During my time as interim CEO of a five-campus charter school, my team spent a lot of time talking about the communities we served and the stakeholders in those communities. Each school serves a specific community, and each community has a unique set of needs, desires, goals and challenges. Over time, we developed a needs assessment framework.

So, what exactly is a needs assessment? It’s is a systematic approach to understanding the nature and needs of your community. I’ll go over the three key recommended steps in a needs assessment, as well as some of the pitfalls to avoid and how to bring it all together.

Identify and Engage the Stakeholders

A good place to start is to establish the nature of your community and its segments. Of course, we can think of your school and its immediate neighborhood. For many charter schools, this may be the case. We have some schools that work with us that have students commute 30, 40 minutes by car. For those schools, community means something more than geographic proximity.

Your community is composed of your students, their parents, loving guardians and any adults actively invested in the lives of these students, and community members. The internal segment of your community is composed of the teachers and staff, the school leadership and the board. Another segment of your community would be the authorizers. The owner of your school building is definitely a stakeholder.
[CallOutBox bgcolor=”orange”]A needs assessment is a systematic approach to understanding the nature and needs of your community.[/CallOutBox]

If you have any partnerships or collaborations with other institutions or organizations, they are your stakeholders as well. Some STEM-focused charter schools have partnerships with the local university. West Hawaii Explorations Academy works closely with the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Atlantis Charter School in Fall River, Massachusetts, has built a unique coalition of universities, businesses, financial and philanthropic institutions, and other community groups. Through this coalition, the charter school students have access to the Berklee College of Music in Boston and TJ’s Music, a real recording studio in Fall River. Atlantis students have access to a curriculum that mirrors what’s taught to Berklee first-year students. Through another partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), students have access to the university’s Integrated Design Management (IDM) lab. Programs such as these create a pipeline for students into STEM and the Arts.

Several charter schools work closely with local Boys and Girls Clubs. In San Marcos, TX, both the San Marcos Charter School and the Texas Preparatory Schools have implemented BGC programs.

What I aim to do with these examples is twofold. On one side, I’m hoping to lead you towards making as exhaustive a list of stakeholders as possible, leaving no stakeholder behind. On the other, I want you to think ahead and identify – based on your school’s mission, direction, and goals – the relationships you might want to establish in the future.

Determine What Questions to Ask

In previous posts, I’ve written about your WHY (the reason you’re doing what you’re doing, the vision you have for your school) and about growth. Both of these should guide this exercise. Your WHY should be accurately reflected in your Mission Statement. Your growth plan should be a topic in your board meetings and your conversations with school leadership. Keep both of these in mind, and think of the questions these inspire.

Some examples of questions to consider:
  • What values/principles do they associate with this community?
  • In their eyes, what are the key issues facing the community?
  • In their eyes, what are the ways in which your charter school can forward those values/principles?
  • In their eyes, what are the ways in which your charter school could help resolve the key issues affecting the community?
  • What are their key expectations, and their hopes, in terms of your relationship with this school?
  • In their eyes, what current aspect of your school do they hold dear? What elements and programs of your charter school drew them to the school?
  • In their eyes, what current aspect of your school needs bolstering or improving?
Resource Mapping

Resource mapping is the process of identifying internal and external supports and services that can help you accomplish a set of goals.[CallOutBox bgcolor=”orange”]Some resources will inevitably prove more fragile or less reliable than anticipated through this process. At the same time, you might have some welcome surprises. [/CallOutBox]

As you speak with or survey the various stakeholders, you should keep resource mapping in mind. Find out which stakeholder can help in what capacity. Find out what tools, assets, materials, programs, facilities, etc., they have which might be a resource to your school. What people are available, what skills can they leverage? What’s their time availability, and what are their expectations? (recognition, prestige, compensation, etc.)  In the examples above, resource mapping led to those relationships with universities, local businesses and local nonprofits.

Resource mapping can show you:

  • Additional resources available to do more of what you’re already doing
  • New resources that can help you accomplish the same things in a more efficient manner.
  • New resources that can empower you to provide additional solutions to community needs.

Resource mapping has to be followed by active and strategic resource management. This is where the rubber truly meets the road. Do keep in mind that some resources will inevitably prove more fragile or less reliable than anticipated through this process. At the same time, you might have some welcome surprises with people or assets who prove a lot more valuable than you expected.

Pitfalls to Avoid
Not casting a wide enough net

One example of that, with a charter school, would be to forget to include authorizers. Or to leave out board members. The board members are ultimately responsible for the effective running of your school. They should always be included at the early stages of planning.

In a community where grandparents or extended family play an important participatory role in the life of the student, these family members should be included as stakeholders.

The students themselves are definitely key stakeholders and can also prove valuable resources. Students can be activated to create a GSA or a No Bullying campaign. Students can help organize fundraisers and do prep work for school events. Students can voice their needs, which may impact decisions about facilities, lunch menus, musical instruments, field trips or even new pilot programs to consider.

Another key aspect of this is that people who have been invited to be part of a process are much more likely to contribute, and people who have been excluded from a process are most likely to find fault and complain.

Not listening to snippets

Feedback and input won’t always arrive through formalized channels. The offhand comment a parent makes as they’re picking up their student, the suggestion another parent voices from their car during dropoff, the observation a teacher makes at lunch – all of these are snippets that can point to a serious problem or a surprising solution.

One potential practice would be to write quick emails to yourself, with the word “snippet” at the beginning of the subject line. Then, every so often, search for the keyword “snippet” in your emails, and look for trends and patterns in these snippets.

Missing the emotional component

As people share their thoughts, ideas and feedback with you, they are less likely to share the emotional context behind these thoughts. It’s a good idea to look for the underlying emotional triggers. An expression that comes to mind is, “if the problem was the problem, there would be no problem.” What this means is, if people knew and expressed what’s bothering them, the solutions might be immediately evident.

In listening to stakeholders, it helps to imagine yourself as part detective and part therapist – looking for ‘the things behind the things.’

Not understanding social structures

It can be disheartening to spend energy and time coordinating with one individual or group, only to find that they’re not the true decision-makers. To make plans based on assurances from one source, only to learn they’re not empowered to give such assurances. In identifying stakeholders AND in resource mapping, you’ll want to chart the relationships and structures among these. This will lead you to fruitful conversations with the right people.

Not recognizing external influences in your community

I recently worked with a school that did an exceptional job of identifying their stakeholders and making sure to ask the right questions, and getting solid information. What they missed was that a whole segment of their student body were family members of transient military personnel. When 10% of their student body left the school as a result of relocation over the summer, the school had to scramble to bring enrollment back to its baseline.

