The administration, staff, Governing Authority as well as our Buckeye Community Hope Foundation sponsor is excited to welcome our students and families back for the 2023-2024 academic/performance year.  The challenge in front of us continues to be to rebound from the academic and developmental transitions relative to the pandemic, especially in the area of math and appropriate social behavior in the school setting.  Our teaching staff will be working diligently to serve your students.  We are fortunate that our enrollment continues to grow and with that, different students with different talents and abilities to share in our school community.  

We are committed to providing the best academic core curriculum blended with meaningful integration of the visual and performing arts to build educated, confident students to be future community leaders.

The educational philosophy of The Richland School of Academic Arts is best summarized by a simple concept … “Students learn best when they are consistently challenged to develop and use higher order thinking and creativity skills through inquiry based projects.” We believe that a curriculum focused on mastery in all core content areas, but designed to challenge students to develop additional skills related to leadership, teamwork, self discipline, inquiry, critical thinking, problem solving, reflection, collaboration, ethics and work habits is needed if students are to become true lifelong learners. We believe that not only must students learn these skills; they must apply these skills and knowledge at high levels if they are to be perceived as future community leaders.

The Richland School of Academic Arts is a public charter school in which students are required by Ohio Revised Code to take the Ohio AIR tests and the Ohio Diagnostic Assessments.

In addition, we believe in the importance of a strong arts education program which is integrated into the development of core academic areas, as well as into the development of personal and interpersonal skills. "Qualities of Quality" research sponsored by the Wallace Foundation through Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (June 2009) emphasized the multiple benefits of arts education served in tandem with a high quality core academic program:

We believe the integration of fine arts into the regular school schedule will provide a systematic infusion of activities and resources that heighten understanding and application of knowledge across the curriculum. We understand the importance of administrators, a team of teachers and teaching.

RSAA believes these thinking and creative skills must be brought to the forefront of the curriculum and used as a guide for teachers in ensuring that students know how to apply and use learned information.  Research has shown that integrating higher order thinking and creativity skills into the curriculum has been notably successful in accelerating advantaged and disadvantaged students in all respects.  When these skills and techniques were taught, students developed intellectually and socially, and their test scores grew dramatically.  We teach the concepts of the test, not by having the student memorize a bunch of unrelated facts, but by allowing the students to work with each concept through an active arts-based learning environment.  This allows concepts to be totally internalized and heightens the student’s understanding so the information can be used not only for the test but also applied to every day life.

Middle school children (grades 4 through 8) bring a variety of personal issues to school every day.  In many cases, it is difficult for them to achieve academically if they are dealing with a wealth of emotions, such as feelings of fear, anxiety, anger, isolation and rejection. RSAA will address these issues by providing our students (with and without disabilities) a customized individual learning plan designed to fully help develop each student’s social awareness, emotional self control and problem solving techniques needed to become thinkers and problem solvers who articulate their feelings and opinions in a positive way (Comer, 2007).

Charter schools are innovative free public schools designed by educators, parents or civic leaders that are open by choice, accountable for results, and free from most rules and regulations governing conventional public schools. Today, nearly 4,000 charter schools serve more than a million children in forty states plus the District of Columbia and 94,000 children in Ohio.

Community Schools must have a Sponsor who oversees the school’s fiscal procedures (working with the School’s Fiscal Agent), educational progress, and compliance with state laws and provides technical assistance as needed. The Richland School of Academic Arts is sponsored by Buckeye Hope Community Foundation.