Word: paramountly
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Carrie Roan, a medical transcriptionist, was more than ready when she heard a radio ad for Paramount two summers ago. With 30-plus kids per class and unbending teachers, the public schools had failed her daughter Staci in most of the familiar ways. But after a year at Paramount, Staci was thriving. With the help of the school's performing-arts program, the once shy fourth-grader had found her voice and performed a Beach Boys medley in a charity concert at the Phoenix airport...
...everything was ideal, and trouble was coming. Though Staci was more confident, she seldom brought home much schoolwork. Instead, she complained of unruly classes and bus rides. Then the school business got in the way of education. Paramount had to cut staff and stop ordering new school supplies. In February the school lost its music teacher in a salary dispute and suddenly switched to a much cheaper, 4-H agriculture curriculum. Staci would have to drop her singing ambitions and cultivate seedlings. "Paramount was attractive to me because of the choice," says Roan, who is enrolling her daughter in another...
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...
...second blow came last fall, when parents started decamping to other 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...
...this brave new marketplace, education and business are harder and harder to separate. For this school year, Paramount budgeted $5,000 for advertising and $6,000 for textbooks. Even as the school was freezing funds for new supplies, Paramount principal Bud Garrett had to send his teachers door-to-door to recruit new pupils. "We scrambled big time," explains Garrett, "flyering and advertising until we got up to 140." While Garrett and his staff were out fishing for students, Cline was hard at work on another venture: a second Paramount campus in nearby Peoria, where he says there are "better...