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Ashley Baquero Archives - North Carolina Coalition for Charter Schools

Sep 02
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EdNC highlights innovation at four NC charter schools

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A student from Reaching All Minds Academy on a school bus from the educational bus fleet. Photo credit: EdNC/Reaching All Minds Academy.

EdNC has a new article out on charter innovation, highlighting four North Carolina charter schools: Reaching All Minds Academy, Union Day School, Northeast Academy for Aerospace & Advanced Technologies, and Thomas Academy.

We share an article excerpt below, along with a recent video from Reaching All Minds about the school’s educational bus fleet program.

At Reaching All Minds Academy, a STEM-focused Durham charter school, students grow and study plants in a decommissioned school bus, which has been converted into a mobile greenhouse. The school’s “educational bus fleet” now also includes a podcast studio and library bus, highlighted in a recent school video.

More buses are coming. An aquaponics lab, in which plants and vegetables are fed through wastewater from a fish tank, is under development, as is additional classroom space, according to Thomas McKoy, the school’s principal.

“Innovation: That’s what we’re here to do,” McKoy said.

His school’s ingenious ideas are attracting national attention. In 2025, Reaching All Minds Academy (RAMA) received a 2025 national impact award from the nonprofit organization Building Hope, specifically for educational innovation.

“You see it happening nationwide, you see it happening locally within our state,” McKoy said. “I would just push or challenge the other charters to add that into their mission, to continue to innovate for our students in North Carolina.”

Read the rest of the EdNC article.

Watch the video from RAMA about the school’s educational bus fleet:

Two schools highlighted in the article (RAMA and NEAAAT) are Coalition member schools, while two are not.

Jul 30
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EdNC: Deep dive on charter enrollment and trends

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Pine Springs Preparatory Academy in Holly Springs, North Carolina. Photo courtesy of Bruce Friend/EdNC.

EdNC has published a new deep dive on charter enrollment and trends. The article addresses where charter enrollment growth is occurring in North Carolina right now–and it also shares how the state stacks up nationally for schools and students.

We include an article excerpt below.

As a new school year dawns, North Carolina’s charter sector is poised for robust, continued enrollment growth. Yet experts point to increasingly high hurdles for new charter schools, with facility acquisition and increased competition for students topping the list. Established, rather than new, charter schools are the primary drivers of enrollment growth now, as obstacles to opening and other K-12 changes reshape the sector.

“The challenges of getting open are vast,” said Ashley Baquero, the executive director at the state’s Office of Charter Schools (OCS). She is seeing more delays from schools in the charter pipeline, as they struggle to find and finance facilities and hit enrollment targets.

Meanwhile, established charter schools with facilities, funding, and reputational capital continue to expand.

“The data has shown that the schools that have been around a little bit longer tend to be the ones that are growing — where a lot of the new enrollments are coming in,” said Bruce Friend, chair of the state’s Charter Schools Review Board (CSRB).

During the 2024-25 school year, state charter enrollment increased to 153,480 students, according to the new annual charter schools report from OCS. This figure represents a 6.1% annual enrollment uptick and an overall increase of 8,845 students since 2023-24.

Charter demand continues to outpace supply: 77% of state charter schools reported waitlists last year, totaling 74,287 students.

Somewhat paradoxically, however, the number of charter schools in 2024-25 declined for the first time in 14 years, dropping to 208 schools from 211 the year before. This is the first school downturn since state lawmakers removed the cap on charter school growth in 2011.

Only two new charter schools opened last year: ALA Monroe and Riverside Leadership Academy. Together, they accounted for 6.5% of the total annual enrollment increase, based on final Average Daily Membership (ADM) figures.

See the rest of the article from EdNC.

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