Thousand Oaks and Ventura, CA - BRIDGES Charter School in Thousand Oaks and Ventura Charter School in Ventura have formed a partnership to create a very unique independent study program in Ventura County that is the first of its kind. Both schools believe in opening doors and creating opportunities for their students.

Both charter schools embrace the same progressive educational philosophy—a belief, which educates the child beyond academics, by recognizing the importance of the social, cognitive and emotional education as well.

Through the creation of this collaboration, both Bridges Charter School and Ventura Charter School will be able to offer a wider range of resources, extracurricular options, technology integration and eventually a wide variety of enrichment classes, including music, drama, art, technology, science, and field trips to supplement their student’s learning experience.

The cumulative effort will create a program of newfound open doors and expanded opportunities. In their innovative, trend-setting pilot program, these schools together will create live online classes (e-Classes) for 6-8th grade students in math, writing, literature, and science using state-of-the-art technology. The small size of each class is designed to support the home study program through effective student/teacher ratios.

In the near future, this new collaboration will spawn an online e-Tutoring program in which home schooled students may access tutors online to get help in a variety of subjects.

Collectively both schools share a philosophy of developing the world’s state of the art independent study experiences through new channels of education, philosophy and technology.

BRIDGES Charter School will open at the Glenwood Campus in Thousand Oaks on August 31, 2010 for the 2010/11 school year. Hilda Salas is the Director.

Ventura Charter School of arts and global education is located in Ventura on Cameron Street. Mary Galvin and Lisa Hildebrand are the Directors. The school opened in 2006 and is fully WASC accredited.

For additional information about this cutting edge home schooling experience, contact Claudia Weintraub at bridges.ventura.charter@gmail.com