After six years of planning, a challenge in court and a volley of appeals, Brett Marcoux isn’t going to let a paint job or two stand between him and the opening of the state’s first public charter school for children with dyslexia.

“Finally, we’re open!” the CEO and president of Provident Charter School told a group of more than 100 school officials, families, dyslexia experts and local leaders, who gathered in a stuffy hallway of the Troy Hill school for an open house and ribbon cutting Wednesday.

The cafeteria is still being cleaned and painted, and other projects are in the works, but the classrooms look ready for the first day Aug. 29. The charter school closed on the former North Catholic High School building in June.

Provident has so far drawn 42 students, some as far away as Butler and Beaver counties. The school initially will be able to enroll up to 96 students and will offer third and fourth grades in the first year with plans to serve second through eighth grades by 2021.

Roughly a dozen independent schools in the Philadelphia area work solely with children with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities, but none is free to parents, said Christine Seppi, a reading therapist and chair of the Pennsylvania Branch of the International Dyslexia Association. Read here