In our present situation, the COVID-19 pandemic is very much one such external pressure that is playing havoc with our plans. School leaders should stay nimble and adaptable, and have a Plan B and even Plan C ready.

Cohesiveness: Bringing it all together

Once you follow all of these steps, you’ll have a sizable volume of information. The task that remains is to sort through it, organize it, and most of all, sort out the conflicts.

You might find one segment of your community loves the idea of dropping the focus on language immersion in favor of an accelerated learning initiative. Meanwhile, another segment may become downright disaffected with the school if the language focus is dropped. Issues of heritage, ethnicity and tradition may make this especially emotional. Moving forward with the change without thoroughly addressing these concerns could spell doom for a school.

Conflicts and misalignments can be resolved through meaningful conversations with stakeholders to understand their motives and drivers better. Sometimes conflicts can be resolved by finding “the third solution.” Instead of A or B, there may be a C solution that accommodates both needs.

You don’t have to please everyone. Prioritize and decide what aligns best with your WHY, along with what contributes to the growth and sustainability of your school. Then, communicate, communicate, communicate. People react best to change when they’re given plenty of information about the reason for a change, the scope of the change, and its expected impact.

A needs assessment and resource mapping exercise does not dictate what you should do next. It provides key information toward that – but your next moves need not be reactive. Armed with all the information, you can move to the next stage, strategic planning.

When charter schools focus on enrollment marketing, quite often, the focus is on digital initiatives. Google Ads campaigns. Facebook advertising to drive enrollment. Email marketing efforts. A revamp of the website. And more.

All of these are excellent ways to drive enrollment (and we deliver all of these as part of our pay-for-performance enrollment marketing solutions). But often, school leaders underestimate the importance of analog efforts – what I call “the ground game.”

A charter school’s ground game consists of the strategies and initiatives the charter school leader may implement at the local level. These are “old school” promotional efforts, networking, and just plain getting to know folks.

Three key initiatives can bring amazing results and help fill the waitlist at a charter school. (These are initiatives that I’ve implemented myself, back in the day when I was the interim CEO of a multi-campus charter school organization.) I share them below.

Tour of the School (Weekly)

Tours allow parents to come in and see for themselves what your school is all about. Parents want to experience what you have that is interesting or unique, they want to see your classrooms and see the grounds, and they want to meet the staff and get a sense of to what degree the ‘vibe’ of the school aligns with their culture and their vision for their child’s education.

It’s important to note that I’m not saying that the CEO or Principal of the school needs to commit to this charter school tour weekly. Tours can be delegated to staff members or even volunteers.

While informal, the tour should be pre-planned and scripted to decide the topics you want to be included strategically, the key talking points to float up, the main areas of the school that you would like to showcase. Did your school get new equipment? Was the cafeteria recently upgraded? Did you add elements to the playground? Is there something unique or interesting in your class layout or materials that you’d like to highlight? Write these points down and have a printout that volunteers giving the tour can use as a guide.

Note that school tours should continue year-round regardless of when school is in session or not.

I encourage you to prominently display how to sign up for this weekly tour on your website, Facebook page, and other promotional materials.

“Back to School” Evening Session (Weekly)

This should be a presentation delivered by a member of school leadership. It can happen at the campus or a meeting place off-grounds – it doesn’t have to be at the school. Make sure the chairs are comfortable for adults and ensure ample seating to allow for all who attend.

This presentation should be about an hour. Ideally, it would include a PowerPoint-like slideshow. Along with being visually pleasing, a presentation will provide a ‘cheatsheet’ for the presenter to follow to avoid getting lost (Although be careful that the presenter doesn’t just parrot the words on the slides! The slides should just be a guide.). Here is a great TEDx talk on delivering strong presentations.

Coffee with the CEO (Monthly)

Promote a once-monthly event to meet the leadership of the school. Events could be “Pie with the Principal,” or it can include any other member of school leadership – perhaps on a rotating schedule. The important point is that parents get to sit down with you or a member of school leadership and get their questions answered.

Events are also an excellent opportunity to create a support system for the school. You’ll have a chance to find highly engaged parents and turn them into volunteers. A parent can then help you with Instagram, another can help with flyer distribution, another can help with the school tour. You can also create a team that will help lobby for charter school acceptance when proposed bills threaten charter schools.

Show up to these events fully engaged – with patience, empathy. Quite often, the most vocal parents, and one might even say annoying, turn into the school’s strongest supporters if allowed to participate and have their voices heard.

Many of the successful schools I’ve counseled in my role as VP of Business Consulting here at Charter School Capital have mentioned parent and caregiver engagement as a key element of their growth and success. Listening to parent input, tailoring the school’s offerings to what parents articulate as needs, showing them that their voices matter, all of this counts.

There are other components of a school’s “ground game.” You can network with the leaders of the local Boys’n’Girls Club, and you can make your facilities available for town events (when feasible and appropriate).

Over the past year, many charter schools became hubs for distributing COVID-19 tests, vaccines, and even food. While this should never be done strictly for promotional purposes, this kind of engagement with the community positions a school as a reliable resource and a positive presence in the community.

By all means, continue your email marketing initiatives, your website upgrades, and your social media efforts as well.

How to Keep from Being Overwhelmed

The key to avoid being overwhelmed is delegation. Finding trusted volunteers for activities such as the school tour and the Back-to-School night will take a load off your shoulders.

In the same vein, you can entrust your enrollment marketing efforts to us. Our pay-for-performance model makes the decision completely stress-free. We only get paid for delivered results. We can help with logo design, an upgraded website, paid advertising on Google Ads and Facebook, and a lot more. Reach out today to learn more!

Your Charter School: Remember Your WhyDo you remember why you started your school?

What was the compelling purpose or the unavoidable calling that led you to this work? What did you envision when you started talking about it? When you assembled your team? When you pitched the idea to other educators?

Do you remember yet?

You might remember this vividly. You might have it front-and-center in your mind.

Or maybe too much time has elapsed. Perhaps your school evolved, and your current vision for your school is a much sharper beacon. Maybe a pandemic and a drastic shift in educational format reshaped your vision. Perhaps external factors such as gentrification in the community your school serves forced adjustments or internal factors forced your school to refocus and adapt.

Maybe the current direction of your school, and your school’s current offerings, no longer reflect the original Why.

Often Your Why is Captured in Your Mission Statement

When you drafted your charter, you wrote your school’s mission statement. Many organizations, from small businesses to non-profits, engage in such an exercise at their inception. For some, it’s a profoundly heartfelt ritual. For others, it’s a necessary exercise to appease the gods of bureaucracy. Some see this moment as a time of deep reflection, while some may see it as one more checkbox in their journey.

