OUR CHARTER
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Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts (PHSSA) operates under the terms and conditions set forth in our charter agreement with School Board of the City of Richmond; the charter agreement authorizes PHSSA to establish, organize, and operate a charter school in accordance with applicable Virginia code.
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What is a charter school? Charter schools are public schools granted autonomy to operate outside local school district policies, in exchange for maintaining agreed-upon levels of academic achievement by students.
Our History
The Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts (PHSSA) was founded as part of the revitalization of the Woodland Heights neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia. The revitalization included converting houses that had been divided into apartments back to single family residences and expanding the 43rd Street Arts Festival to year round arts activities for families. Another part of this project was restoring and maintaining Forest Hill Park, restoring and preserving Reedy Creek and its environs as a safe and clean tributary with ADA accessibility, and returning the vacant Patrick Henry School to use as a neighborhood public school that reflected the revitalization of the neighborhood while opening the school to all K-5 students in the city.
Parents and citizens formed the Richmond Partnership for Neighborhood Schools in 2007 to explore the possibility of reopening Patrick Henry Elementary School. This led to a Patrick Henry Board focused on building a school with a diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic population delivering an integrated curriculum of environmental science and the arts. The school would provide an alternative school experience, act as a laboratory for best practices, meet SOL standards, and be a part of Richmond Public Schools in order to attract more families to public education. After extensive research by education professionals at all levels of education, the Board decided that a charter school within the school system would give the school the flexibility and autonomy to pursue a less traditional approach to learning, offer all city children a unique public school education, and be a laboratory for implementation of successful learning strategies.
The Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts (PHSSA) was founded as part of the revitalization of the Woodland Heights neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia. The revitalization included converting houses that had been divided into apartments back to single family residences and expanding the 43rd Street Arts Festival to year round arts activities for families. Another part of this project was restoring and maintaining Forest Hill Park, restoring and preserving Reedy Creek and its environs as a safe and clean tributary with ADA accessibility, and returning the vacant Patrick Henry School to use as a neighborhood public school that reflected the revitalization of the neighborhood while opening the school to all K-5 students in the city.
Parents and citizens formed the Richmond Partnership for Neighborhood Schools in 2007 to explore the possibility of reopening Patrick Henry Elementary School. This led to a Patrick Henry Board focused on building a school with a diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic population delivering an integrated curriculum of environmental science and the arts. The school would provide an alternative school experience, act as a laboratory for best practices, meet SOL standards, and be a part of Richmond Public Schools in order to attract more families to public education. After extensive research by education professionals at all levels of education, the Board decided that a charter school within the school system would give the school the flexibility and autonomy to pursue a less traditional approach to learning, offer all city children a unique public school education, and be a laboratory for implementation of successful learning strategies.