CENTRAL FALLS — Kate Smith came to the Learning Community two years ago, after having worked in traditional public schools in Newport and Washington, D.C.

A relatively new teacher, she says the Central Falls charter school immediately felt different to her.

While charter schools are public, they have greater freedom and autonomy than traditional public schools. Teachers are not unionized, although they are paid union wages. Those running the school can be more daring in their approach to curriculum and staffing. And while charter school teachers lack some of the protections of unionized teachers, they have more say in the running of their classroom.

“There’s a lot more freedom in terms of what you can teach, and you work with a lot of passionate educators,” Smith, 27, says. “It’s also a lot of work, but in a good way.”

Smith gets to school around 7 a.m., an hour and a half before school starts. She spends that time preparing her lesson and setting up her classroom.

The students leave at 3, but Smith usually stays late, often collaborating with her fellow fourth-grade teacher on lesson plans. Once or twice a week, there are staff meetings after school. She typically puts in several more hours on weekends.

Despite the long hours, Smith says she and fellow teachers have more say in curriculum and feel supported by administrators. Teachers get two weeks of professional development each August and several other days during the school year. The school also encourages teachers to work together, including holding three in-depth planning sessions a year and instituting an open-door policy where staff, teachers and parents can drop in on classes. Teachers are evaluated twice a year.

“I feel like every single teacher here works as hard as the next person,” Smith says.

The longer hours and added duties have not proved a deterrent to job applicants, though. This spring, 200 teachers applied for 5 openings for the fall — 3 of which are the result of the school adding a fourth-grade and two fifth-grade classes.

Most of the 14 teachers at the school are relatively new to the profession and earn about $46,000 a year — or $10,000 less than the state average.

Smith says the biggest difference she’s found at the charter school is how seriously teachers’ concerns are taken and how quickly the small school is able to respond.

“There is so much freedom in the curriculum,” she says. “When you walk into a regular public school, you are given the curriculum the school uses whether you like it or not. Here, we design our curriculum, taking into account the state standards.”

This school year, Smith and the school’s other fourth-grade teacher approached school co-director Meg O’Leary with concerns about the fourth-grade math curriculum and lobbied for more language support because many of the students’ primary language is Spanish. In late September, they reworked the curriculum, which required new workbooks.

“Meg ordered everything for us and she told us that if this didn’t work out, we would keep looking until we found something that does,” Smith says.

jjordan@projo.com