Some leaders post the mission statement in a prominent place and discuss it with their staff regularly. Other leaders may put it in their charter, and seldom if ever, think about it again. Some leaders give it to their marketing person to put up on their website, then get busy grooving along, and get busy with the mundane details, the weight of responsibility, the logistics, and the day-to-day.

Your Why Matters

Your mission statement matters. One key reason is that it informs the public about your school’s focus. It tells parents and other stakeholders what to expect as they choose to send their children to your school. More importantly, it helps parents and other stakeholders decide if they want to send the students to your school, if your school is the right fit, or if your school is an effort they want to support.

But another key reason is that it informs you and your team about your school’s focus. It guides your actions and tells you what you want your school to become.

 Time and Changes

This can be a little bit tricky for charter schools because what happens is here you are. You’ve started this great school. You’ve made this great application, and students are pouring in. The staff is really excited to be here working at a charter school with that mission. Parents are excited. Students may or may not be excited because they may or may not even understand it. But the families understand the mission.

Then suddenly, you start noticing that your recruiting might trickle down a little bit or that some of your founding families aren’t as satisfied with the school as they were in the beginning.

I often recommend that schools go back and look at their mission statement and make sure they still provide the same mission. And, if you’re not using the mission as your guide, you can decide whether you want to recommit to that mission or want to pivot away and create a new mission.

Recommit or Pivot?

There are internal and external reasons for a pivot. One external challenge is gentrification. Suppose a school opens in an underprivileged area. They have a mission to serve a particular demographic. Then investments in real estate, new businesses, a new shopping center, or some new development begin to change public sentiment and perception. A different demographic begins to move into the neighborhood, prices go up, and the original population is displaced.

Often schools in gentrifying neighborhoods have written a mission, for example, that says that they will serve a specific population of students. And then they find that because of gentrification, their target students are no longer in that area. At that point, school leaders need to decide if they recommit to the mission, move the school to an adjacent neighborhood closer to their intended demographic, or work on somehow attracting the students located outside their immediate community.
Internal challenges also provide opportunities to pivot.

Several years ago, I became aware of a school where a specific foreign language was a crucial part of its mission and reason for the formation of the school. For the first few years of the school’s existence, it provided a specific foreign language program, and that program made the school attractive to their community.

Then, the school experienced solid testing results, and it was doing a great job with its curriculum. Parents outside its immediate community noticed and enrollment grew. But the language program became less critical to the school’s new population, and so the school gradually decreased its focus on that language. Unfortunately, many of the founding families were disappointed and angered by that shift. The school had to decide if it would recommit to that foreign language program or pivot to something different.

Sadly, for that school, it didn’t do either. They just left the mission statement as it was, with the promise of a language they no longer delivered. Over a few years, the school lost enrollment, went out of business, and became yet another example of why a school’s mission is so critical to the curriculum it leverages and the community it serves.

Altruism and Practicality

There’s another aspect to this. In trying to decide whether you should pivot to a new mission or recommit to your existing mission statement, you should regularly consider the extent to which the mission serves the entire community and yourself.
For example, your mission might be incredibly generous, but it may not serve the population you need to serve. There needs to be some balance to your mission statement to fulfill both the pragmatic and altruistic sides. You must consider the business piece of it because there may be a reason that you need to be in a specific area to serve your mission, but other students might be coming along with those students. Depending on your circumstances, there may be other balances to strike, different tradeoffs to consider. Tradeoffs between the part of your mission that guides your heart and the part of your mission that allows your school to be strong and flourish.

Creating a mission statement, just like determining your why is not always a simple one-direction line. You have to take in all of the competing thoughts and ideas and develop a genuinely powerful, well-rounded mission statement that fully reflects your Why.

What are your thoughts on this? Have you encountered these challenges? Share your comments with us!

COVID relief funds and school growth

California charter schools have experienced two years of funding hardship. Additionally, schools nationwide have adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic, adjusting nearly everything about the teaching container. There’s been massive changes to the way teaching is done, and the way schools interact with students. Schools have had to invest in technology, train teachers, hire additional staff and make all sorts of adjustments to teach their students safely during this health crisis.

Fortunately, the Federal Government has responded to educators’ needs with school funding relief packages, including The CARES Act, which went into law on Friday, Mach 27, 2020. That legislation included over $30 billion in emergency school funding.

Along with The Cares Act funding, we’ve broken down other funding sources for California charter schools and included strategic recommendations on leveraging those funds.

ESSER Funds

The first source for this founding is Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER I Fund)  The ESSER fund includes approximately $13.2 billion of funding for all states and California’s allocation is $1,6+ billion.

GEER Funds

The second source of emergency funding for schools is the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER I Fund).

The GEER I Fund includes approximately $3 billion of funding for all states, and California’s allocation is $355,227,235. This funding will channel through local educational agencies (LEAs). These emergency relief funds aim to help elementary and secondary schools recover from the impact COVID-19 had and continues to have on their budgets.

LLMF Funding

The Learning Loss Mitigation Funding (LLMF) includes $5,3 billion nationwide, stemming from three different funding sources and allocated to local educational agencies (LEAs). The funds are specifically aimed at supporting student academic achievement and mitigate learning loss related to disruptions in education resulting from the COVID-19 crisis.

(You can read about these funding packages here.)

What Should You Do With These Funds?

These funds are a substantial amount. For some schools, they may represent 20%-30% of their annual revenue. Choosing how to spend this money will be a critical strategic decision for most California charter schools.

First of all, these funds are reimbursable. What that means is that you need to spend them in order to receive them. That’s why it’s crucial to have a spending plan in place.

It’s essential to know these funds are fungible, unlike students. For example, if you’ve been contracting for an educational service or product that is not part of your school, and you’ve been paying that through regular State funding or through receivable sales, you can submit that as an ESSER reimbursable expense. You can use your ESSER funding for any number of expenses to serve your students. (Of course, before you assume an expense is allowed by ESSER, check California guidelines to ensure that you’re in full compliance.)

Spending for Growth

These funds give your school some great expansion opportunities.  You can serve more students, or serve existing students with more programs or upgraded facilities.

Special Programs

If you’ve been hoping to bring in a special program, such as a Hebrew-language program, or a STEM program, and you need to hire educators, allocate infrastructure and buy materials for that, this may be the time to move on that.

A word of caution here: I do recommend that any new programs are deployed as a pilot, setting expectations to a finite length (I suggest one or two years). It is important that this one-time school funding package does not lead you into long-term financial commitments which could become a liability down the line.

Bolstering Infrastructure

This might be the time to invest in your school building. This could include building maintenance. The COVID pandemic brought increased awareness of airborne contaminants. Many schools have responded by overhauling their air-purification systems.

