Raleigh Charter High School is located in Historic Pilot Mill, an architecturally stunning set of buildings behind Peace College. The buildings have an impressive entrance, loblolly pine floors and ceilings, and nine foot, double hung sash windows. The interior of the school retains the exposed brick walls and sealed pine floors and ceilings. The architect for the project is Eddie Belk, who is well known in North Carolina for his historic restoration projects, including Brightleaf Square in Durham.

The fully renovated 1910 Administration building houses our administrative offices and classrooms for subjects including biology, math, English, social studies, languages, art, music and drama. New space in the adjacent 1894 Weaving building has ten classrooms including a chemistry lab, computer lab, and new physics lab. New space for music classes was added in 2004.

Raleigh Charter High School was begun by a Board of Directors made up of business professionals, experienced educators, and college professors. The school is backed by a non-profit corporation established in the summer of 1998 by parents of 8th graders at The Magellan Charter School who wished to continue the secure, nurturing, academically enriched education that our children experienced there, and to expand this opportunity to include more Raleigh-area students.

Key elements of this experience have been:

• A small community of learners allows teachers to focus on teaching rather than crowd management
• Very actively involved parents support the teaching staff AND communicate strongly to their children the importance of education
• Hands-on, experiential learning enables students to delve into the North Carolina Standard Course of Study in great depth

From this background we created RCHS, looking at what we want this community of teenagers to be like when they graduate.