New StarShine Ecovillage Campus Set to Open in Phoenix
StarShine Academy, is a non-profit charter school located in Phoenix, Arizona. StarShine is located in a impoverished area of Phoenix, Arizona. StarShine is dedicated to showing and teaching the students that it does not matter where you come form and that each and every one of them has the ability to change the world.
Phoenix, AZ, July 19, 2013 --(PR.com)-- Phoenix-based StarShine Academy plans to open its new Eco-Village K-12 school in August, with a greatly increased enrollment of 600 students, thanks to financing made possible through a $12.7 bond which it closed on late last month.
Trish McCarty, CEO and founder, said that the school, located at 35th Street and McDowell Avenue in Phoenix, expands on the temporary facility at the same location, which operated with an enrollment of 250 students in the last school year.
The new facility, intended to provide inner city students with a safe and healthy environment was designed to help them grow into young productive citizens, who can in turn, contribute to improving life in their own communities. The school features unique innovations. It features, for example, an “urban farm” where students will raise livestock, chickens, fruit, and vegetables. There is a new Theater and Sports Center, a Student Bistro, a renovated Innovations Center with computer-based learning, and a remodeled building from the 1950s serving as the school’s administration headquarters. In the last school year, students made use of temporary buildings.
An all-wood building with a metal roof housing for classrooms was designed by architect Vernon Swaback, whom apprenticed under Frank Lloyd Wright starting in 1957 at Taliesen West in Scottsdale, Arizona. Swaback, whom has had a long association with the growth of StarShine, is a member of the school’s Board of Directors.
McCarty said that when students enter the new campus in August they will enter a kind of peaceful urban park that also serves as an education center. The school is located on a busy street with many industrial and commercial-type buildings that cuts through the barrio where many of the students live.
“When they enter” the school grounds, she said, “they will walk in on a cobblestone street lined with beautiful, old-fashioned signs” pointing to classrooms and other facilities. They will see trees and gardens where before there was scorched grass or bare earth.
Flying near the entrance will be 10 flags: a reminder, she said, that the students "are world citizens and that there is a need to make the world a better place." The flags also remind them that the school is helping make their neighborhood a better place, and that out there in the barrios; the students should be helping to do that too.
The Stars & Stripes and the flag of the United Nations will always be raised, she said. The other eight flags – from different countries – will be changed out on a daily basis. This, McCarty said, is a reminder that attending StarShine Academy is part of creating “a New World” of achievement and understanding.
StarShine has, in the past, received recognition from the United Nations Children’s Organization for its efforts to create international understanding among educators and young people.
The “Eco-Village” concept, McCarty said, is designed to show that students attending a K-12 school can “learn contextually, which I think is the most important thing in education.”
She said she wants students to be able to answer “Yes” when they ask the following questions: Do I like my teachers? Do I feel safe? Is education at the school interesting? Is the school clean, does it have a relationship nature, with my neighborhood, and the world?”
The $12.7 million bond was arranged by the (Robert) Lawson Financial Corporation of Phoenix, founded in 1984 and with branch and regional offices in Arizona and the United States.
McCarty, a former banker, formed Education Resources in 2000, to address the increasingly complex and critical problems in the education market. In 2002, McCarty opened a K-12 school for high-risk, inner-city Phoenix children to prove that with the right help, “all children learn to reach for the stars. Her book, The StarShine Effect: Teaching That Happiness Is Success, was published last year and details her education philosophy.
“National interest in education right now is like a fever,” McCarty said. “There are questions about what is good parenting, about how you reach children and how you engage them so that they will be good citizens.”
Trish McCarty, CEO and founder, said that the school, located at 35th Street and McDowell Avenue in Phoenix, expands on the temporary facility at the same location, which operated with an enrollment of 250 students in the last school year.
The new facility, intended to provide inner city students with a safe and healthy environment was designed to help them grow into young productive citizens, who can in turn, contribute to improving life in their own communities. The school features unique innovations. It features, for example, an “urban farm” where students will raise livestock, chickens, fruit, and vegetables. There is a new Theater and Sports Center, a Student Bistro, a renovated Innovations Center with computer-based learning, and a remodeled building from the 1950s serving as the school’s administration headquarters. In the last school year, students made use of temporary buildings.
An all-wood building with a metal roof housing for classrooms was designed by architect Vernon Swaback, whom apprenticed under Frank Lloyd Wright starting in 1957 at Taliesen West in Scottsdale, Arizona. Swaback, whom has had a long association with the growth of StarShine, is a member of the school’s Board of Directors.
McCarty said that when students enter the new campus in August they will enter a kind of peaceful urban park that also serves as an education center. The school is located on a busy street with many industrial and commercial-type buildings that cuts through the barrio where many of the students live.
“When they enter” the school grounds, she said, “they will walk in on a cobblestone street lined with beautiful, old-fashioned signs” pointing to classrooms and other facilities. They will see trees and gardens where before there was scorched grass or bare earth.
Flying near the entrance will be 10 flags: a reminder, she said, that the students "are world citizens and that there is a need to make the world a better place." The flags also remind them that the school is helping make their neighborhood a better place, and that out there in the barrios; the students should be helping to do that too.
The Stars & Stripes and the flag of the United Nations will always be raised, she said. The other eight flags – from different countries – will be changed out on a daily basis. This, McCarty said, is a reminder that attending StarShine Academy is part of creating “a New World” of achievement and understanding.
StarShine has, in the past, received recognition from the United Nations Children’s Organization for its efforts to create international understanding among educators and young people.
The “Eco-Village” concept, McCarty said, is designed to show that students attending a K-12 school can “learn contextually, which I think is the most important thing in education.”
She said she wants students to be able to answer “Yes” when they ask the following questions: Do I like my teachers? Do I feel safe? Is education at the school interesting? Is the school clean, does it have a relationship nature, with my neighborhood, and the world?”
The $12.7 million bond was arranged by the (Robert) Lawson Financial Corporation of Phoenix, founded in 1984 and with branch and regional offices in Arizona and the United States.
McCarty, a former banker, formed Education Resources in 2000, to address the increasingly complex and critical problems in the education market. In 2002, McCarty opened a K-12 school for high-risk, inner-city Phoenix children to prove that with the right help, “all children learn to reach for the stars. Her book, The StarShine Effect: Teaching That Happiness Is Success, was published last year and details her education philosophy.
“National interest in education right now is like a fever,” McCarty said. “There are questions about what is good parenting, about how you reach children and how you engage them so that they will be good citizens.”
Contact
StarShine Academy
Grace Chenal
480.323.0933
www.starshineacademy.org
pressreleases@starshine.us
Grace Chenal
480.323.0933
www.starshineacademy.org
pressreleases@starshine.us
Contact
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