Community Involvement

Getting the community involved in how to use these funds provides an excellent opportunity to build local connections. Consider organizing a town hall meeting with parents and other neighborhood stakeholders to discuss discuss which needs the community feels your school could fulfill. What might emerge could be an after-school program, or the need for school transportation, or other initiatives that might not even be in your line of vision. Allowing the community to participate in this process is a wonderful way to build allies and rally the community in support of your school.

Enrollment Marketing

The most direct way to impact school growth is through continuous and intentional enrollment marketing. As we described in a previous blog post, this is a time to look at your waitlist, ensuring that you have a strong pipeline to keep your rosters healthy with incoming pupils.

Enrollment marketing is a combination of initiatives. This may include collateral, pamphlets, word of mouth, and digital marketing –  and ideally it includes what I like to call your ‘Ground Game,’

Your ground game is composed of initiatives like a standing weekly tour of your school, even including tours in the summertime when your school is not in session. It includes a monthly open meeting with the CEO or the Principal. You can tailor these to your unique style and your school’s needs. The idea is to create opportunities for parents and potential new students to interact with the school, to show transparency, and raise parent confidence in your school’s programs.

Your school should also have solid branding. You should have a unique, recognizable logo that communicates your school’s focus and mission. You should have collateral, brochures and leaflets, and other informational material. With these COVID funds, you have an opportunity to bolster what you currently have – or seize the opportunity to launch a new branding initiative.

Most of all, your enrollment marketing should include a solid, strategic digital marketing plan. This involves several digital channels – it includes website design, email marketing, blogging, Facebook ads, Google ads, and social media marketing. If you happen to be well-versed in these disciplines, all the better. In most cases, it’s best to outsource these marketing efforts to a professional marketing team. This allows school leaders to focus their time on what they do best – serving students.

Charter School Capital offers a pay-for-performance enrollment marketing service. Our knowledgeable team of school marketing professionals brings new students to you, and you only pay based on actual growth. 

Why Focus on Growth?

While these funds are substantial, they’re not a steady revenue stream. It’s vital to channel these funds toward long-term sustainability. Consider that a percentage of your operational expenses are student-specific, while a percentage is a fixed cost. There is a ‘sweet spot‘ where a school’s fixed costs become a low enough percentage of the budget and the school moves into long-term financial viability. In my experience, most California schools should aim for 450 students. Depending on your area, this number could be lower or higher. I encourage you to set a goal for this ‘sweet spot’ and grow your school towards it. These COVID relief funds give you a golden opportunity to do so.

Charter School ProgramNew 2019 Charter School Program Grants Now Available for Developers

This information was shared by The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. We think it’s vital to keep tabs on the pulse of all things related to charter schools, including informational resources, and how to support school choice, charter school growth, and the advancement of the charter school movement as a whole. We hope you find this—and any other article we curate—both interesting and valuable.


The US Department of Education published a notice inviting applications for grants to Charter School Developers for the Opening of New Charter Schools and for the Replication and Expansion of High-Quality Charter Schools.

This notice includes applications for developers of new charter schools (84.282B) and for developers replicating and expanding existing charter schools (84.282E). Charter school developers in states that do not currently have a Charter Schools Program (CSP) State Entity grant are eligible to apply. Read more information about this grant competition, including webinar recording for interested applicants, or contact the CSP team at charterschools@ed.gov.

Applications are due before midnight Eastern time
on August 2.


 

charter school sustainabilityDo You Know the Four Pillars of Charter School Sustainability?

Editor’s Note: For this CHARTER EDtalk, our own Charter School Capital Advisor, Ryan Eldrige, was honored to be joined by Jeff Rice, Founder and Director of APLUS+, The Association of Personalized Learning Schools & Services, to discuss the Four Pillars of Charter School Sustainability. Jeff is passionate about the charter school movement and because of his dedication, APLUS+ has been a leading voice to raise awareness and understanding of the critical need for parent and student choice in public education, and specifically for a personalized learning option in education for the growing number of students for whom a rigid, classroom-only model is not a good match for success.
To learn more about the Four Pillars of Charter School Sustainability, please watch the video or read the transcript below for the full story.



Ryan Eldridge: Hello and thank you for joining this episode of CHARTER EDtalks. I’m Ryan Eldridge, Charter School Capital Advisor, and I’m honored to be joined today by Jeff Rice, director and founder of the APlus+ Personalized Learning Network Association, and we’re going to be talking about building strong community engagement. So, welcome Jeff. Thank you for joining us.
Jeff Rice: Well, thank you. It’s an honor to be here as well.
Eldridge: Why don’t we just kick it off. I’ll ask you a couple of questions, and we’ll just dive right into it. So, can you tell us a little bit about APlus+ and the APlus+ network and your theme for this year?

About APLUS+ and Personalized Learning

Rice: APlus+ is the first and currently the only association whose mission and vision is to advance personalized learning and to support all schools, but particularly charter schools whose mission and vision is to personalize learning.
When we talk about personalized learning, because that tends to be a phrase that can be used to represent a wide variety of things, we’re talking about a model of education that provides choice and flexibility in how, what, when, where and with whom each student learns. So, it is incumbent upon every school, who supports that mission and vision, to provide a wide variety of choices. Sort of a buffet menu that can be matched to the needs of each and every student.
We were founded 17 years ago in 2002, so this is our 17th year in operation, and we have built a strong reputation as the pioneers in education for personalizing learning in the 21st century. Our theme for this year is Strengthen That Which We Can Control, and the reason we chose that theme is obviously because of the consequences of the 2018 elections and the choice (of some within the status quo education system) to use charter schools as scapegoats for all of the financial troubles, the academic issues that the district schools are experiencing, and they’re using charter schools as the reason for their fiscal mismanagement and academic failures, of course, all of which is false.
But what we can control is to strengthen our schools in four particular areas, which we call the Four Pillars of Sustainability. If you’d like me to-

The Four Pillars of Charter School Sustainability

Eldridge: That was my next question. Now, I was just going to ask you can you go into the Four Pillars of Sustainability?
Rice: I jumped right into it.
Eldridge: That’s great. Please do.
Rice: Okay. So, the Four Pillars of Sustainability, which are the four primary areas in which we have direct control over are as follows.

PILLAR 1: Accountability and Transparency

Rice: Obviously with the recent signing into law of SB 126 by [California] Governor Newsom, requiring charter schools now formally even though most charter schools were already complying with these requirements, but formally, legally, to comply with the Brown Act requirements, the Public Records Act requirements, the Political Reform Act requirements, and sections of Government Code 1090. It has intensified the requirements for charter schools to be very transparent in those areas. So, with regard to governance, charter schools now really have to step it up to make sure that they are following all the requirements now that are being required of them.
In addition to, of course, what they’ve been required to do all along, and that is make sure that they follow their charter school petition in their administration that they meet their LCAP goals and do their reporting mechanisms as they are required to do to make sure that their finances are in order and that they are fiscally responsible and prudent that they have the required reserves set aside as well as legal compliance to make sure that they are very familiar with charter school law, very familiar with all the areas in which they are required and being scrutinized to follow. As we know, the scrutiny has intensified in the last couple of years. And as a result of the 2018 elections, has intensified even more. That is the first pillar, accountability and transparency.

