HARPSWELL

Ian Poeraatmadja, 15, of Bowdoinham, got his first look Thursday at the charter school he will be attending as a freshman starting Sept. 3.

A new experience for him — and for the school, too.

Harpswell Coastal Academy is one of three new public charter schools set to open this academic year and one of five approved in Maine.

Thursday night, the gym of the former West Harpswell School was full with its first Harpswell Coastal Academy students and their families — many in the school for the first time — who spent two hours learning more about the school’s themes and opening status.

Ian’s mother, Kristen, said her son has wanted to be a marine biologist since he was 2, “so exercises in marine biology, science and learning by doing” should be a good fit for him, she said.

When a spot opened on Memorial Day for him, she said the decision was his to make.

Opening soon

Charter schools receive public funding but are formed and operated by parents, teachers and community leaders, and are exempt from many of the rules and regulations that apply to public school districts.

Harpswell Coastal Academy will open with 60 students in grades 6 and 9 on Sept. 3.

The school’s parents and their children wanted to know Thursday how the school plans to get their children to and from class, how the schedule will work, the technology they will use, and what their curriculum will be.

“Those with doubts, we can perfectly expect that,” Head of School John D’Anieri said. “Getting this chance to do this first year, with this particular group of people, is going to be really fun and really satisfying, because they are extraordinary, and it’s just going to be fun.

“You only get to do something like this once: 60 kids, six teachers, figuring this out. It’s, by the way, largely figured out, but we’re going to have to do all of these things for the first time together and this is an amazing group of people to do it with.”

Teachers led students into one of the classrooms where they all introduced each other before D’Anieri started giving parents information.

“It is your school and it is our school, but it is also Harpswell’s school and the Midcoast’s school,” he said. “It is a public school that serves anyone who wants to go to school here; and the only limitation is we’re going to keep it small, so some years we may need to pick some names out of a hat.”

Talking about what to expect the first three weeks of school, D’Anieri told parents, “We build community really carefully at Harpswell Coastal Academy.”

“We’re going to spend a lot of time in core groups,” also known as advisory groups, which is very important to parents because the core group is their point of contact with the school. “The idea is, one teacher knows those students really well and their responsibility is to know how your student is doing in all of their academic pursuits and other pursuits.”

The school will also be building student work teams, because students will be known as the “worker” and teacher is “coach,” D’Anieri said.

“That means our students are going to be serving food in groups; they’re going to organize and serve food and clean up. No one gets to leave a dish at our school for someone else to clean up.”

Students and teachers will be doing “a fair amount of field work,” D’Anieri said, so students will be in the community exploring, perhaps at Bowdoin’s Arctic museum or out in the clam flats — at least twice a week for at least half a day.

“We don’t see a lot of distinction between hands-on and so-called academic learning. You cannot have one without the other,” D’Anieri said.

The kids will be investigating the food system, D’Anieri said, and broken into three trimesters will look first at what is food and where it comes from; what is a system; and what is a sustainable food system.

Students will be planting and care for school gardens at local farms.

The students will also be “mapping Harpswell,” which is the second “big investigation,”  D’Anieri said.

They will investigate “Who am I and where I come from,” which will involve some oral history and talking to family members; “Where are we now?” and then “Where are we going?” — which will likely involve some mapping help from a volunteer who is a comparative mathematician.

The school day will run from 8:45 a.m. to 3:45 p.m., but staff will be at the school daily from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Students in Bowdoin, Bowdoinham and Topsham will jump on an otherwise empty School Administrative District 75 school bus at Mt. Ararat High School that will drop students off at Harpswell Coastal Academy.

The charter school is purchasing two 14-passenger vans but may also be looking at car pools and help from parents.

Thursday, Ian Poeraatmadja said he was excited and nervous, facing an entirely new experience.

At D’Anieri’s example of explorations on the clam flats, Poeraatmadja rubbed his palms together.

Down his alley?

“Oh yeah. Field time, measurements. Now I’m excited.”

dmoore@timesrecord.com