When the Weilenmann School of Discovery opens in August officials say the charter school will offer parents an educational choice with highly qualified teachers and small class sizes.

In its first year, the school under construction on Kilby Road will have about 550 students in grades K-8, Weilenmann Principal Mary Kimball said.

She hopes the average class size at the charter school is about 24 students.

Weilenmann is a public charter school. Parents will not pay tuition for their kids to attend Weilenmann because the charter school uses monies from public schools where their children would have gone.

Children selected to attend the Weilenmann School of Discovery are chosen through a lottery system.

“As long as you are a Utah resident you could place yourself in the lottery and have an equal chance of getting in because it is completely random,” said Cynthia Phillips, middle school dean at the Weilenmann School of Discovery. “Once people have indicated an interest and placed themselves in the lottery we have no control over who is actually admitted to the school.”

A large chunk of Weilenmann students could come from the Park City area. There was a lottery in the winter and students were selected for next year but a few openings remain for seventh- and eighth-graders to attend Weilenmann in the fall. Others can be added to waiting lists.

“It’s always good to get on the wait list because you never know whether or not a place will open up,” Phillips said. “There could be an opportunity down the line or maybe this year. People change their mind between now and the fall.”

Charter teachers must perform

Officials at the Weilenmann School of Discovery can hold their instructors to high standards because teachers at the school will not belong to unions, Phillips said.

“The first and most important piece is good teaching and good faculty,” Phillips said. “One of the things we are able to do is insist on a quality of scholarship and pedagogy that our teachers will yearly have to demonstrate or they are gone.”

Firing unfit teachers is difficult for public schools beholden to unions, Phillips said.

“You can’t get rid of the worst teacher in the district who has been teaching for 20 years,” Phillips said. “A charter school finds itself much more accountable in how it has allocated its resources. The parents have essentially taken back the control from unwieldy institutions where they feel like they have no say and that there is, in fact, no real accountability for teachers.”

Weilenmann does not belong to a school district and funding is taken from districts when students transfer from public schools into the charter school.

With fewer kids to educate, when students transfer to the charter school there should be no negative impact on funding at districts they leave behind, Phillips said.

“It is actually a financial boon for the district,” she said. “They have more money and a more reasonable number of students so they are actually in a position to drop their class size and put more money into educating their students.”

State law protects districts from losing funding in the first year after a student transfers from a public school into Weilenmann, Phillips explained.

Public schools will continue to receive a chunk of the funding for the students who leave the district even after the kids are enrolled for a few years in the charter school, she added.

“The first year that a student leaves the district the district retains all of the money for that student for one year,” Phillips said. “In subsequent years, the districts still retain a substantial percentage of the money that would have paid for that student who is now absent.”

A choice in education

Weilenmann students in their early years are taught music, art, science and physical education.

“People who are trained in these fields of expertise will really focus on those subjects with the students,” Kimball said. “It allows our other homeroom teachers to really hone in and focus on language, math and history, the subject matter that they teach and teach so well. They will not feel overwhelmed and burdened by having to teach seven subjects.”

Silver Creek resident Kevrine Wells said her children will attend Weilenmann because the school will focus on the arts.

“A huge factor for me was when the [Park City School District] pulled the instrumental music program for fifth-graders,” Wells said. “I think kids these days are losing the opportunity to be kids and have the creative outlets and the freedom to explore as individuals. Music and art and the outdoors are outlets that nourish the individuals in us.”

Wells also said some classes in the Park City area have grown too large.

“I’m looking at the school this year where the kindergarten class is 28 or 29,” Wells said about Trailside Elementary School. “Fourth-grade class sizes this year are 30, which is too big.”