Atlanta, GA – The Georgia Charter Schools Association’s 2nd Annual Leadership Conference named Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School (ANCS), an APS public charter school located in Atlanta’s Grant Park/Ormewood neighborhood, the 2015 GCSA Charter School of the Year.
As the winning school, Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School will receive a $50,000 grant from The Coca-Cola Foundation. The highly selective award was established to honor excellence in Georgia’s rapidly growing charter school community. This is the fourth year of this partnership initiative between The Coca-Cola Foundation and the Georgia Charter Schools Association (GCSA).
Atlanta Neighborhood Charter is a K-8 school with two campuses formed by the merger of two successful charter schools — Neighborhood Charter School (NCS) which opened in 2001 and serves K-5 students; and Atlanta Charter Middle School (ACMS) which opened in 2005 and serves 6th-8th grade students.
ANCS is a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES), a network of hundreds of schools around the nation. CES fosters small, personalized learning communities in which teachers and students know each other well in a climate of trust, and high expectations for all.
The charter school’s awareness of community needs and its commitment to collaborate with traditional public schools in APS’s Jackson Cluster was noted by the selection committee. ANCS recently secured a 5-year, $3M grant from the U.S. Dept. of Education to support its work on improving math and science teaching and teacher retention.
Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School (ANCS) is the winner of a $50,000 grant from
The Coca-Cola Foundation as the 2015 GCSA Charter School of the Year. Staff from the
school received the news at the Awards Luncheon of the Georgia Charter Schools Association’s
2nd Annual Leadership Conference. Pictured: ANCS Executive Director, Matt Underwood (2nd from the left), Cathy Ramos (center) from the Foundation, Dr. Tony Roberts, President & CEO of the Georgia
Charter Schools Association (GCSA).
Matt Underwood, the school’s Executive Director said, “It was such a privilege to be a finalist for this award the past two years against several other terrific schools. We are so appreciative of the GCSA and Coca-Cola for sponsoring this award. Our school has been open for 13 years, and while we are winning this award in 2015, it’s a testament to the hard, thoughtful work of all of our students, teachers, staff, and parents, past and present, who make ANCS such a wonderful school.”
ANCS was among three finalists rated by an independent panel for academic excellence (as measured by standardized achievement tests), and for demonstrating operational sustainability and sound fiscal practices. The other finalists were DeKalb PATH Academy and Mountain Education Charter High School.
###
The Georgia Charter Schools Association is the non-profit membership organization for Georgia’s public charter schools and petitioners. Its mission is to advance awareness of public charter schools, communicate charter school needs to state and local officials, support legislation to strengthen public charter schools in Georgia and build partnerships, collaborations and grassroots support for charter schools. GCSA also provides programs and services that advance student achievement, school accountability and professional learning for charter school leaders.