PILLAR 2: Student Data, Growth, and Achievement

Rice: The second pillar has to do with student data, growth, and academic achievement. Of course, student data is an area in which we can significantly improve, particularly around student intake data. In my nearly 20 years of experience, I hear countless stories about how students who have been struggling in district-operated public schools are coming to charter schools, and their first or second year state testing results, of course, are far below proficient, the reason being because they are inheriting the failures of those district schools with those particular students who upon enrollment with the charter school are several grade levels behind, are credit deficient, are having all kinds of challenges that are not the fault of the charter school at all.

The Importance of Data to Demonstrate Growth

Rice: But the charter schools can do a much better job of documenting that information and translating it into a reportable document that shows that they didn’t start on an even ground when they enroll that student. Well, to use this starting gate analogy, they weren’t at the starting gate. They were hundreds of furlongs behind the starting gate and had to play several years of catch-up in order to bring those students to proficiency in all of the core subject areas. But yet the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) results don’t show that. CAASPP results do not reflect that at least until year three or year four.
If the student stays that long with the charter school, the students’ testing results start to reflect the great work that the charter school is doing. So, we need to do a much better job of documenting data and then recording data and reporting it. In addition to that, we need to do a better job not only on the CAASPP results and the dashboard indicators but also using internal assessment data to show internal growth. There are a number of effective tools out there that every charter school should be using regardless of the type of model the charter school is to be able to document internal growth where a one-year snapshot test by the state does not provide all of the story.
Then in addition to that, we want to make sure to use other types of indicators that demonstrate success, college and career indicators and so forth, some of which the state is finally after all these years adopting formally, but to the degree to which the charter school can show those additional indicators. Even post-secondary placement indicators will help in the mix of demonstrating success.
That is the second pillar. Those are more internal pillars by the way. The other two pillars are more external. I believe that charter schools across the board need to recognize that they assume the role of dual educators.
They are equally responsible for showing positive successful results with their students as they are in educating their greater communities and the public.

PILLAR 3: Brand Identity and Sharing Your Success Stories

Rice: We know that still after 26 years of being a movement in California, that the majority of the public still doesn’t know what a charter school is. When most of you say, “We are from a charter school,” the first question out of their mouth most of the time is, “How much does it cost?” That is a mirror that reflects back to you their lack of knowledge in what a charter school is.
In fact, it tells you that the majority of the public still after 26 years believes that charter schools are private schools because how many people in the public think that there is a tuition fee for a public school?
Unless they’ve been living in a cave, they know that public schools are tuition free. So, for them to say, “How much does it cost?” tells you that they believe that charter schools are private schools.

Unless they’ve been living in a cave, they know that public schools are tuition free. So, for them to say, “How much does it cost?” tells you that they believe that charter schools are private schools.

That is a huge public relations disaster for the charter school movement where the majority of the public still doesn’t recognize that charter schools are part, an integral part, of the public school system. Now, our opposition is taking advantage of that by going out and using false propaganda and talking points to say that charter schools are stealing public school students. Charter schools are stealing public school dollars from the public education system.

Rebranding Charter Schools

Rice: So, they’re using that lack of knowledge in the public to their advantage to use charter schools as a scapegoat and to demonize charter schools and to sway the public against charter schools even though charter schools are an integral part of the public education system. In order to turn that around, not only do we need to educate the public about charter schools being an integral part of the public education system, but charter schools need to adopt a strong brand identity. A brand identity is a way to, in layman’s terms, describe who you are, what you do, and how you do what you do.
What is the end result? The end goal is to create value and distinction in the mind of the public, so they recognize that you are an essential part of a vibrant and healthy public school system in their community that you are serving students whose needs are not being effectively met by other types of public schools. Now, that’s not to say that we should get rid of all district schools and go all charter. This is not about charter schools versus district schools. This is about having a healthy and vibrant and diversified public education system that provides equal access and equal opportunity to all students, to find the school and the program that is best matched to them to ensure their best chance at succeeding and going on to a productive life through career and college pathways.

This is about having a healthy and vibrant and diversified public education system that provides equal access and equal opportunity to all students, to find the school and the program that is best matched to them to ensure their best chance at succeeding and going on to a productive life through career and college pathways.

To establish a brand identity is to succinctly describe who you are, what you do, and how you do what you do in a way that the public understands and recognizes the tremendous value to society and to the public education system that they’re currently not seeing by not even knowing that what a charter school is. So, it’s incumbent upon every charter school to establish a strong brand identity, and from that foundation to then tell your success stories and tell your success stories through a wide variety of avenues, from social media, to traditional media, to developing relationships in the community, which gets, then, to our fourth pillar of sustainability, and that is to develop strong relationships and allies out in the community.

PILLAR 4: Building Community Relationships and Allies

Eldridge: Please elaborate on this one. This is important, I think, for a lot of charter schools.
Rice: That’s right. Because charter school leaders wear so many different hats, they tend to really have little or no time to reach out to their greater communities, and yet that is equally as critical as serving the needs of their students, especially in today’s very contentious climate where we’re really facing some of the most anti-charter legislation and anti-charter perspectives and sentiment and downright attacks that we have experienced in 26 years of existence.
So, the heat has been intensified. It is incumbent upon charter school leaders to reach out, not operate in isolation, not operate as separate islands, but to reach out and develop strong relationships with community leaders and community organizations that make a difference.
And in so doing to build allies so that when we are challenged by the status quo system that believes in a monopoly ahead of the best interests of students and ahead of parent and students’ school choice, which should be the foundation that everybody agrees on.
But yet that is not what we’re currently facing. We need to have those local allies to influence decision-makers and elected officials are responsible for making policy at the state level, to remind them that the most important focus is what is in the best interest of students, and how can we together create a vibrant and healthy education system that offers diverse choice and opportunity for all students to ensure that all students succeed? That should be the goal for everybody, but yet it’s not.
So, developing those community relationships by reaching out to individuals, engaging with them, educating them, inviting them to be a part of your school community, of your greater concentric circles of influence, makes all the difference in the world, and that needs to be integrated into the culture of every school as vitally as important as is integrated into the school, the goal of academic excellence.
Eldridge: Yeah, can you provide some specific tips on how they can actually engage the community and create those allies? Is that inviting authorizers out to board meetings? Is it holding community events? How do you suggest they do some of those things?
Rice: Well, I think first and foremost, it’s to invite them to be part of your interview informational distribution network. Get them on your email distribution list. Develop an email newsletter or other ways of distributing and disseminating information on a regular basis, some of which may include invitations to all school events whether those events are open house events; they’re events that honor and recognize community leaders for their support, which are very important. Community leaders love to come and receive awards, and to find excuses and reasons to honor and recognize their leadership and their support in your school and in what you’re doing is vitally important.


