Central Educational Center (CEC) Charter School Dissemination Initiative

If you are a Georgia community, it is our distinct pleasure to invite you and your community to apply to be one of two participating sites in the statewide Central Educational Center (CEC) Charter School Dissemination Initiative. Over the next two years, CEC and its partners will provide technical assistance to two communities with the goal of starting a new charter school in each. These new charter schools will feature a strong collaboration among local business, your regional technical college, and your local public school system. This information and application give details about this opportunity and the application process. We encourage you to review them with your key advisors and the stakeholders in your community. The CEC team is happy to answer any questions you may have.

CEC is a charter school in our fifth year teaching students in Coweta County. CEC's mission is “to ensure a viable 21 st century workforce.” Since opening in 2000, CEC has played a major role in our community by helping to reduce the drop-out rate, raise test scores, graduate more students, place more graduates in higher-paying jobs or in additional postsecondary education, improve the local workforce, attract more and better higher education, and attract and better serve industry. In one case alone, a major industry decided to create 300 new higher-paying technical jobs in our community because CEC was begun. This year, we were named a national Model High School. We have received a grant from the state Department of Education to disseminate and replicate our successful model throughout Georgia.

We hope you choose to take this opportunity to realize similar gains in the educational outcomes and economic development of your community. Our team is eager to work with you. Applications must be postmarked by November 5, 2004. Please indicate in a cover letter submitted with your application the most convenient dates in November for our team to interview you and the other signatories from your application (see Part III). We will inform all applicants by mid-December which two communities have been selected.

Download CEC Dissemination Initiative documents:

Background Information about Applying as an Initial Dissemination Site

CEC Charter School Dissemination Initiative Application

Georgia DOE Charter School Planning Grant Application