Winfree Academy Charter Schools Revenue and Competitors

Mission Statement:The mission of Winfree Academy Charter Schools is to create a supportive, safe environment that motivates, educates, and trains students so they can graduate from high school prepared with the skills and abilities needed for higher education, employment, and life. Winfree Academy works to fulfill its mission by working with an underserved population of ninth through twelfth grade students who, for a myriad of reasons, find their chances of graduating becoming less realistic almost on a daily basis. The backgrounds of students who attend Winfree Academy Charter Schools are as varied as the students themselves, but they all have one singular commonality: the traditional public school they are zoned for and have attended in the past has failed them in some way. In fact, during the 2005-2006 school year, almost 80% of the students enrolled at Winfree Academy were classified as freshman, yet the average student age was eighteen. These students need an atmosphere that is tailored to serving both their academic and social service needs. Every aspect of the Winfree Academy school system has been designed to ensure that all students who enroll at Winfree Academy will be given every tool they might need in order to attain success-to graduate from high school and to leave prepared for the future. Many of the students enrolled at Winfree Academy come to Winfree carrying baggage that has statistically minimized their chances of graduating. They are parents and ex-dropouts and homeless and, often, just facing a surfeit of luck. They need a place that will provide satisfactory security and will help them to meet their social service needs as a means of furthering their academic progress. In order to create a protected environment for the students, Winfree has eliminated the need for hallways and lockers because the hallways in traditional high schools are where the majority of physical infractions occur. Therefore, instead of changing classes, students remain in the same classroom all day, and teachers rotate into those classrooms. This system also provides a sense of ownership and security for a group of students whose lives outside of school are often a blur of change. In addition, Winfree has full time security guards on duty every day. In order to meet the students' social service needs, each classroom has an Academic Guidance Counselor who works with the students daily on meeting the needs of today and on preparing for tomorrow. Two campuses also have Communities in Schools campus facilitators whose sole job is to ensure that the social service needs of every Winfree student on their campus are being met. Winfree Academy understands that students will not be capable of truly focusing on their academic progress until certain social service needs are met, so Winfree staff members work hard to meet those needs and to make sure that they continue to be met while a student remains enrolled at Winfree. However, the primary objective of Winfree Academy is to help students to succeed academically. Thus, each facet of the academic program utilized at Winfree Academy has been designed to accommodate students with substandard academic records as well as students with average and superior records. The curriculum at Winfree is self-paced, which places students in a position to take ownership of their academics and allows them to accelerate their progress at their own pace. Teachers work together with individual students, focusing on the areas in which that individual student evinces the most need. Part of Winfree's curriculum is run through computer-based and computer-assisted programs, such as the Plato Learning Curriculum, which has been utilized for over forty years and has helped over ten million students in their learning processes. However, students are not sitting at a computer and working alone-they work with teachers and other students in a mastery-based learning environment. The entire curriculum taught at Winfree Academy is based on the TEKS-Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, and all students are prepared to take, and to pass, the TAKS test (the Texas statewide assessment program). Then, when students graduate from Winfree Academy, they receive the same public high school diploma received by students graduating from any other public high school in Texas. While at Winfree Academy, students are not just working on graduating from high school-they are building and creating the skills they will need for a successful future. Career preparation is built into the curriculum of all content areas, and, in conjunction with that, career and post-high school education preparation activities are regularly offered. Graduates of Winfree Academy leave prepared to go into virtually any field that most interests them as well as with the knowledge of the best method of entering into their field of choice.