RELATED: How to Host a Successful Legislative Visit to Your Charter School


Rice: That also includes events that may showcase student talents and student achievements and student results, everything from theater to spelling bees, to robotics team results and those kinds of things. Use those opportunities to reach out to your community and invite folks to join you. Also, use organizations such as Chambers of Commerce and rotary clubs and Elks lodges and other organizations that are parent-driven, that work with troubled youth and teens, that work with families such as real estate agencies, such as church groups and so on. I have a whole list here. I’m trying to remember off the top of my head what a lot of them are.
Eldridge: You’re doing great.
Rice: But certainly, elected officials. Go out and meet with elected officials, staff at the regional offices. Go visit them in Sacramento. Bring students along to tell their success stories. In addition to the newsletter, use social media outlets. Use traditional media outlets to talk about your student success stories, to talk about your academic results and how you’re making a difference for students who otherwise would not have been successfully served had you not been in existence.
That is what ultimately creates value and distinction. You are providing a school model and results that other types of public schools and even private schools are not able to offer, which means you are an essential ingredient and component to a, to contributing to a healthy and vibrant public school system.
Eldridge: Great. Jeff, always passionate. Really appreciate it, it’s great information. Appreciate you coming again today.
Rice: Thank you so much for having me.
Eldridge: And hopefully everybody else out there enjoyed it, and that wraps up this episode of CHARTER EDtalks. Thank you.


Charter School Capital logoSince the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. Our depth of experience working with charter school leaders and our knowledge of how to address charter school financial and operational needs have allowed us to provide over $1.8 billion in support of 600 charter schools that have educated over 1,027,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!

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charter-like schools9 Tips For How To Create More Successful Charter-Like Schools In Urban Districts

Editor’s Note: This article from The74, was originally published here on September 19, 2018 and was written by David Osborne and Emily Langhorne. David directs the Progressive Policy Institute’s education work and is the author of Reinventing America’s Schools: Creating a 21st Century Education System. Emily Langhorne, a former English teacher, is an education policy analyst and project manager with the Progressive Policy Institute.
This article highlights how, over the past 15 years, the fastest improvement in urban public education has come from cities that have embraced the key tenants that have led to charter schools’ success — autonomy, choice, diversity of school designs, and real accountability for performance. In order to compete, many districts have recently tried to spur charter-like innovation and increase student achievement by granting their school leaders more autonomy.
Interestingly, studies in Boston, Memphis, Denver, and Los Angeles showed that public charter schools outperformed both traditional public and in-district autonomous schools on standardized tests in three of the four cities studied. But getting a charter isn’t always an easy road in today’s political landscape. In this case, in-district autonomous models may be the second-best option. Learn how districts can increase the success of these schools if they take guidance from these nine lessons learned from districts already embracing this new charter-like model.


Osborne & Langhorne: Where Politics Make Charters Difficult, 9 Tips for How Urban Districts Can Create Charter-like Schools — and Improve Their Success

charter-like schoolsOver the past 15 years, the fastest improvement in urban public education has come from cities that have embraced charter schools’ formula for success — autonomy, choice, diversity of school designs, and real accountability for performance. To compete, many districts have recently tried to create charter-like schools to spur innovation and increase student achievement by granting their school leaders more autonomy.
District-run autonomous schools are a hybrid model, a halfway point between charters and traditional public schools. They’re operated by district employees, but they can opt out of many district policies and — in some cities — union contracts.
Our recent analysis of state exam scores from 2015 and 2016 in Boston, Memphis, Denver, and Los Angeles showed that public charter schools outperformed both traditional public and in-district autonomous schools on standardized tests in three of the four cities studied. In the one exception, Memphis, the district concentrated its best principals and teachers in, and provided extra funding and support to, its autonomous iZone schools.
However, when the political landscape makes chartering difficult, in-district autonomous models may be the second-best option. Districts can increase the success of these schools if they heed these nine lessons learned by the four cities in our study.

1. Protect unrestricted autonomy

When autonomy is limited, so is principals’ ability to meet students’ needs. Districts need to give these schools unrestricted staffing and budgeting authority.
Staffing autonomy allows school leaders to hire effective staff who believe in their school’s vision and to evaluate staff based not only on performance but also on cultural fit. Forced placement of teachers not only harms student learning; it can also undermine a school’s culture. As one autonomous school principal in Los Angeles said, sometimes a principal needs to “lose a teacher and save a school.”
Budgeting autonomy enables principals to hire staff according to their schools’ unique needs — for example, bringing on additional guidance counselors rather than a dean. Leaders who control their own budgets can fund hands-on learning, purchase tablets for blended learning, hire a full-time substitute teacher, or employ any of a hundred other innovations.

2. Create a district office or independent board to support and protect autonomous schools

Autonomous school leaders spend a significant amount of time fighting to exercise the autonomies they have been promised. Sometimes, they get so frustrated, they leave. Districts with autonomous schools should create a central unit dedicated to supporting them, defending their autonomy and advocating on their behalf when disputes arise.
An alternative is to create a 501(c)3 nonprofit board, as Denver has. These boards are appointed, not elected, so they are free to make decisions that benefit students and schools without fear of political backlash. The boards oversee school progress, provide financial oversight, select school leaders and evaluate their performance, and protect them from district micromanagement.

3. Articulate a district-wide theory of action and secure buy-in from central office staff

Changing the mindset of the central office requires a huge cultural shift. Autonomous schools necessitate that many parts of the central office do things differently, so employees need to believe in the connection between school autonomy and student success, rather than seeing autonomous schools as an inconvenience and/or a challenge to centralized authority. District leaders need to openly discuss why they believe school autonomy will produce better performance, share this information publicly with school leaders, central office employees, teachers, and the community — and constantly reinforce the message.

4. Turn some central services into public enterprises that must compete with other providers for schools’ business

The fastest way to change the mindset of central office staff who provide services to schools — such as professional development, food, maintenance, and security — is to take away their monopoly. When internal service shops have to sink or swim in a competitive market, they almost always swim, because they are much closer to their customers than private competitors are. But, in the process, they increase their quality and reduce their costs.


