7-15-2024 12:51am

Friendship Aspire STEM Academy Bowie to open temporary location in Upper Marlboro this fall

Friendship Aspire STEM Academy Bowie (pictured) is a new public charter school. Image courtesy of Friendship Aspire.

Friendship Aspire STEM Academy Bowie, a charter school with a STEM-based learning approach, is opening in Prince George’s County in August.

The school will open temporarily in Upper Marlboro at the former Excellence Christian Academy, and its permanent location is set to be constructed in south Bowie at the intersection of US 301 and MD 214.

The Friendship organization, founded in 1998, is the largest minority-led charter school in the country with over 6,000 students across several campuses in Washington, D.C. and Arkansas.

Bowie’s campus will serve kindergarten through fifth grade students. The school will open on a gradual basis, serving K-1 students this fall and an additional grade each subsequent year.

Friendship Aspire Principal Jason Simmons, who previously served as principal of Northview Elementary School and Perrywood Elementary School, said having a STEM-infused education model will have a “huge impact” on the county by preparing elementary students for the future.

“There are jobs that will be available that we haven't even created yet. But the students who are learning about the STEM and the technology piece, they will be ready and better prepared for that,” Simmons said.

Friendship Aspire will join nine other public charter schools in Prince George’s County, according to the Maryland State Board of Education.

Charter school issue in national politics

Throughout Friendship Aspire’s application process to be approved in the county, the charter school faced opposition from some local elected leaders.

Bowie City Councilmember Roxy Ndebumadu, one of the initial proponents of bringing Friendship Aspire to Bowie, said other colleagues were against it at the beginning. She said a common objection to charter schools partially stems from a “misunderstanding” that charter schools take funding away from public schools.

“It’s still part of the public school framework,” she said.

A Republican, Ndebumadu said charter schools have become a partisan issue in national politics, but to frame charter schools as Democrats versus Republicans is “a nonsense narrative,” she said.

The charter school’s application was denied several times. Friendship Aspire CEO Joe Harris said the school was not permitted to address the deficiencies cited by the reviewers during the application process.

Ndebumadu said she worked for two years to bring Friendship Aspire to Bowie, and she lobbied school board representatives to get the charter school’s application on the regular meeting agenda. The school board ultimately approved Friendship Aspire’s application with a unanimous vote in December 2023.

County funded but with a `private school feel'

Friendship Aspire is a public charter school, meaning it is fully funded by the county and is free for students to attend. Like the rest of PGCPS, the funding is allocated per pupil.

Principal Simmons said Friendship Aspire’s model is to be a public school with a “private school-feel.”

There will be 80 students per grade with four classroom teachers each, in addition to a schoolwide STEM coordinator, a special education teacher and special education paraprofessional. Simmons said there will not be an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program.

Students were selected based on a lottery system. For the 160 available seats, the school received over 550 applicants, Ndebumadu said. She said she is working to set aside a certain percentage of seats for Bowie residents moving forward.

CEO Harris said that once the school was approved, the biggest obstacle was the timeline: the charter school had eight months to get ready for students to walk in their doors. These preparations included instating the lottery system and hiring teachers and staff.

The construction of the school at the South Lake location in Bowie is set to be completed during winter of 2026 at the earliest, Harris said. Starting in August of this year, the construction is set to follow a timeline of 18 to 24 months. He said the engineering and school design is already underway.

The charter school is looking into a partnership with Bowie State University to establish a teacher residency program where juniors and seniors can access internship opportunities in Friendship Aspire’s classrooms. CEO Harris said Friendship Aspire is also working with the university to potentially offer a freshman-level course to encourage students to enter the education field.

Promoting STEM education at an early age

District 5 School Board Representative Zipporah Miller said she voted for the charter school because she is a “STEM advocate,” having taught middle school science and having written two textbook programs. She said STEM is a part of many career paths and that it's important to equip students with the skills they will need to thrive in their professional lives.

She said STEM education fosters collaboration among students and that learning those skills at a young age will set them up for success.

“Giving them that opportunity to engage in experimentation at an early age is critical to their learning and critical to be able to make decisions or to process information,” Miller said. “So it was important for me to have opportunities in Bowie which are diverse.”

Ndebumadu said there is a lack of STEM opportunities in Prince George’s County, and that STEM-oriented instruction would be a great asset to students as the job field for that sector grows.

According to the Maryland State Board of Education’s 2022-2023 report card for PGCPS, both elementary and secondary schools did not meet targets for academic achievement as measured by state testing.

“For the level of intellect, intelligence, perseverance, and just beauty in humanity that is out here, it makes no sense why our public school system is scoring at the level that it is,” Ndebumadu said. “And that's why I advocated for Friendship. That's why I led the charge.”

Thurman Jones is the president and founder of Patriots Technology Training Center, a program based in Prince George’s County that provides STEM competitions and education for students in grades 5-12. He said offering students STEM education early on provides a “roadmap” for the rest of their academic and professional lives, enabling them with skills to get internships and jobs later on.

“All these industries need young people in the pipeline, so before people retire, we want to make sure that students are prepared to fill those jobs,” Jones said.

Andrea Evans, founder of the Laurel-based STEM enrichment program KidGINEER, said she can “only imagine” if that type of education is offered in schools.

“It's going to be nice to be able to talk about a science project like slime, and then actually learn the chemical structure of it, and possibly some of those kids may want to be future chemical engineers,” Evans said.

During her time at KidGINEER, Evans said she has seen a huge demand for early exposure to STEM learning. “Our county is so rich with diversity and culture and opportunities that we can transform the county into, hopefully, the next Silicon Valley with the right mentorship, leadership and exposure,” Evans said.

Learning from other charter schools' missteps

Bowie resident and D.C. Public Schools teacher Ronnie Seneque has previously worked in two of Prince George’s County charter schools and shared concerns about a lack of support for students.

In 2010, Seneque taught sixth grade math at Possibility STEM Preparatory Academy Charter School, which was shut down after one year by the Board of Education.

Seneque said he thinks Possibility Prep failed due to a lack of adequate support services for its students. Its initial enrollment upon opening in Aug. 2010 was 396 students and had declined to 300 students by December of that year, and the principal was removed that same fall.

Seneque moved to teach at another charter school, Imagine Foundations. He said this school was “much better-run,” but he believed it still lacked adequate support for students with behavioral issues or those behind grade level.

But Seneque said he thinks Friendship Aspire is “learning from the mistakes of other schools.” He said slowly adding each grade level allows teachers to get to know their students and learn about what support systems the students need.

“You need a staggered system, otherwise it can encourage disaster,” Seneque said. “Because, if the teachers do not have a relationship with the students – to know who will need service, what supports they'll need – and just throw all these students in there at the same time, it can go to chaos very, very quickly.”

Seneque is a parent of two children who attend PGCPS schools in seventh and eleventh grades. He said the STEM-based learning is consistent with the intent of charter schools – which is to try out new or different education methods – and that he would enroll his children in Friendship Aspire if given the opportunity.

Tori Newby is a Maryland native who previously covered community news for The Daily Tar Heel in North Carolina and wrote about tech startups in the Triangle area for GrepBeat.