STEAM

In 1994, the Atlanta Housing Authority “AHA” issued a Request for Proposals designed to convert the nation’s first public housing project, Techwood Homes, into a sustainable mixed-income, mixed-use community. The Integral Partnership of Atlanta “Integral” put forth a competitive, compelling, and novel vision, and was subsequently selected to do the work. The vision was of an economically integrated community with a new infrastructure, new mixed-income housing, historic preservation, new schooling arrangements and new social institutions, resulting in a “new sociology.” At the core of this new sociology was an educational goal that all students schooling in the new community would go to and graduate from Georgia Institute of Technology or other comparable institutions.

 

With neither a charter nor a contract, Integral proceeded to build a covenant with the Georgia Board of Education (BOE) and Atlanta Public Schools (APS) to develop a school that could secure and sustain the mixed-income vision sought by Integral and AHA. It would be built on an educational foundation whereby students attending the school are able to attend Georgia Tech and other highly selective colleges and universities and graduate on time. The covenant, created after intense negotiations, included the descriptives below:

 

The Covenant

• The BOE authorized building a new Math, Science, and Technology-themed school, which it named Centennial Place Elementary School.

• The Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing (CEISMC) organization at Georgia Tech was enlisted to help make the school the first STEM-focused elementary school in APS. They helped design curriculum, provided professional development, and produced new instructional features.

• The school leader and the instructional designers selected project-based learning as its instructional design.

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After a few years of operation, Centennial achieved another first: it became a STEAM school, working with The Ferst Center at Georgia Tech and the Music School at Georgia State University to incorporate an Arts focus. But covenants age, and so, too, do the people who drive them. Over time, original covenants can become unreliable as a means of sustaining arrangements in an ever-changing environment. 

 

In response, Integral New Schools Atlanta (NSA), a non-profit organization sponsored by Integral and focused on the pursuit of the STEAM educational mission, sought out a conversion charter to provide a world-class education that would prepare its students for college and beyond. In order to do so, NSA sought to solidify the freedoms granted from the original covenant and to then take advantage of the additional freedoms and flexibility that having a charter provides. 

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In time, NSA developed a charter petition in order to fully utilize the flexibility that a charter provides, so that Centennial could do the following:

• Establish school-specific classroom and personnel structures to address student achievement goals including adjusting class size, addressing readiness promotion, and hiring based on a STEAM curriculum and project-based learning.

• Align the calendar and school day schedules to address student achievement goals including a longer school year, increased instructional time, project-based learning, and focused professional development time.

• Develop a replicable model of STEAM education, fully utilizing educational partners, specifically Georgia Tech, to develop best practices. STEAM - Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics - instruction utilized new ways of integrating the subjects to build creative, critical thinkers.

 

In May 2013, the local APS School Board approved a resolution allowing for the expansion of Centennial Place Elementary to serve grades K-8 and began the process to determine the proper governance for the new school based on the proposed partnership. In July 2013, it was confirmed that the vehicle for school transformation was a Conversion Charter. The new Conversion Charter officially began operations on July 1, 2014 and set forth the following academic innovations:

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From its onset, Centennial Academy has relied on its strong network of community partnerships. The Georgia Institute of Technology was the premier education partner in this effort and continues to provide support in STEAM curriculum development, professional development, and student enrichment activities. Other foundational partnerships still in existence include the Georgia Aquarium for enrichment and professional development and High Tech High (HTH) San Diego for project-based learning support and curriculum consultation.