RELATED
Five Reasons Independent Charters Outperform In-District Hybrid Schools


5. Authorize district-run autonomous schools like charter schools

Rigorous authorization has been essential to the success of strong charter sectors. Districts should use similar processes to authorize their own autonomous schools — allowing only the most promising applicants to open schools and removing those that prove ineffective. A careful authorization process weeds out weak proposals at the beginning reviews performance along the way and replaces schools that fail with stronger operators.

6. Ensure continuous improvement by using a clear system of accountability to close and/or replace failing schools

A common shortcoming among districts with autonomous school models is their failure to impose consequences that create real urgency among teachers and principals — closing and replacing failing schools. Every district should implement a performance framework that requires schools to show academic growth. If they fail, the district should provide additional supports during a probationary period but replace them if they still don’t meet targets. If a school is successful, the district should provide resources and incentives to encourage it to open another campus, as Denver does with its Innovation Schools.

7. Invest in developing autonomous school leaders

Giving schools autonomy does nothing to help student achievement if school leaders follow district procedures rather than looking for ways to be innovative. Districts need to invest in developing school leaders so they can take advantage of their freedoms. Careful selection of and support for principals has been a large part of the Memphis iZone’s success. Novice principals there are placed in partnerships with experienced principals, meeting over the summer and throughout the year to collaborate on strategies for leveraging autonomy to achieve results.

8. When possible, give families a choice of autonomous schools

Families and students who can choose their school tend to show more commitment than children who are assigned to one. Choice empowers them, and people who feel empowered are more likely to give their best efforts. In addition, systems of choice allow for the creation of schools with a variety of learning models, so students can select a school with the culture and curriculum that best fit their needs.

9. Explore district-run autonomous models from other cities

By examining a variety of successful strategies, districts can find and adapt the model that best fits their political climate and meets the needs of their community.
In addition to the four cities we studied, Springfield, Massachusetts, and Indianapolis, Indiana, have launched interesting in-district autonomy strategies.
The Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership, created as an alternative to a state takeover of several schools, contains nine struggling middle schools and one high school that have been given significant autonomy, overseen by a seven-member board of four state-appointed officials and three locally appointed members. The teachers union negotiated a new contract that includes longer hours, increased pay, and some compensation based on performance.
Indianapolis’s Innovation Network Schools, which start with full charter-like autonomy rather than with waivers from district rules, are the fastest-improving in the district. They have the same exemption from laws, regulations, and contract provisions as charters, and while the schools operate in district buildings, the principals and teachers are employed by the nonprofit corporation that operates the school. Each school’s board hires and fires the principal, sets the budget and pay scale, and chooses the school design. The nonprofits have five- to seven-year performance contracts with the district. If schools fail to fulfill the terms of their contracts, the district can refuse to renew them; otherwise, the district cannot interfere with their autonomy.
By following the recommendations above, districts can create self-renewing systems in which every school has the incentives and autonomy to continuously innovate and improve. At the same time, they can offer a variety of school models to families, to meet a variety of children’s needs.
Whether school boards will have the courage to close failing autonomous schools full of unionized district employees will always be a question. The long-term sustainability of in-district autonomy after the leaders who championed it have left is another Achilles’ heel. But if done well and sustained, such schools have the potential to improve public education in urban America


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charter school fundingThe Charter School Funding Misconception: Who’s money is it?

This article was originally posted here on September 5, 2018 by The74 and written by James V. Shuls, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. It is an opinion article that challenges one key assumption about charter school funding: does the funding for public schools belong to the child or to the district? This question is at the heart of education reform arguments.
Proponents of school choice believe that every family deserves to choose the best educational option that suits their child’s specific and unique needs—whether that school is a traditional district public school or a public charter school. Opponents of the charter school movement believe that families that choose the public charter school are “taking” money away from traditional district schools. As this writer suggests, this may hold true if you believe the child, and the funding that follows them, are district property.
Do the traditional district schools have less money if the student opts for a public charter school? Yes. That is the natural result of freedom of choice as it is within any other industry, so why should it be different for education? If your local charter schools are outperforming your local district schools or offer your child something unique to their needs, shouldn’t you be able to make that choice?
If you think the funding belongs to the district and not the student, this writer makes an enlightening comparison to shopping at Walmart versus shopping at your local farmer’ s market, “It presupposes that the customer belongs to Walmart; that any time the individual chooses to buy cucumbers from a local grower or salsa from an aspiring entrepreneur, he or she is “robbing” the dominant grocer.”
We think it’s vital to keep tabs on the pulse of all things related to charter schools, including informational resources, and how to support charter school growth and the advancement of the charter school movement as a whole. We hope you find this—and any other article we curate—both interesting and valuable.
Read on for the complete article.


Shuls: Do Charter Schools Take Districts’ Money? Only If You Think Children, and the Funding That Comes With Them, Are District Property

How would you respond if you stumbled across a headline that asked, “How much do farmers markets cost Walmart?” It’s a ridiculous question. It presupposes that the customer belongs to Walmart; that any time the individual chooses to buy cucumbers from a local grower or salsa from an aspiring entrepreneur, he or she is “robbing” the dominant grocer. That’s just absurd. Yet this is the standard frame we use when talking about education. We blithely assume that education is wholly different from any other field.
Consider, for example, a recent headline on the Education Writers Association’s website: “How Much Do Charter Schools Cost Districts?” It’s the same question, and it is just as absurd as when talking about groceries. Worse, it is unethical, because it dehumanizes children, reducing them to economic units. In this formulation, neither they nor their parents are individuals with aspirations, endowed with free will and the ability to act in their own self-interest; they are a mere funding stream for public school districts.
This type of headline is all too common. Most people wouldn’t even bat an eye at it. But this isn’t just semantics. It gets at the heart of the way many people view public education.
It is only in education that we presume the customer is the rightful property of a specific supplier and therefore “costs” the supplier when he or she goes somewhere else. Indeed, this is the fundamental problem with the public education system in the United States: We presume the tax dollars that fund a child’s education belong to the public school district and the child belongs in a public school seat.
If, heaven forbid, parents want to use those education funds at a charter school or a private school, they must prove that “choice” works. We demand that school choice programs justify themselves by increasing student achievement on standardized tests, or increasing graduation rates, or fixing decades-old segregation issues. We would never ask the farmers market to prove its tomatoes are bigger and juicier than Walmart’s as a condition of operation.
It doesn’t stop there. A few years ago, one writer went as far as to say, “You are a bad person if you send your children to private school.” You can almost hear Snowball from Animal Farm repeating the mantra, “Four legs good, two legs bad.” It’s us versus them. We treat public education as if it — the system, the school district — were the ultimate good to be served. Just google “school vouchers” and look at the images. The internet is replete with political cartoons that characterize school choice programs as systematically dismantling traditional public schools, brick by brick.
Challenges to this concept are not new. In his 1958 book, Freedom of Choice in Education, Father Virgil Blum wrote that “our educational policy must be philosophically based on the dignity and transcendent value of the individual, on the integrity and freedom of the human person; it must be legally based on the Federal Constitution, recognizing the individual student clothed in all his constitutional rights.” We are no closer to that reality today than we were 60 years ago.
Our commitment to educating every child, regardless of wealth or ability, is a reflection of our highest and noblest ideals. What we do today in our public education system is a feat that was almost unthinkable even 100 years ago. Yet in the process of building that system, we somehow lost our purpose. Instead of the system serving the children, we now insist the children must serve the system.
If we are ever to change this, we must first change how we talk about public education. We can’t presume, as the author of the Education Writers Association piece did, that children and their funding inherently belong to the public school system. Do public school districts have less money when a student goes to a charter school or a private school? Absolutely — as they should. This is what happens in any industry when customers choose to spend their dollars at one place instead of another. More to the point, it is what happens when students leave a district school for any reason.
In the final analysis, we must realize that public education is not about the school system, but the students that it is supposed to serve. They have value. They have worth. They should have choices.
James V. Shuls, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.


