Charter school proposed in Somerton

SOMERTON — City officials here are considering a proposal by a Phoenix-area social service organization to open a charter high school to serve up to 400 students.

The Arizona Foundation for Social Justice, Children & Youth Services wants open its second Foundation Preparatory Academy charter school to prepare youths between 14 and 21 for careers after graduation or for college graduate programs with a law or medicine emphasis.

During a visit to Somerton this week, Sylvester Ajagbe, the foundation's executive director, said the organization hopes to have a location and nearly $1.5 million financing lined up in time to open the Somerton school by 2015.

Ajagbe met in a work session with Somerton Mayor Martin Porchas, City Councilman Luis Galindo and City Administrator Bill Lee in hopes of winning the city's official backing of the project as part of the foundation's efforts to get a federal loan for the school.

“We are not asking the city for any kind of financial help, just the moral support for us to be able to go to the government and prove that there is a need here for the education,” Ajagbe said.

Porchas said Somerton is receptive to charter school proposals. He noted that more than 1,000 Somerton youth travel every day to Yuma to attend high school, and that the city has appealed to Yuma Union High School District officials in meetings over the past year to build a high school in Somerton.

Porchas said the foundation's charter school proposal will be placed on the agenda for an upcoming city council session for a possible vote to back it.

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Maricopa, the not-for-profit foundation cites as its mission promoting social justice and helping needy youths and families by providing life skills training and family and job development services.

“About two years ago we began to think of starting a charter school,” Ajagbe said. “Our schools are failing and that can be changed by bringing in quality teachers and paying them well.”

Currently, the foundation is finalizing financing for its first charter school, planned for the city of Prescott.

Besides asking for Somerton's backing, Ajagbe also sought the city officials' help in identifying a building that the foundation could purchase and upgrade as the school site.

During the work session this week, Galindo noted that some charter schools have a bad image, prompting Ajagbe to point out that the Foundation Preparation Academy would offer a curriculum with a medicine or law emphasis that would prepare students to go on to universities for training in those careers.

The academy would offer above-average salaries in efforts to attract the most qualified teachers.

“If you don't pay them well, they don't give attention to (student) groups, and there's no quality education.”