REDMOND — With a lease in hand, Redmond Proficiency Academy is moving forward with plans to expand this fall into the middle school years.

The Redmond charter school has contracted with the Redmond School District to use the Hartman building. The two-year lease, signed Monday, goes into effect July 1.

Redmond High freshmen now use the Hartman building, but the space won’t be needed when Ridgeview High opens this fall.

RPA has 480 students in grades nine through 12. Renting the Hartman building will allow the school to add nearly 200 students in grades six through eight.

At the same time, the Hartman facility will bring benefits for all grades, including high school students, said Michael Bremont, the school’s director.

“We’ll be able to have full school assemblies we’ve never been able to do,” he said. “We’ll have a nice wood shop we can use.”

RPA won’t leave its downtown Redmond location. The bulk of the high school program will stay there, Bremont said.

High school students at RPA have an open campus setting, and classes are scheduled in a way that mirrors the scheduling of college courses. For example, a course might be taught in two 90-minute blocks each week rather than in hourly periods every day.

The school day will be more structured for middle-schoolers, who will attend classes on a traditional schedule and remain on campus for the entire day. Bremont hopes to enroll 180 students in grades six through eight, though no more than 150 may come from within the Redmond School District.

Bremont said it’s hard to tell how many middle school students might come from outside the district. That’s because the district doesn’t provide bus transportation to charter school students who live outside the Redmond School District. Predictions are easier for high school students, he said, as they can take public transit or drive themselves.

“We’re not sure, realistically, how many people will drive their middle school kids in,” he said.

Under the lease agreement, RPA is required to cover all utilities, insure the building and provide janitorial services.

Additionally, the school will pay the district $2,632 each month to cover the district’s estimated costs of providing snow removal in the parking lot and maintenance on the plumbing, electrical and heating systems.

“We’re looking to maintain the facility at zero cost to the school district,” said Mike McIntosh, the district’s operations director.

With Ridgeview opening, the Hartman building’s staff will be reassigned to the new high school or Redmond High, McIntosh said.

Learning institute courses to continue

RPA had a good reaction to its first three-week run of learning institute courses, Bremont said. The courses offered students the opportunity to focus intensely on classes taught in one-week blocks during a three-week period in January that wrapped up last Friday.

The learning institute courses help students get credit and explore an area of interest, sometimes with projects and field trips. Additionally, they can help students catch up quickly on their credits.

“Students loved it,” Bremont said, adding that the courses may be offered in the summer. “Parents loved it. We’re looking at how do we incorporate more.”

Senior Dillon Bennett, 18, said he liked the approach. For a course in sports statistics, one day included a trip to a Portland Trail Blazers game. There, students crunched numbers based on athletes’ statistics as a learning experience.

Bennett said the fast pace keeps the lessons in focus.

“It’s so compact,” he said. “It’s not like it goes in one ear and out the other.”