Circle of Independent Learning Charter School

Our Story

The Circle of Independent Learning Charter School (COIL) provides a stimulating, flexible and comfortable personalized learning environment for K-12 students in the Fremont, San Francisco Bay Area. We are an independent study program, not a site based school. The COIL staff works closely with teacher-parents, Fremont Unified School District, the El Dorado SELPA and other community education organizations to provide challenging, innovative, personalized curriculum to our students. Our vision requires that we regard parents as teachers and create individualized learning plans and teams to meet the personal needs of each student.

“This charter school is designed through personalized learning to reach the unique bent of genius in each of its students.”“Within the team of teacher, student and parent, an educational plan will be developed to best suit the student. This personalized educational plan will be developmentally appropriate for each student, designed for the student’s particular bent of genius. While the plan will enhance the strengths of the student, it will also provide a systematic strengthening of his areas of weakness. Our school plan will enable students to become literate, self-motivated, life-long learners, academically prepared for the 21st century.” COIL Vision 1998

As a California public charter school, COIL provides a tuition-free education to interested students on a voluntary basis and is directed by an elected Governance Board. This board represents all decision-making factions and clients of the school, including parents, teachers and community. School administration is provided by the executive director.

The COIL staff currently serves almost 400 students and their families. Our educational team consists of advisory teachers, special resource teachers, a speech therapist, a school psychologist, a family therapist, a library media technician, school secretary and much more. We consider COIL to be a community program, meeting the educational and emotional needs of each child.

Each COIL student is assessed with multiple tools, including a learning style survey. A personalized curriculum is developed according to interests and identified strengths and weaknesses. The California content standards provide a cornerstone for each student’s curriculum and the one-on-one educational methodology allows each student to work at a personal pace in all disciplines. If the student excels in math, he/she may work at an accelerated pace through the continuum, regardless of grade level. If the student exhibits writing difficulty, he/she moves through this part of the curriculum at a slower pace, participating in the classroom “Step Up to Writing” program offered by COIL. Several COIL high school students enroll in our UC/CSU a-g list classes, our biology, chemistry, and physics lab program, the COIL Split Day Program, ROP and community college classes. We encourage students to dig into their academic passions in the form of research and practicum as credited electives and pursue interests in community service opportunities.

COIL teachers and parents offer exciting, age-appropriate classroom experiences to our students in our classrooms and shared space arrangements on the Fremont Adult School campus. Specific grade level field trips are also provided throughout the year to places like The Exploratorium, Math/Physics Day at Great America, art galleries and other educational facilities. Annual parent surveys dictate the choice of supplemental educational experiences for the school year.

Please come visit us! We’d love to have you!