NATCHEZ — As charter school bills work through the Mississippi Legislature, the Phoenix Project Early College Charter School will apply again for the Natchez area, a local board member said.

The latest legislation from the senate would allow for the creation of a charter school in a C-graded district. Currently, charter schools are only allowed in D- and F-graded districts, though the Mississippi Department of Education is no longer giving out F-grades.

Currently only two charter schools exist in the state, both of them in the Jackson area.

It also allows students to cross district lines, permits employees to participate in the state retirement system and other benefits programs and allows conversion charters to purchase or lease the school building from the local school district at market value.

The house’s bill was narrower in scope, only voting to allow students in D- and F-graded districts to cross district lines to attend a charter school.

The bills will move to opposite chambers for more work.

Meanwhile, Iretha Beyah, of Natchez, who is a board member for Phoenix Community Foundation, said she welcomed the potential expansion charter schools. Though what she said Phoenix really needed was a process that was friendly to grassroots efforts.

“Anything that will give our families more choices to succeed, I think is a good thing,” Beyah said. “But to get there, there has to be a charter school started.”

Beyah said she wished that the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board or the Mississippi Department of Education would be more able to provide more resources to start ups that are not coming in with a “utopia of funds.”

“We could really teach children how to work together for how to better their future that way instead of just working with people who are bringing in a lot of money,” said Beyah, who added that members of the Phoenix team have previously started charter schools in Illinois.

Marian Schutte, executive director of the MCSAB, said the board does not provide support, either financially or through developing proposals.

“During the 2015 request for proposals process, Mississippi First, a local non-profit organization, provided any interested charter school applicant with technical assistance for their charter school proposal,” she said. “I don’t believe that Phoenix Project Community Development Foundation worked with them during the 2015 process.”

Phoenix started this process three years ago during the 2014 application cycle, and were rejected. The group brought it up again last year, only to be rejected.

“We took advice from being denied and came back and shored it up,” Beyah said. “We got great participation, and people wanted it in Natchez, but it’s very hard for a grassroots organization to have that kind of money in their pocket.”

The authorizer board rejected them last year in part because they couldn’t show how they were going to raise $100,000.

The group also did not provide a timeline for student recruitment or identifying who would be responsible for that; and for not providing details on completion dates or identifying who is responsible for preparing the physical school site, Schutte said.

The proposal was also rejected because it did not adequately account for students with special needs.

Natchez-Adams Superintendent Frederick Hill said the district started working on the Natchez Early College Academy at approximately the same time the Phoenix idea came to light, but said any similarities in the plans were merely coincidental.

“It actually came from my experience,” Hill said. “During my last year of teaching, I taught in an early college system.

“I saw the impact it had on students there and saw an opportunity for us to do it in Natchez.”

Hill said he had no problem with a charter school opening in the area.

“I am for any student opportunity that helps students receive a diploma, whether charter, private or public,” he said. “This has to be a parental call on what will best serve the child with the parent knowing their child.”

Beyah said Phoenix would apply again in Natchez because the community was important to her, but the group would be looking around the state for other locations as well.

“I have a very personal investment in this community,” she said. “This is where I got all of my formal education, including my degrees.

“But now, the public schools are failing our children. You know there is a problem when people are crossing the river for their education.”