Chartered Territory

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Written and photographed by Will Yurman

Sometime this fall, Whitmore Classical Academy will open its doors to students in kindergarten through third grade in the former Rite Aid drugstore at the corner of Route 101 and 35th Street in Florence. 

It will be the first public charter school in Florence.

And while a charter school is new to Florence, Whitmore Classical Academy is the latest chapter in a story that began 35 years ago, and nearly 2,000 miles away. The state of Minnesota passed the nation’s first charter school law in 1991, and the first charter school opened there the next year. In 2026, there are more than 7,000 charter schools across the country in almost every state, with more than 130 operating in Oregon.  

Before Whitmore opens, there is a lot to do, including choosing the date for the first day of classes. School officials are deciding whether to open before or after Labor Day.

And there is controversy as well. At school board meetings dating back to 2022, in long threads on Florence Facebook pages, and in letters to the editor, members of the community continue to debate whether a charter school is needed or wanted.

Detractors say a small rural district can’t financially support a charter school and that the academy will pull funds from an already-strapped system. They also argue that Whitmore Academy is driven by conservative values, noting its original affiliation with Hillsdale College, a conservative religious school that supports charter schools around the country. 

Supporters argue that the district is failing its students, pointing to low test scores. Some supporters see a district that is teaching the wrong values and promoting ideologies they disagree with, and they believe the charter school will provide a necessary alternative.

The academy hopes to take possession of the former Rite Aid building in the coming weeks and then begin construction and remodeling, Jennifer Waggoner, the school’s executive director, said in an interview in early February. They have an instructional principal in mind, but are waiting to close on the former drugstore before making her an offer. The instructional principal will focus on academics and report to Waggoner, who, as executive director, will oversee the business side. 

The school is accepting lottery applications until March 6.  If there are more applicants than seats, a lottery would be held to select up to 156 students for the school’s first year. 

In year one, the academy will operate kindergarten through third-grade classes, adding one grade (and eventually another building) until it becomes a kindergarten through eighth-grade school.

Before then, teachers need to be hired. And then trained. Furniture purchased. And there remain some outstanding issues with the Siuslaw School District to be settled. The district school board is holding a work session on February 17, 2026, at 5:30 p.m. to discuss concerns with members of the charter school board and Executive Director Waggoner.  The meeting is open to the public. 

One big decision is set. The school will operate on a four-day, Monday to Thursday schedule. Friday will serve as something of a flex day. Waggoner said they envision it as a day to offer optional opportunities for students, and a day for teachers to get caught up on grading and lesson planning. 

“We’ll have a lot of remediation that we need to do. We’re going to have a lot of kids that are below grade level coming into our school. Friday will be used for that kind of remediation, but also extra stuff for the talented and gifted kids that need extra,” she said.

WHY DO CHARTER SCHOOLS EXIST

Charter schools were created to provide a place for public school systems to test new ideas and experiment within state education guidelines. They are the greenhouse, the test kitchen, the science laboratory of public schools. 

Critics say charter schools are often an end run around public schools, driven as much by politics as by academics. That the schools weaken the system by dividing resources, particularly in smaller rural districts. Test scores are not always a great measure of success, they argue. The single biggest indicator of a student’s performance is socioeconomic status. Studies bear this out.

In Oregon, the legislation guiding charter schools reads, in part, that charter schools can be created;

“…as a legitimate avenue for parents, educators and community members to take responsible risks to create new, innovative and more flexible ways of educating children within the public school system.”

This allows the Whitmore Classical Academy board greater flexibility than the district in hiring teachers and staff, as well as in the curriculum and lessons they will teach. They will still use state tests to measure student performance and must follow other state education guidelines, but they are given greater latitude in how they achieve their goals. 

As a public charter school, Whitmore Classical Academy will operate under the sponsorship of the Siuslaw School District. It will be publicly funded through tax dollars, just as the Siuslaw School District is funded. And as a public school, students will attend the academy for free. 

IMPACT ON THE SCHOOL DISTRICT

In Oregon, state funding covers the bulk of a school district’s operating costs and is based on a complicated formula. But at its most basic, a school receives money for each student. That currently translates to about $11,000 per year per student for the Siuslaw District, Siuslaw School District Superintendent Andrew Grzeskowiak said. 