Charter School Capital logoSince the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. Our depth of experience working with charter school leaders and our knowledge of how to address charter school financial and operational needs have allowed us to provide over $1.8 billion in support of 600 charter schools that have educated over 1,027,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!

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charter school expansionIs Charter School Expansion Supported by Strong District-Charter Partnerships?

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published here, by The Rivard Report out of San Antonio, Texas and written by Inga Cotton, a parent activist and blogs at San Antonio Charter Moms about school choice and local educational activities for families.
As we continue to support the efforts around charter school expansion across the country, we always seek to bring you articles that help ask the question, “What can help the charter school movement continue to thrive?” This charter parent discusses how charter partnerships with traditional district schools can strengthen the entire public school system by raising the quality of education and, thus, creating benefits for our nation’s children. But, both opportunities and risks lie in bringing partnerships into our neighborhood public schools. Read on to hear her perspective.
We think it’s vital to keep tabs on the pulse of all things related to charter schools, including informational resources, and how to support charter school growth and the advancement of the charter school movement as a whole. We hope you find this—and any other article we curate—both interesting and valuable.


A Parent’s Perspective: District-Charter Partnerships Strengthen Public School Systems

Put yourself in the shoes of San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) leaders earlier this year: faced with a perpetually failing campus, they chose to enlist the help of charter operator Democracy Prep to transform Stewart Elementary into a school that offers high-quality education and a brighter future for its students.
Now put yourself in the shoes of a Stewart parent: the forthcoming district-charter partnership is almost certain to have brought on both change and uncertainty.
A recent commentary on the topic mentioned my blog, San Antonio Charter Moms, but did not accurately describe its mission. It is not an “advocacy group for charter expansion;” rather, it aims to give parents tools and information to make informed decisions and raise the overall quality of education in our city.
The blog started in 2012 with a small group of moms curious about some of the new charter schools that were coming to San Antonio. While the “charter moms” name has stuck, the purpose has expanded to include all types of schools.
School models tend to be secondary to parents as governance systems usually work in the background. That is, unless there is a breakdown and a school is faced with closure or new management. At the end of the day, parents want a school where their child is happy, feels safe, and makes progress in learning.
Charter partnerships, such as the forthcoming one at Stewart Elementary in SAISD, can strengthen the public school system by raising the quality of education and, thus, creating benefits for San Antonio’s children. But from a parent’s standpoint, both opportunities and risks lie in bringing partnerships into our neighborhood public schools.
Looking to charter schools for expertise makes sense. The Texas charter school sector as a whole is successful. According to Charter School Performance in Texas , a study published by CREDO at Stanford University in August 2017,
” … on average, charter students in Texas experience stronger annual growth in reading and similar growth in math compared to the educational gains of their matched peers who enroll in the traditional public schools … The impact on reading gains is statistically significant. Thinking of a 180-day school year as ‘one year of learning,’ an average Texas charter student exhibits growth equivalent to completing 17 additional days of learning in reading each year.”
Those are averages – meaning, some schools do better than others. Public school districts must select successful charters with expertise in serving certain types of students, such as low-income students or those who have too few credits for their age. When those charter schools bring proven expertise to help a district school succeed, students benefit.
Charter schools can learn from district schools, too. Neighborhood schools experienced in supporting groups like English-language learners and special education students must pass that knowledge on to charter operators. Democracy Prep is tasked with accommodating all students assigned to Stewart Elementary.
Not all charter schools are doing a good job. Like failing district schools, failing charters should be closed, too. Resources and students should go to the successful schools, but ensuring that happens requires thorough analysis on behalf of leaders and parents.
This raises the broader issue about school quality and parental choice that applies to all public schools: Parents need support to make good decisions. They need objective information about school quality, like the TEA’s school report cards, and forthcoming letter grades for districts and campuses.
There should also be limits on choice: Parents should not be allowed to choose a failing school, either district or charter. Why would parents want their children enrolled in a failing school? A child’s lag in academic progress often does not become apparent until there is a serious problem.
But parents may like intangible things about their kids’ school – friendly people on campus, a feeling of safety and belonging, a sense of tradition, a location within walking distance from their home – and we must have compassion for families who make the best decisions they can with the information and resources available to them. Many parents have told me that transportation, application processes, deadlines, and wait lists are all major limiting factors in choosing a different school.
That’s why every neighborhood needs a high-quality public school. In neighborhoods where public schools have been failing, the tendency to cover up the problem has eroded parents’ trust. SAISD is working to fix the problem of failing schools through innovative partnerships, but the district must now also work to rebuild trust with its constituents. While there is a lot of uncertainty among Stewart Elementary parents, experiences at other campuses give reason for hope.
Ogden Elementary, for example, has been a residency lab school of the Relay Graduate School of Education for one year now, and both teachers and school leaders there have said parent engagement has increased because children are talking about the changes in their school.
Part of rebuilding trust is reassuring parents that, in the new world of district-charter partnerships, the community’s most vulnerable students will be taken care of. The system needs safeguards to ensure it is fair and improves – not worsens – inequality in our city.
To ease the discomfort of change and uncertainty, SAISD must communicate clearly and compassionately with affected families and ensure its most vulnerable students still get the attention they deserve.
These are difficult times, but there is the potential for SAISD to emerge as a stronger district and a true leader in the region and the nation.


Since the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. Our depth of experience working with charter school leaders and our knowledge of how to address charter school financial and operational needs have allowed us to provide over $1.6 billion in support of 600 charter schools that educate 800,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!

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