Listen in Principal Diane Mooney talks about how the school differs from public schools. Ms. Mooney talks about the response she's had from parents. Ms. Mooney discusses how the students are encouraged to define a positive classroom.

The children marched up the hallway, carefully following the colored tiles up the center of the floor.

They were wearing khaki pants, shorts or skirts and collared shirts, looking cute and well-scrubbed. "Keep your hands together behind your backs," the teacher said. "That way you can be sure they're not touching anyone."

It was Day Two at Propel Montour Charter School, and clearly the class was involved in a rather firm part of the process of building what the school calls "classroom communities."

That means "learning how to be able to function in a classroom socially and emotionally in order to prepare to function academically," Principal Diane Mooney said.

For example, the fifth- and sixth-graders -- the oldest children in the brand new school -- had spent the first day of classes Monday working in teams to make posters describing positive classrooms.

"To a student, what does a positive classroom look like?" Ms. Mooney said. "What kind of things might I see in a positive classroom?" That is especially important when pupils come from 12 different school districts, which is the case at Propel Montour.

The charter school on Bilmar Drive in Kennedy, in a business park just off Steubenville Pike near the Interstate 79 interchange, has pupils from as far away as Quaker Valley and Chartiers-Houston in Washington County.

Propel Montour has 280 pupils, 40 each in grades K-6, divided into two classrooms of 20 at each grade level. More than half -- 150 -- come from the Pittsburgh City School District, and 85 from Sto-Rox.

Like other charter schools, including Propel in Turtle Creek, Homestead and McKeesport, it operates with a measure of the independence enjoyed by private schools, with funding coming from the home school districts of its students.

That funding has created a good measure of opposition on the part of public schools, as has the implied rejection when parents choose an alternative education. Partly due to public roadblocks, it took three years for Propel Schools to open its Montour branch, moving to Kennedy after running into problems with two different sites in Robinson.

That became part of the past Monday, though, when buses and parents' cars started pulling up to the school's back door.

The early start to the school year is a key difference between Propel and public schools -- the charter is on a 190-day school year, 10 days longer. It also has longer school days, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Together, according to spokesman Bob Crytzer, that means 25 percent more instruction time over the course of a year.

There is a focus on basics during that instruction time, with 90 minutes a day devoted to math and two hours devoted to reading and writing. Ms. Mooney said there is also an emphasis on using data and assessment results to build individual programs for the pupils.

"Having data to support what we're doing and to know something works is a 100 percent guarantee toward a teacher's approach in implementing it," she said.

There are drawbacks associated with the school's small size, however. It has no auditorium, no full-fledged library and no art or music rooms. There is outdoor play space on unused parking lots but no field or playground.

It does, however, have both art and music teachers, along with a full-time nurse, two counselors, two academic coaches, two special-education teachers and a variety of aides, along with the regular classroom teachers.

It also brings in what it calls "enrichment artists" in six-week blocks, to give classes in everything from karate to theater to poetry.

Like all charter schools, Propel is required to admit any pupil who applies. For this year, parents who had applied previously were put at the head of the line; from now on, admission is on a first-come, first-served basis. Mr. Crytzer said the school has a waiting list of about 100.

The size, however, is pretty much capped. Propel will add seventh grade next year and eighth the year after that -- classrooms have already been built to accommodate those grades -- but there are no plans to expand the 40-per-grade size.

The building itself has been completely renovated from its former warehousing use, and works fairly well in its new guise. A portion of the warehousing space has been turned into a large room divided between gymnasium/multi-purpose space and a cafeteria. Grades K-4 are downstairs, with grades 5-6, and eventually 7 and 8, upstairs.

Ms. Mooney, who has experience in public, Catholic and other Propel schools, said that so far, she is happy with how things have gone.

In particular she's been delighted with the response from parents.

"Parents were very embracing, wanting to volunteer," she said, with many signing up for the parent council and listing what they would like to do.

"It was kind of nice and funny because it wasn't something that I had asked for," she said. "The interesting thing was how much they wanted to be involved."