PALMER — One more name can now be added to the list of charter schools in the Valley — Birchtree Charter School.

In a 5-1 vote Wednesday, the school board decided to approve Birchtree’s application to become a charter school. The school is tentatively set to open next school year.

The school district’s website lists four other charter schools in the Valley — Academy Charter School, Fronteras Spanish Immersion Charter School, Midnight Sun Family Learning Center and Twindly Bridge Charter School. Generally, charter schools offer a type of education that differs from the education offered in the district’s traditional public schools. Birchtree will as well.

Lori Berrigan, president of Birchtree’s board, said the type of education the school will offer is simply not available in the Valley. The school’s webpage describes it as a “Waldorf-inspired program.” Berrigan and at least a half-dozen other parents hoping to enroll their children in Birchtree testified at Wednesday’s meeting, urging the school board to approve Birchtree’s application.

The website of the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America paints a picture of a school in which science, math and reading play an equal role in the curriculum with art and handicrafts. Notable differences from traditional education include teachers that stay with their classes through multiple years and student-created workbooks in place of traditional textbooks.

But the discussion at Wednesday’s meeting focused less on the curriculum than on the details of Birchtree’s application. Board members seemed concerned about a waiver the school had asked for on testing requirements.

Berrigan explained that Birchtree would not be teaching kids to use computers until later on in their school careers. So they asked that the computer-based testing requirements be waived until third grade.

“We don’t want them to be tested in a medium that we’re not schooling them in,” Berrigan said.

Other reservations include the school hasn’t scored any funds yet for start-up costs, hasn’t yet met the minimum requirement of 150 students and nevertheless plans to open its doors in the fall.

But Berrigan said the school is looking at two grants that it’s pretty sure it can get and with that money plans to hire a local expert in Waldorf education to get the ball rolling on training teachers. They’ll also start writing grants. She said that from the interest she’s seen, the 150-student number won’t be hard to reach. And they’ve also started talking to potential landlords about upgrading buildings for the school to rent.

Berrigan said that after the application passes the school board it goes to a state board. The plan is to line up enough plans beforehand to hit the ground running after that.

Board member Sarah Welton said she wasn’t so sure about the Waldorf model.

“I’m not sure that this is the choice for a public school,” she said. “This feels more like a private school.”

Board member Erick Cordero, who has kids at Fronteras, answered Welton’s question.

“I don’t understand the Waldorf system,” he said. But, “my children go to a charter school where half of the day is in Spanish. A lot of people wouldn’t understand that.”

School board president Colleen Vague asked Berrigan about Birchtree’s durability. With charter schools, she said, “you start with a group of, for lack of a better word, zealots,” but once the school is started, that zealotry often fades.

“What kind of things are you looking at to keep this as an elongated sort of situation?” she asked.

Berrigan said she plans to run a childcare center with Waldorf elements to spread the word to parents whose children might not yet be of school age.

At least one of the parents who testified seemed to hint at that potential. Jessica Dryden-Winnestaffer of Sutton said that though she’s a relatively new parent with a baby son, she has a keen interest in Birchtree’s application.

“I really want to have Birchtree Charter available when he is ready to go to school,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.