Harmony school expands for second year

Insulation and wall panels are still on the floor of the new gymnasium at the Harmony Science Academy Odessa campus, but administrators promise the gym and two new classrooms, as well as a second set of restrooms, will be ready by Aug. 20, two days before the charter school starts its second academic year.

“They’ll have most of the work done in a week,” principal Emin Cavusoglu said.

The school, located at 2755 N. Grandview Ave., a former Dunlaps store, is putting in the classrooms because it is adding a ninth grade, Cavusoglu said. It will add another grade each year until it serves kindergarten through 12th grade.

Meanwhile the gym is needed because the school was forced to have physical education classes in the cafeteria during February’s freezing weather in its first year.

“Now it’s so hot,” Cavusoglu said.

The school still has space left to expand for the 10th through 12th grades, with some of the building still vacant. In fact, the sign for the men’s furnishings department at Dunlaps is still visible on the north wall of the building.

Cavusoglu said he would have liked for the school, one of more than 30 charter schools in Texas operated by the Houston-based Cosmos Foundation, to have built out the remainder of the building at one time. But state cuts of $4 billion in education funding hit charter schools as well as traditional school districts, and charter schools don’t have access to property-tax revenue as a fallback.

“Compared to traditional public schools, our funding is limited,” he said. “So we have to be very wise spending it.”

Students are still lining up to attend Harmony. Cavusoglu, who took over two weeks ago after serving as principal at a charter school in Arkansas for eight years, said the Odessa school received 442 applications for 160 openings at the school, with the rest of the applicants going on a waiting list.

Overall, the school plans to increase enrollment to 350 from 220 last year, Cavusoglu said.

Harmony earned a Texas Education Agency accountability rating of academically acceptable in its first year. While no new accountability ratings will be issued until 2013, while TEA switches over to STAAR and End of Course testing, Cavusoglu said Harmony is already working to pick up its performance.

This week, 50 underperforming students are coming in for six hours of tutoring, he said. The school has a goal of becoming a recognized or exemplary campus.

“We are already working with the students,” Cavusoglu said.

While some students take robotics or chess as an hour-long extracurricular activity once school lets out each day during the school year, others will undergo more tutoring, assistant principal Cengiz Han said.

“We try to do our best for our students to provide a safe learning environment,” Han said.

The halls at Harmony are lined with pennants from colleges. Cavusoglu said that is part of the school’s mission to prepare students for college, even while they are in kindergarten.

“We give our classrooms university names,” he said. “Instead of Section ‘A’ or ‘B,’ we name it ‘Georgia Tech’ or ‘Rice’ or ‘Baylor.’ ”

Students start using a computer lab in kindergarten, while regular science classes are set up like laboratories. Cavusoglu said this is part of Harmony’s emphasis on science, math, engineering and technology.

“We believe our nation lacks successful people in these fields,” he said.

@OAschools