LoriAnn Stretch said the first year brought the school a lot of successes, and a lot of lessons.

The school went through a big change recently when Dr. Patricia Harris, former principal at West Johnston High School and head of the county’s Academically and Intellectually Gifted (AIG) center, took over as the school’s director.

Dean Olah had been the school’s director for most of the first year, but Stretch said he got a job offer in his previous field, technology, that was too good to resist.

Before hiring Olah last summer, school leaders had been trying to hire Harris as the school’s first director, Stretch said. But state employee retirement laws prevented Harris from coming to work at Neuse Charter right away. Instead, she served in an advisory role, as curriculum consultant.

Stretch said NCS families can expect to see other staff changes when school reopens in August.

To get the mix of teachers they wanted, the board hired several educators who had to commute into Johnston County to be a part of NCS. But the drives, coupled with soaring gas prices, claimed a few of those commuting teachers by the end of the year.

“We’ve lost three teachers because of gas prices,” Stretch said. “It’s been sad.”

However, the school is boosting its teaching ranks with people who have come from much farther than just a county or two over. “We have been able to recruit a phenomenal staff,” she said, adding that NCS has teachers from Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Jamaica. The school emphasizes global education.

While Stretch thinks they have a staff worth boasting about, she said the unsung heroes in many cases during the first year were NCS parents. “We had 48,000 parent volunteer hours this year,” she said.

When the school opened, a lot of parents thought the school would be like the AIG Center, offering lots of unique electives and learning through unconventional methods, Stretch said.

But Stretch said that approach would have been unrealistic, and wouldn’t have served the student body. Stretch said the school attracted those students who would have met the AIG Center’s high academic standards, but that it was also a place for students who struggled in traditional schools and needed more focus on curriculum.

A parent-faculty curriculum enrichment committee was formed to look at how to serve students who might be in the same classroom but have different needs. Stretch said next year, students will be grouped by ability across grade level to study core subjects like reading and math.

And earlier this year, the school started a Saturday Academy for students who need tutoring or extra instruction. Stretch said the school hopes to add enrichment classes during the Saturday sessions, too.

The school will still have time for the creative classes it started with, but Stretch said art, music and media lessons will be blended into the curriculum more than before. And in subjects like art and music, Stretch said the school wants to involve artists from the community more.

“Everything we do, we try to integrate into the curriculum,” she said.

Neuse Charter School started the year with about 220 students, and had 192 by the end of the year.

“One of the lessons we’ve learned this year is that charter isn’t for everybody, faculty and families alike,” Stretch said. “I think we really struggled this year to balance the community’s voice, parents’ voices, and staff.

“We’re adding a second fifth grade and a sixth grade next year. The fifth grade is the only grade where we don’t have a waiting list.”

Because the school’s originators insisted on a high-level of parental involvement, Stretch said parents kept school leaders accountable. Stretch said she typically read 100 to 150 e-mails daily. “I think the No.1 success for me, looking at and talking to students, is that they enjoyed coming to school,” she said. “I see so many wonderful things happening.”