School History

25 years

School History and Philosophy

What Is A Charter School?
The Charter Schools Act was passed by the California Legislature in 1992 in order to give California communities the ability to create self-governing, publicly supported schools that have the flexibility to meet locally identified needs. Since then, parents, students, teachers, and community members have collaborated to create a variety of schools across the state that are innovative, flexible, and responsive to the conditions and aspirations of their communities. California is home to over 1,300 charter schools, including seven all-charter districts, serving nearly 630,000 students statewide.

Plumas Charter #146
Plumas Charter School was founded in 1998 and became California Charter #146, operating for its first two years as a subsidiary of Plumas Unified School District. In 2000, PCS became an independent, or direct-funded, charter school. PCS was originally designed to serve the needs of the local homeschooling community, but in the school’s 25-year history, it has evolved to serve a broader spectrum of students and families and now identifies itself as a personalized learning school and operates learning centers in Quincy, Taylorsville and Chester. 

Personalized Learning
Personalized learning refers to Resolution 36 of the California State Senate, adopted in July 2004. Under this learning model, each student’s program is tailored specifically for him or her, using curricula, instructional strategies, settings, and pacing that have been selected to suit the student’s academic strengths and challenges, goals, interests, and personal situation.

Among the available components for a PCS academic program are classroom instruction, tutoring by teachers, web-based skill-building, online courses, independent study courses, extracurricular workshops, elective instruction from qualified enrichment teachers, and a wide range of texts and curricula.