Children's Community School may soon change its name to "Community School of Davidson" and add a high school building.

Children’s Community School has outgrown its name.

Representatives of the state charter school appeared before the Davidson Town Board Tuesday to explain why their current name doesn’t pass the “cool” test with the middle school crowd.  They asked for the Town Board’s blessing on their plan to become Community School of Davidson. At the meeting, school leaders also described plans for a new building elsewhere in town to house their planned high school.

Children’s Community School opened in 2001 as a state charter school for grades K-6, located at 565 Griffith Street in Davidson.  Two years ago, the state granted the school’s request to expand into a full K-12 facility.  Now, with plans in place to grow by a grade per year, starting with this fall’s addition of the seventh grade, school administrators have discovered they need to ponder the cool factor.

“Our middle schoolers are telling us ‘CCS’ is just not a name that’s cool enough for middle and high schoolers,” Director Joy Warner told the town board.  “So as you can imagine, we’re facing a name change to match the growth that we have experienced over the years.”

She and Assistant Director Kevin Green asked for the town’s blessing in adding “Davidson” into a new school name.

“We ended up here because we think we were meant to be here, so we wanted to consider a new name that would incorporate ‘Davidson,’” Ms. Warner explained, as Mr. Green unveiled a drawing for the proposed new name: Community School of Davidson.

The two also told the town board that the charter school is working with “a local developer and building owner” and are hoping to sign a lease soon for a new high school.  The building under consideration is located within a mile of the CCS elementary/middle school building and has fields that can be used for athletics.

“We were approached by other folks in neighboring towns, but we really, really wanted to be in Davidson,” Ms. Warner said.

The current building has room to add the eighth grade, which is slated for the next school year.  Then in August 2010, the charter hopes to open a high school building.

“Our high school will be very small, probably about 400 kids,” Ms. Warner said.

CCS currently enrolls 682 in grades K-7, and has a waiting list of 1,250.