LEBANON — A new K-8 charter school focusing on literacy education plans to open its doors in the Upper Valley in the fall of 2026.

During its first year, Cornerstone Charter School aims to serve 64 students in grades K-3, and add a grade each year until it reaches its capacity of 128 students in grades K-8, founder Lynne Howard, of Lyme, said by phone recently.

“We want to have enough time to build our board, fundraise, and recruit students and staff,” she said.

To date, the school has received $1.5 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education. 

Charter schools are tuition-free public schools approved at the state level. Admission is on a first-come basis. A lottery will be held if there are more applicants than spaces for Cornerstone, Howard said.

The school does not yet have a physical location, but its leadership is looking at Lebanon and surrounding areas in their search for real estate.

The New Hampshire Board of Education approved Cornerstone’s charter at a Jan. 9 hearing in Concord. 

The Upper Valley has two other charter schools — Lebanon’s Ledyard Charter School and River View Chartered Public School in Claremont. Both serve at-risk students in grades 9-12. Cornerstone would be the first to serve elementary and middle school students.

Chartered public schools allow for more autonomy and specialization than a comprehensive public school, proponents say.

“Typically a charter school starts because they want to do something different,” from comprehensive public schools, Page Tompkins, president of Lebanon’s Upper Valley Educators Institute, said in a phone interview. 

Howard is an independent literacy consultant and a structured literacy coach at the Stern Center for Language and Learning in Williston, Vt.

Cornerstone’s will use what is known as the Orton-Gillingham method for teaching reading, and teachers will be certified in that approach. Orton-Gilingham is a “structured, sequential, multi-sensory approach” to teaching literacy that “aligns with the science of how children learn to read and is supported by decades of research,” Howard said. 

Traditionally, it has been used in teaching students with dyslexia, “but we know that it benefits all students,” Howard said.

Since they can be mission-driven and specialized, “charters don’t have the same responsibility for serving all students,” as comprehensive public schools, Tompkins said.

Charters often have a selection bias, in which “the harder-to-serve student s remain in public schools, while the most informed parents have other options,” he said. 

Nationally, about 7% of K-12 stud ents attend a charter school. In New Hampshire, it’s about 3%, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. 

A report issued last week by the state’s Department of Education noted that New Hampshire’s charter school enrollment has increased 44% since 2019.

Including Cornerstone, New Hampshire has 38 approved charter schools. Of those, 32 are in operation and the rest have been approved but are not yet open. 

Vermont has not passed legislation allowing for chartered public schools. 

In making the case for the school in January, Howard told members of the Board of Education that about half of New Hampshire’s third-graders are not proficient in reading. Being proficient in reading by third grade is an especially important benchmark that is predictive of academic and career success, she said.

According to data from the New Hampshire Student Assessment System, 50% of third graders were proficient in English Language Arts in 2024, up from 46% the previous year. 

The data show a sharp decline in proficiency following COVID-19, with scores inching back up since 2021. 

In 2019, 52% of third graders were proficient in English Language Arts

Upper Valley Educators Institute faculty member Audry Richardson, who coordinates the institute's literacy educators program, agrees with Howard that Vermont and New Hampshire students are generally below proficiency in reading and that the clock is ticking on young readers who don’t achieve proficiency by the third-grade benchmark. 

“As students age, their opportunity for learning to read gets more difficult,” Richardson said. 

Orton-Gillingham is a tool that can be “really successful,” Richardson said. “But it absolutely can’t stand on its own.” Rich texts, strong systems of support, and an understanding of brain science are also necessary for student success, she said.

What is important, she said, is “looking at the student data and making sure that the decisions we’re making are directly tied to student outcomes,” and supporting students as they grow. 

Cornerstone will be equipped to address “not only academic challenges but also the impact of ADHD, anxiety, trauma, and stress on student learning,” Howard said. 

“While OG is a critical component of our instructional approach, it does not comprise the entire ELA curriculum.” Howard said.  Cornerstone’s approach also includes a “Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) to ensure that all students receive targeted, data-driven interventions based on their individual learning needs.”

With approved charter in hand, Cornerstone is looking to fill an 11-member board of trustees, along with locating a suitable building. 

Information about the school can be found at cornerstone-cs.org. 

Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@vnews.com or 603-727-3208.