MIDDLETOWN — The Lake County International Charter School (LCICS) recently announced the reinstatement of the eighth grade class, as well as the continuation of the free and reduced lunch program.
“Three years ago, we made the decision to reduce from a K to eight to a K to six to consolidate our classes on one site. We did this because of the state budget cuts and the need to keep our school fiscally strong, and it worked,” LCICS Director Gwendolyn Maupin-Ahern said. “Last year, we added back in the seventh grade, and this year several of our students who started kindergarten in LCICS”s very first year expressed a desire to remaining at LCICS through their eighth-grade year. It was important to us to find a way to make that happen, and fiscally it make our school even stronger.”
LCICS has always had multi-age classrooms, such as the St. Helena Unified School District”s Multi-Age Program (MAP), allowing for increased flexibility for grade configurations as well as for the students within each class, according to Maupin-Ahern.
“We can shift our grade combinations each year based on the classroom populations, and within each classroom, we can group students by abilities rather than just by age,” Maupin-Ahern said. “This creates a learning environment based on the individual strengths and weaknesses of each student rather than just on their age and grade.”
The school will have four classrooms, Maupin-Ahern said. Kindergarten and first-grade students will share a classroom; second- and third-grade students will have another; the third room will be for fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade students and another classroom will be for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students.
The class size for the youngest students will be at a maximum of 24 students and 25 for the three other classrooms, Maupin-Ahern stated.
To add the fourth classroom, LCICS will move the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade classroom to a property across the street from the main campus. The building, formerly used as a Judo dojo, is being renovated to create one large classroom, and the outdoor area will provide additional room for exercise and the gardening program, Aupin-Ahern stated.
“We have also hired an additional teacher, Karlene Barnes, who will join our three current, long-time teachers, Pamela Kirkpatrick, Sheamus Kennedy and Andrew Vance,” Maupin-Ahern said.
LCICS will continue to provide a daily lunch program in cooperation with the Middletown Unified School District, supplementing with vegetables from the student-grown garden whenever possible, Maupin-Ahern.
Based on family income, students are able to receive a hot lunch free-of-charge or for a small fee.
For information about the school or enrollment, email info@lcics.org, call 987-3063 or visit www.lcics.org.
