Imagine all Don Pedro-area students having local schools to attend.

Imagine children not having to ride buses for two or three hours each day over treacherous routes to get an education.

Imagine local adults having local control over the schools their children attend.

Residents were encouraged to imagine all that and more at a community meeting hosted last week by the Save Our Schools committee.

The SOS group hopes to launch the new school, dubbed Golden Lakes Charter School, next fall.

Two local high school girls who are student representatives on the Golden Lakes Charter Committee urged the community to get behind the charter effort.

Brenna Gebaroff pointed out that, “when Big Oak Flat (the school district board that calls the shots for students on the Tuolumne County side of the subdivision) closes down our school (Don Pedro High), it will be a minimum two-hour commute daily for us to get an education. Does anyone see the practicality in that, when we have a lovely school right in our own back yard?”

She added, “Big Oak Flat isn’t just breaking up a school, but severing ties made between students, teachers, and our community.”

Sarah Spirk agreed. “I individually don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t get equal opportunities as the other schools do. We have the appropriate facilities, and the right people behind us to get this charter started. All we need is a little extra help.”

Don Pedro High teacher Greg Brown presented the results of a student survey, in which students expressed a desire for the charter school to offer such classes as auto shop, photography, dance, cooking, woodshop and instrumental music. Under a charter system, those class offerings would be do-able, because local experts could be hired to teach them, he said.

Plus, he added, “Imagine all the chore time your kids would have if they didn’t have to ride the bus two or three hours a day!”

Guest speaker Jerry Simmons, an attorney with a Sacramento law firm specializing in charter school law, said the California charter school movement is exploding in many communities because it’s an effective way to get out from under the costly and burdensome laws that keep getting handed down from the state and federal level.

“The amount of laws districts have to deal with has become overwhelming,” Simmons said. “There are so many of them … it’s gotten a little bit out of hand.”

Charter schools are a departure from the “one size fits all” educational directives coming down from Sacramento, he added.

Charters can use different textbooks and offer different classes than traditional schools. They can set a different pay scale than the public school district.

He said charters have much more budget flexibility. “Charter schools have the flexibility to spend money however they feel will produce the best student outcomes,” he said.

Charters don’t use traditionally elected school boards; rather, he said, “you can hand-pick members” based on the expertise needed on the board.

Simmons and Jeff Sands, a representative of the California Charter Schools Association, recommend that the local committee attempt to create one non-profit umbrella charter with two charters under it – Lake Don Pedro Elementary School, currently operated by the Mariposa County Unified School District, and Don Pedro High, now under the Big Oak Flat-Groveland Unified School District.

Simmons and Sands encouraged local residents to seek out people in the community with a variety of skills in education, finance, government, technology and other fields who will be willing to volunteer time and services to help get Golden Lakes Charter off the ground.

Once they’re up and running, they will have access to federal grants of around $600,000 and a loan of $250,000 to help fund the activities.

Most important, though, the guest speakers said, is planning what the schools will offer students.

“You need to have a serious conversation as a community about what you want your educational program to be,” Simmons said. “It’s a critical element that you’re on the same page.”

While there are many opportunities for charters to be flexible according to student needs – to the point of offering an online Mandarin Chinese class for students who prefer that to, say, Spanish – Simmons warned, “You can’t be all things to all people.”