The Fayette County Board of Education isn't ready to enter the charter

school business just yet.

Monday night, members of the board heard an update from Pam Riddle, assistant

superintendent for curriculum, on efforts to start a charter high school

in the county.

As proposed by Superintendent John DeCotis, the charter school would be

housed at the LaFayette Educational Center and offer advanced course offerings

that the county's five traditional high schools can't offer individually

because of lack of interest.

For example, this semester one class of Advanced Placement psychology is

being offered at the LEC as a trial run, Riddle said.

Though it's going well, Riddle said the experiment has proven that

the county doesn't have the resources available yet to launch a full-scale

charter school with a host of course offerings.

"Last year we decided to start small because we didn't have the

funding," Riddle said. "We feel at this point that we're not

ready to make this committment."

Financing is just one concern, Riddle said. Others are support from different

agencies in the community, as well as a solid committment from the Board

of Education itself.

"It would involve a lot of legwork on our part" to get a full-fledged

charter high school up and running, Riddle said. "We're still interested

in studying a charter school, but not without the proper funding in place."

Riddle said Fayette school officials have been looking hard at Coweta County's

charter high school, which is a good model.

"Whether we need to proceed with the exact same model Coweta has is

another question," she said.

One key to success of Coweta's charter program is that transportation

to the site is provided. The single AP Psych class being offered in Fayette

County this semester is taught in a modified first period, and students from

the various high schools must provide their own transportation