The Whitmore Classical Academy charter school will receive 90% of those dollars, about $9,900 dollars for each student they enroll. The remaining 10% stays with the district to help cover costs associated with supporting the charter school, Superintendent Grzeskowiak said. 

Each student who leaves the district school to attend the charter school reduces the district’s budget by $9,900. If the charter school enrolls new students — homeschoolers or students from outside the district — the district would receive 10% of that student’s funding, about $1,100 per new student.

For roughly every ten students the district loses, it would have to eliminate one teacher or two staff members, Superintendent Grzeskowiak said. That could be offset in part by any students new to the district who attend the charter school. 

The charter school would need to enroll nine new students for every one that comes from the district to balance the ledger. There aren’t enough home-schooled children in the district, something Grzeskowiak tracks, to cover the money the district will lose for each district student who moves to the charter school. So some loss of income for the district is almost guaranteed, he said. 

Based on applications and letters of intent accepted before the formal application process began, Waggoner expects to enroll a large number of homeschooled children and said a small number of families from outside the district have expressed interest as well. “I would say maybe a quarter of our families are homeschooled. I think that’s probably an accurate number,”  she said.

Chuck Trent, a member of the Whitmore board of directors and its treasurer, said the school needs to enroll at least 100 students in its first year to cover operating expenses. If Waggoner’s prediction is correct, about 30 of those students could be new to the district, while 70 or so would leave the district system to attend the charter school.

That would result in a net loss to the district of about $660,000 in the first year. Based on Grzeskowiak’s estimates, that would mean eliminating some combination of about six teachers or 12 staff members.

BIRTH OF A SCHOOL

The idea for a Florence-community charter school was born in 2022, Waggoner said, when a small group “found each other.”  Waggoner wasn’t there at the beginning, but she said, “They all had the thought, we’ve got to have a school option in Florence.”

The original plan was to align the school with the Hillsdale network. Hillsdale College promotes and supports a network of charter schools, and its classical curriculum and core values, as seen on its website, align with those of the Whitmore Academy. But Hillsdale’s religious affiliation is problematic for a public charter school in Oregon. By law, public schools can not be affiliated with any religion. 

And so Whitmore cut ties with Hillsdale, though it is still listed on the Hillsdale website as a Hillsdale College Curriculum School. The Whitmore site lists the Core Knowledge Foundation curriculum for its social studies, science and English language curricula. 

During our conversation, Waggoner and Trent pointed to low test scores in the district as one reason for creating the charter school. Broader cultural issues in the district are also problematic, they said, without naming specifics. They stayed focused on what the academy will do rather than what the district is or isn’t doing. 

It’s time to move on from trying to fix the district, Waggoner said. “At some point, you can’t keep talking about it.” You need to act.

“We’re not going to be debating current issue topics that are sensitive, or the things that should be taught at home, necessarily, or things that are divisive or political. We’re going to focus on math, on reading, on science, on, you know, history as far as founding documents and critical thinking and creating really good foundations,” Waggoner said.

Waggoner was hired as the executive director in the summer of 2025. Her mother, Kay King, is president of the Whitmore Classical Academy’s school board.

Waggoner was proud to say she is a Siuslaw High School graduate, class of 1990. “I am always the first to say I was so prepared for college. I was very successful because I had a great education here,” she said. And all three of her children went through the Siuslaw schools, with her youngest graduating in 2024. 

But. 

But now she firmly believes the community needs an alternative. “I think we’ve got to have a choice. I think it’s beyond just wanting a choice. I think that our Oregon public school system is failing our kids,” she said.

Siuslaw has great teachers in a broken system, she said. “And so I think that the beautiful thing about a charter school is it allows you to kind of get out from underneath that and do things uniquely and try some things and try to do things differently.”

When pushed, she returned to test scores as her concrete example of proof the system is broken. She pulled out a chart showing that as state spending has gone up in Oregon, test scores have fallen.

The answer, she said, is to focus on academics, using the classical curriculum, which leaves “the politics of the day out of the classroom.”

