to fulfill a specific need for early learning in this community so that students can ... leverage their voice to go back to the school of their choice.”
But parents, elected officials and community members highlighted the chronically under-performing public schools in the neighborhood as a catalyst for the charter school.
Yolanda Seban, who has four kids, drove all the way to Austin to voice her support for the campus before the State Board of Education.
“ISDs have been around for a very long time,” she told the Star-Telegram. “For the longest time, that is all we had.”
The low accountability rating at her locally zoned school led her to explore charter schools even before Rocketship considered opening a school in Texas, and galvanized her to support it.
“They really came into the community wanting to know what was up,” she said of the initial meetings. “It was not a facade … they asked the right questions.”
Gyna Bivens, the city councilmember for Stop Six, lauded Seban, and also thanked state officials for approving the charter school’s application.
“You can look around Fort Worth ISD schools and I’m not throwing any kind of shade,” she said. “But if there is a way to get your children a quality education, I admire you for stepping off that path.”
