The mission of The Environmental Charter School at Frick Park is to educate each student to high academic learning standards using a themed curriculum that will foster knowledge, love of and respect for the environment and the will to preserve it for future generations.

The school began with grades K-3 in September, 2008 and grew to include fourth grade for the 2009/2010 school year. The school will continue to grow by one grade a year to grade 8. The school fills a gap in local education programs as the first environmentally themed public school in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County.

The Board of Trustees of the charter school has chosen Imagine Schools, a high-performing national charter school / organization based in Arlington, VA (imagineschools.com) as its partner. Imagine Schools will provide valuable support to help the school grow and thrive.

Imagine Schools uses these five principles to create this school culture for students, teachers and all other school staff:

Shared Values of integrity, justice and fun influence collective behavior.

Parent Choice and satisfaction are used as key indicators of success.

Academic Achievement is balanced by excellence in reading and math with instruction in science, social studies and the arts and is measured by student learning gains as well as proficiency.

Positive Character Development is themed through the curriculum and its impact is evaluated by measuring discernable positive changes in behavior.

Economic Sustainability is established to have every school financially able to stand on its own with a secure facility to continue to educate children over the long run.

The vision for the school is to create a program that integrates the environmental theme into the curricula in two distinct ways. One is the use of environment and ecology issues in a comprehensive science curriculum aligned with State standards. The other is the appropriate infusion of environment and ecology themes into the content areas of literacy, mathematics, social studies, the arts, music, and health and physical education. For these purposes, the school will use the curriculum of the Green Woods Charter School, which has won an award for excellence from Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Education.

The curriculum of the school will be designed to contain project-based learning experiences to ensure that students apply what they are learning to the real world. The school will develop education partnerships with area environmental organizations to help provide students these experiences.

The school will model a longer school day and a longer school year. This will allow students to receive instruction in all courses – social studies, art, music, health and physical education – as well as science, language arts and math. This will allow teachers to have more time for professional development to improve their teaching.

Each student in the school will have an individual Student Success Plan so that teachers can tailor instruction to their learning needs.