The district schools also focus on math, reading, and the sciences as well as critical thinking, Superintendent Grzeskowiak said. Current events are discussed in a manner appropriate to the grade level to develop critical thinking and an understanding of different views and values, he said. 

Emma Muehle is the mom of a fifth- and sixth-grader in the district. She worries that the charter school will pull money from the existing district schools without offering anything “uniquely valuable.” 

Superintendent Grzeskowiak agrees that test scores are low but sees a complicated set of reasons. Socioeconomic factors, a shorter school year compared to other states, and high absenteeism all play a role, he said. Compared to Washington state, an Oregon student will spend roughly 30 fewer weeks in school over their K-12 school career. That is nearly a full school year less than a student in Washington. 

Whitmore Academy will follow Oregon state requirements for the length of its school year with a four-day-a-week schedule, matching the number of instructional hours offered by the district.

CREATING THE SCHOOL

The charter school board has secured a loan for $4.5 million to cover the purchase of the building and the first phase of construction. They have also been fundraising and have about $1.3 million in the bank, Trent said. 

They will need to continue fundraising to help pay for upcoming capital costs, Trent said.  Furniture will cost about $15,000 per classroom for desks, chairs, cabinets, etc., Waggoner said. If the school reaches its maximum enrollment of eight classrooms, two per grade, the total would be $120,000 for the first year. Phase two of the construction plan would include outfitting the playground, which initially will be a fenced-in asphalt surface on the south side of the building. 

Operating costs will depend in part on how many students attend in the first year. Kindergarten classes will have a maximum of 18 students each, while first through third-grade classes will top out at 20 students each. Fully enrolled, that would be 156 students.

March 6 is the application deadline, but “It’s really hard for families to make a decision without seeing the building, without knowing that we signed on the building.” So adjustments may need to be made, Waggoner said. 

In addition to enrolling at least 100 students in the first year to pay the bills, they will need to raise another $500,000 next year to move forward with the next phase of construction and other expenses, Trent said.

TEACHING IN THE CHARTER SCHOOL

A different curriculum and a different culture. This is how Waggoner described how the charter school will be different than the district. Though the plan lacks specifics, she believes the Whitmore Classical Academy can raise test scores. And Chuck Trent said if they can’t, they have no business being in business. 

The details will come into focus once an instructional principal is in place, teachers are hired, lesson plans are written, and teachers are trained in both the curriculum and the culture the school wants to instill in its students, Waggoner said.

The charter will use a classical education curriculum. Their website describes it this way:

Classical education is a liberal arts education rooted in ancient history. “Liberal”, in this case, means “free.” Classical education prepares young people to live in freedom and independence, engaging them in the highest matters and the deepest questions of truth, justice, virtue, and beauty. Academically, a classical education encompasses:

• A content-rich, traditional curriculum, including the use of classical books and art
• Concentrated study of the core academic disciplines: history, literature, mathematics, and science
• An appreciation for—and study of—the visual and performing arts
• A strong emphasis on language, literacy, writing, and mastery of the English language
• Reading of the great books in literature and primary source documents in history
• Socratic teaching by kind-hearted teachers who are subject matter experts

The district uses a modern, standards-based education model that teaches core academic skills, civics, civic engagement, and social skills, Superintendent Grzeskowiak said. And as a government entity, they are politically and religiously neutral. Both the district and the charter are public schools, required to accept any student in the district. 

In the language the charter school uses, Grzeskowiak said he hears what he called, “a nonacademic influence.”  “And if that’s within a parent’s personal set of values. Great. If it’s not, how are you working to make sure that those other students are included?” he asked.

Charter schools, in general, are controversial. And the Whitmore Academy has created its own debate in the Siuslaw area community.  

If it succeeds, will it do so at the expense of the school district? Is there a societal cost to the Florence community of dividing the public school system? Could the charter become a model for the entire district?

The school is on track to open in September. 

“I really think that we’re going to be an important part of Florence’s history. When you look back on 2026, I think it’s going to be a really important part in Florence’s history, and I’m excited to be part of that,” Jennifer Waggoner said.