Caspar Creek Learning Community (formerly known as the Mendocino Satellite School) is a non-classroom-based K-5 public charter school program serving families in the greater Mendocino-Fort Bragg area of the northern California coast. Attendance-optional classes are held at our Learning Center site, which borders both Russian Gulch State Park and Jackson Demonstration State Forest near the scenic coastal village of Caspar, California. Three full-time certificated teachers and one aide serve some 40 students in Kindergarten through fifth grade. The program features multi-age, small-group learning environments, interactive learning with peers and staff, project-based learning, developmentally appropriate use of technology, active involvement of parents and other community members, and incorporates the natural habitat provided by the learning center’s unique setting. A Parent Advisory Council is responsible for decision-making.

Caspar Creek Learning Community was founded in the summer of 2000 as the Mendocino Satellite School by a group of Fort Bragg, Caspar and greater Mendocino parents who had previous experience with home-schooling and alternative schools. Hoping to affiliate with a local school district, the group contacted superintendents of both Mendocino and Fort Bragg school districts and learned that affiliating with either would require establishing a new charter school, a process that typically takes two years from inception to approval and requires giving enrollment preference to residents of the chartering school district. Caspar Creek subsequently accepted an invitation to become part of the Mattole Valley Charter School, an established charter school whose mission and charter closely match the individualized approach favored by the founding parents and teachers. The resulting affiliation has allowed Caspar Creek to fulfill its mission, an important part of which is the ability to serve Mendocino Coast families from Westport to Albion regardless of their school district of residence.

Based in Petrolia (Humboldt County), Mattole Valley Charter School was founded in 1998 by the Mattole Unified School District as a primarily non-classroom-based program serving families living in extremely rural areas of Northern California—in some cases 2-3 hours from the nearest school—whose remoteness made regular school attendance impractical.

Known locally for its innovative fund-raising events, such as the annual Prius raffle, pet vaccination clinics and the Winter Light Book and Art Cafe, Caspar Creek struggles with the same fiscal difficulties familiar to all California public schools, with the added challenge that charter schools generally do not have access to some revenue sources available to school districts.