Contact us All Departments Dayspring school wants to expand The charter school is asking to double its enrollment next school year. After less than a year in existance, Pasco County's only charter school is asking the School Board for permission to double its enrollment next school year and to add classes for middle school students. Dayspring Academy opened last August as a 130-student public school for children kindergarten through fifth grade. Its contract with the Pasco County School Board already allows it to start a sixth-grade class this August, but the school's parents and teachers now are proposing an expansion on a much larger scale.
Charter schools are public schools run by private groups of parents, teachers and businesses.
They receive tax dollars to run the school, but are relieved of much of the governmental rules that the traditional public schools must abide by. Dayspring's curriculum has a heavy emphasis on the fine arts. The school now is home to one class in each of its six current grade levels. The expansion request, which the School Board is expected to vote on Tuesday, would add an additional classroom of 20 students at each grade level as well as the previously approved sixth-grade class. The proposal also requests permission to add two classes of students in grades seven, eight and nine.