NEWPORT — A literacy-focused charter school slated to open this fall in Lebanon has switched gears and moved to Newport.

Cornerstone Charter School’s backers still plan to open this fall, but were forced to change locations when the building at 325 Mount Support Road in which the school was leasing space proved unworkable.

“During the course of construction, we discovered some unforeseen conditions that were not suitable” for a school, Lynne Howard, the school’s co-founder and executive director, said this week.

She declined to elaborate on what those conditions were. Built in 1964, the building once housed SegTEL, a telecom company, and is currently used as storage by Hypertherm, a manufacturer of plasma cutters. Building owner Jeremy Katz could not be reached for comment.

School officials cast a wide net for a new location, and felt that a space in the former Newport Hospital at 167 Summer St., was the best option on short notice.

More important than location was a timeline that would allow the school to open this fall, Howard said.

“It’s really important that we open on schedule,” she said.

Current plans call for the school to serve up to 40 pupils in grades K-3 in its first year, then add a grade each year until the school serves grades K-8. Because of its focus on early literacy, delaying opening by a year would leave young students in need of targeted literacy instruction in limbo. The number of students enrolled is nearing the 40-student limit, Howard said.

The school will focus on the Orton-Gillingham model of literacy instruction, which was developed in the 1930s and ’40s to teach dyslexic students to read. It helps students by engaging all of their senses to create pathways in the brain that lead to literacy.

Although school officials had initially planned to be in the more populous core of the Upper Valley, Howard said she has seen strong support for the school and its aims in Newport and environs.

“It’s a big difference in location, for sure,” she said. Her hope is that the school’s approach will still appeal to parents in New Hampshire towns farther afield. “In my experience,” she added, “parents will do a lot of things for their children when the need is great.”

New Hampshire students can attend a charter school in the state for free. A charter school is a form of public school that often has a special purpose, and that doesn’t have to meet all of the needs required of general public schools.

In the Upper Valley, Lebanon hosts Ledyard Charter School, and alternative program for high school students, and Riverview Charter School operates as a high school in Claremont.

Charter schools also receive additional funding from the state. While public schools will receive base adequacy aid of $4,351 per pupil, Howard said Cornerstone will receive $9,551 per pupil. Cornerstone will not receive local property tax funding, she said.

“We do rely on philanthropy,” to support the school’s operations, Howard said. For now, each classroom will have a lead teacher and an aide, and the school has hired a music teacher and is looking for a physical education teacher.

Howard, a Lyme resident, lived in Unity for 30 years and raised her kids there, so opening the school in Newport feels like a homecoming, she said.

“We’re just really happy and feel like this is a great place for us,” she said.

The school is leasing around 3,500 square feet of space, far less than the 12,000 square feet it planned to use in the Lebanon building. But there is room to grow, Howard said.