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The Associated Press State & Local Wire

These materials may not be republished without the express written
consent
of The Associated Press

August 18, 2005, Thursday, BC cycle

SECTION: State and Regional

LENGTH: 849 words

HEADLINE: New charter school will feature classes taught in Greek

BYLINE: By RANDALL CHASE, Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: DOVER, Del.

BODY:
While Delaware students prepare to begin a new school year later this
month,
members of Wilmington's Greek community are already doing their homework.

Community leaders are busy laying the foundation for Odyssey Charter
School,
an elementary school where students will be taught in Greek.

Odyssey, scheduled to open in the fall of 2006, will become one of only
a
handful of Greek-immersion charter schools in the country, but officials
with a Washington, D.C.-based Greek-American heritage organization say
many
people hope to change that.

"They want to see this happen on a national level," said Basil Mossaidis,
executive director of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive
Association, which is working with Wilmington residents on the Odyssey
project.

George Chambers, a member of AHEPA's Wilmington chapter and president of
the
Odyssey school board, says the idea for a charter school began with a
phone
call from an education ministry official at the Greek embassy in
Washington.

At the time, Chambers was in charge of an evening Greek school focusing
on
language instruction at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church. The
education
ministry official called to ask if Chambers knew that the Greek
government
was offering to send credentialed teachers from Greece to U.S. schools
where
Greek was taught full-time.

With the No Child Left Behind Act authorizing federal seed money to
support
charter schools, Chambers and other members of Delaware's Greek-American
community saw an opportunity. The Red Clay district school board voted
in
May to approve Odyssey's charter, and is expected to vote soon on
selling
the Odyssey group 15 acres near the Pike Creek shopping center.

While the Wilmington area's Greek community numbers about 850 families,
the
charter school is not targeted exclusively at students of Greek heritage
and
officials expect them to account for only about 10 percent of the
enrollment.

Instead, officials say knowledge of Greek, one of the root languages of
English, can benefit all students, especially in developing language
skills
and comprehension. Odyssey officials say a survey sent out to about 3,500
families in the Pike Creek area last year showed overwhelming support
for
their plan.

"It is all about the education of our youth; that's independent of
heritage,
language," Chambers said.

"We have the ability to give the Greek language viability for
generations to
come," he added. "It's a new and very positive way of having the
language
become an integral part of people's lives."

Odyssey will start with an initial enrollment of about 140 students in
grades K-2. Officials plan to add a grade each year until they reach
fifth
grade and a final enrollment of about 350, when they will look at
transitioning from modular buildings to a brick-and-mortar facility.
Student
recruitment is expected to begin later this fall.

In addition to a core curriculum of traditional subjects, Odyssey
students
will take Greek language classes and a daily review of math lessons in
Greek. Chambers said the school will have a full complement of certified
teachers offering instruction in the core curriculum, and that the
certification process likely will be offered to teachers coming from
Greece
as well.

The school is modeled on the Archimedean Academy in Miami, Fla., where
math
and reading scores of third-graders rank near the top among all Miami-Dade
elementary schools.

Florida is also home to the Athenian Academy in Dunedin, which became
the
first Greek immersion charter school in the United States in 2000. The
academy has been plagued recently by financial and administrative
problems,
and briefly lost its charter earlier this year. Nevertheless, its
embattled
board president succeeded in gaining approval in another county for a
second
Greek charter school, whose scheduled opening this year has been delayed.

Meanwhile, the Socrates Academy is scheduled to open later this month in
Charlotte, N.C. Like Odyssey, Socrates is based on the Miami school,
which
AHEPA turned to in developing a guide for opening similar schools
nationwide.

Mossaidis said AHEPA is working on plans for a charter school in
Washington,
D.C., and has received expressions of interest from Pennsylvania and
California. The group is focusing on states with laws that are friendly
to
the charter school movement, he said.

"This may not work in Oklahoma, this may not work in Idaho, but it
certainly
can work in these urban areas that face challenges," Mossaidis said.

In Delaware, which already is home to 13 charter schools, Odyssey is one
of
four new charter schools scheduled to open next year.

Larry Gabbert, director of the state Department of Education's charter
school office said roughly 7,000 of Delaware's 120,000 public school
students, or roughly six percent, are enrolled in charter schools, one
of
the highest percentages in the nation.

---

On the Net:

Delaware Charter School Office:
http://www.doe.state.de.us/charterschools

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