COST OF INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATEBrown Academy has spent about $50,000 since 2007 training staff how to teach the IB curriculum. Principal Lea Ann Burk said she expects to spend another $50,000 next year. She said the training all has been paid by federal Title I money or support from the Benwood Foundation.
The authorization of Brown Academy as Tennessee’s first elementary International Baccalaureate school reopens the debate over where its students will go to middle school.
Since Brown began the IB certification process three years ago, parents and school officials have asked whether Brown students will be bused to Signal Mountain Middle-High School – Hamilton County’s only other IB campus.
When officials announced Brown’s new status at the June meeting of the Hamilton County Board of Education, member George Ricks urged the board to talk again about the students’ futures.
Brown principal Lea Ann Burk said the school’s graduates should have the choice to go to another IB school.