Word: mesa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Months before, Eric Plunkett, 19, had framed his Gallaudet acceptance letter and told his mother, "In four years, I'll replace this with my diploma." Now his battered body lay in his room in a dorm called Cogswell, discovered when a hallmate named Joseph Mesa Jr. told a resident assistant that Plunkett had missed class and there was a peculiar smell coming from his room...
...here on the frontier, only the hardiest survive. And Paramount Academy is both figuratively and literally on the frontier. The school operates out of a handful of trailers at the edge of a cookie-cutter housing complex in Mesa, Ariz., a rugged desert city that sprouted into a Phoenix suburb two decades ago. But the academy sits on an ideological edge as well: Paramount is a charter school, a publicly funded enterprise that's privately run--in this case, primarily by a former shoe-repair-shop owner who never graduated from college--and free of the bureaucracy that bogs down...
...kids bolt out of their homes as if she were the Good Humor man. "She's not afraid to walk up and down the streets like she's lived here for years," says Emily Valenzuela, a mom who lives a block away. Neither are the dozens of kids from Mesa's ritziest zip codes who now commute to Southside to attend the academy...
...Mesa Arts is a takes-a-village enterprise. But many of the city's charter schools are less lavish affairs that can fall prey to the strains that plague most start-ups. This was certainly true of Paramount Academy. Launched in 1997, the school was originally led by Marsh Dale Cline, a seasoned public school teacher. His son Dale R. Cline was a member of the board and also groomed the school grounds. After cycling through several board members and surviving one aborted takeover attempt, the senior Cline resigned last summer. His son, who freely admits "my background...
...schools. Paramount discovered it had overestimated its head count, and state funding was reduced by $400,000. With its credit cards maxed to the hilt, the school made cutbacks. The school is suffering from growing pains and will be on its feet this fall, according to Leo Condos, a Mesa attorney who represents Paramount and specializes in charter-school law. Says Condos: "Most of the people in the charter business have an educational dream, and they just don't always pursue it with the best business knowledge...