Pride Prep, Spokane’s first charter school, has secured $1.7 million of the $2 million it hopes to raise in order to open in fall 2015, says Brenda McDonald, former Spokane Public School administrator and CEO of the new school.

With a previously announced location secured, the school is well on its way to opening as scheduled, McDonald says.

The $1.7 million in funds raised includes several grants, the latest a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Pride Prep is one of six planned charter schools in Washington state to receive grants awarded by the Department of Education, which will help the Spokane school buy equipment for science labs and will be used for other startup costs that involve one-time expenditures, says McDonald. 

Pride Prep also has received two other grants, one for $400,000 from the Washington State Charter Schools Association and the other for $500,000 from a private foundation that McDonald declines to disclose, in addition to several smaller grants.

 “We’re trying to raise a total of $2 million to get us through the end of 2017, which would supplement federal money that starts in the fall,” McDonald says. 

She estimates costs at $750,000 before the school opens and $500,000 for each of the first two years of operation. The school will receive local levy funding of $2,204 per student from Spokane Public Schools in its first year, which is based on total approved levy funding of $73.5 million, divided by the total district enrollment of 33,340, in addition to typical state and federal sources of funding. That funding will be distributed starting in September 2015 and will be paid on a monthly basis, with the final 20 percent of the funding arriving after the end of the fiscal year, in June 2016. 

Pride Prep is set to open next fall at 811 E. Sprague, near downtown Spokane, in 15,000-square-feet of leased space that formerly was occupied by the Social Security Administration. McDonald says the lease represents about 10 percent of the school’s operating budget annually. 

The location satisfies McDonald’s priorities of being near the university district and close to downtown Spokane. “This provides us access to multiple communities,” she says. “And the space allows us to have more of a flexible learning space, meaning we can have large learning labs that can be used for project-based learning opportunities, and kids can spread out. We will be able to configure it with movable walls.”

McDonald says she and a staff of three—a recruitment specialist, an administrative assistant and a technology director—have been actively recruiting both teachers and students over the past few months. The school already has about 50 potential students out of 120 – 60 sixth graders and 60 seventh graders – that it hopes to enroll for its inaugural school year. 

If the number of students exceeds available seats by the March 20 deadline, names will be chosen at random, McDonald says.

“We anticipate that happening during the first year in terms of watching across the country as states have started charter schools in their state,” she says. “It’s pretty typical for them to have more students than there are seats. We have 50 right now and that is a pretty good indication. We’re almost hallway there. We think there’s going to be quite a bit of interest.”

Eventually, McDonald says, the school expects to serve up to 600 students in grades six through 12, with a focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, as well as a strong community and business component. 

By the end of the school year in June 2015, McDonald expects to have hired six teachers and four classified employees at the school. 

“We’re recruiting high-quality teachers and we’re excited at how many students we already have,” she says.