SELMA - The county's lone charter school opened its doors to more than 300 students this year. With 100 new students and two more grades on the rolls, Neuse Charter School is fast outgrowing its facilities in just its third academic year.

"We grew by a middle school," said Dr. Patricia Harris, the school's director. This year, the school added a seventh and eighth grade, along with more kindergarten and sixth-grade classes.

Over the summer, Neuse Charter set up two more mobile classrooms to handle the influx of students -- and it still turned away 20 students this year.

"There were parents in Johnston County that were looking for another option," said Harris. Charter schools, like other public schools, charge no tuition or fees. Students apply for Neuse Charter through a lottery system.

"It's a different place," Harris said.

At Neuse Charter, Harris and her staff emphasize what they call "brain-based" education. She says the school fills its curriculum with the arts, like music and dance, while class lectures emphasize Socratic-style questions and thinking. At each grade level, students learn Spanish and Chinese.

Cole Biggio, a new eighth-grader, transferred from Riverwood Middle School. "It's just really nice," he said, taking a break from building models of cells in Christine Rennie's science class.

"I love to learn!" Dargan Harris, a second-grader, shouted just after she finished a hyperactive spelling game with her class.

The school seems tight-knit too. Whenever Harris visits the lower grades, she is greeted by a dozen hugs.

"I'm so excited for you to learn today," she told a horde of 6- and 7-year-olds last week.

Jack Moyer, director of the state's charter school office, said Neuse Charter is a good example of a well-run charter school. "They're a new charter, and it takes a new charter some time to get their things together," Moyer said. "I think they're going in the right direction."

While expanding its rolls, the charter school has upped its test scores. In its first year, 71 percent of students passed the end-of-grade tests. This year, 82 percent made the grade, and 100 percent passed the science test. The numbers were enough to earn a "School of Distinction" title.

Neuse Charter's high performance bucks the trend of charter schools in their early years. In general, charter schools have performed worse than traditional public schools since the first charters opened in 1996, according to a study by the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research.

But Ran Coble, director of the center, said North Carolina is home to its share of good charter schools too. "We found at least ten that we thought were really exceptional schools," he said of the center's 2007 study of charter schools. "The problem was that it was ten out of one hundred rather than ten out of ten."

In Johnston County, Neuse Charter might be one of those charters to keep an eye on. It outperformed two-thirds of the county's elementary and middle schools on end-of grade tests in 2008-2009, only its second year of existence.

Moyer, the state charter school director, said many charter schools have seen their scores go up as they have natured. He noted that all charters are at a disadvantage because they are so young.

"Charter schools in North Carolina have just been here ten years," he said. "You don't really compare a ten-year-old with an adult, and that's kind of what [critics] are trying to do."

Charter schools face other handicaps too. For one, they don't get any capital funds to build new facilities. But that hasn't held back Neuse Charter's expansion.

Neuse Charter's land, which is owned by the Town of Selma, is filled to the fences with mobile classrooms. But the town could soon hand over the deed to both the school's lot and an old school building that stands next-door to campus. The school could renovate the building and use it to host its first permanent classrooms.

Come winter, the school will also have access to the town's newly renovated gym next door. Selma's Parks and Recreation Department has put almost $600,000 from the state and county into new flooring, renovated restrooms, new windows, a new heating and cooling system and a brand-new walking trail.

"I've been impressed by the community support that they have," Moyer said of Neuse Charter. "That's really a critical issue in charter schools."

Finally, the school has been pondering a full move. It might buy acreage and build a brand-new campus, Harris said.

And if Harris has her way, Neuse Charter School will need all the space it can get. She is writing the charter for a new high school, though details are scant. If it were created, Johnston County would have K-12 charter education.

Judging from Neuse Charter's first years, there appears to be enough demand to sustain the school's growth. In more-urban counties, thousands of students are on waiting lists for some charter schools.

"The future's going to be great," said Geri Hubbard, president of the parent-teacher group at Neuse Charter. Her fourth-grader, Zoey, was one of the school's first students.

And since then, Hubbard has helped run everything from yearbook production to weekly pizza delivery. Of course, she has plenty of fellow volunteers.

"I have so much parent involvement it's unreal," Hubbard said. The school asks all parents to volunteer four hours a month, but most put in even more time than that, she said.

Their devotion stems from their drive to get a good education for their children, Hubbard said. "We wanted Johnston County to have another choice," she said.