Should States Support Public Charter School Facilities Funding?
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published here on July 31, 2019 by EdWeek and written by Andrew Ujufusa. 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.
If Charter Schools Build It, Will States Help Pay For It?
By Andrew Ujifusa on July 31, 2019 4:34 PM
Most states have policies on the books to provide some kind of funding support for the facilities that charter schools use. But dive deeper into what’s on the books, and the number and types of policies can vary significantly from state to state.
That’s one relatively straightforward conclusion to draw from a new report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools published earlier this month. ”State Policy Snapshot: Facilities Funding for Public Charter Schools“ says that 30 states and the District of Columbia have a policy covering at least one of the following funding issues charters deal with:
Providing a per-pupil facilities allowance to charter schools;
Creating a charter school facility grant program;
Ensuring that charter schools have equal access to all existing state facilities programs and revenues for district-run public schools in a state;
Providing a charter school facility loan program;
Providing charter schools with access to local property tax dollars generated for facilities.
In addition, 20 states and the District of Columbia have more than one such policy on the books. However, no jurisdiction has all five policies listed above, according to the alliance. And not every state’s policy, such a grant or loan program, actually gets funded.
Need some of that report’s data in visual form? Check out the interactive map here.
Questions about charter school facilities raise several issues and can prove particularly divisive.
Supporters believe that as public schools, charters shouldn’t face particular hardships when it comes to issues like paying for space. And some charters, particularly those that aren’t part of big established networks or are just getting off the ground, do face major hurdles when it comes to finding and paying for their locations. As one Portland, Ore., charter founder told Education Week back in 2013, ”We have to meet all of these code requirements that older schools [and private schools] may not have to comply with because we’re a new school, which makes even the consideration of most spaces impossible and difficult.”
However, others argue that comparing charter schools’ facilities access to the bonds and other financial tools used by traditional district-run schools oversimplifies how the traditional public schools actually get their facilities. Skeptics have also cited the instance of a charter school suing its management company, Imagine Schools, which also rented a facility to the school, over allegations that Imagine charged the school excessive rent. A similar case played out in Los Angeles in 2013 that ended with two founders of a charter school getting sentenced to prison and community service.
One additional policy areas charters are exploring? Opportunity Zones. As we wrote earlier this week, these zones were established by the 2017 tax law and are designed to provide tax benefits to investors who put money into designated distressed communities. Supporters of Opportunity Zones believe charters could be big beneficiaries by linking up with these investors, possibly in conjunction with other groups and institutions seeking space, to help with facilities and other costs.
A February presentation on Opportunity Zones hosted by the alliance notes that the structure of the zones “rewards patient capital” (since the tax incentives hinge on long-term investments) and “takes equity capital off the sidelines and puts it to work in low-income communities.”
The alliance’s July report on state policies says this about the general landscape and trends for this issue:
One of the biggest challenges to the continued expansion of charter schools is the fact that many charter school laws place the ultimate burden of obtaining and paying for facilities on charter schools themselves. As a result, charter school leaders struggle to find suitable and affordable facilities to house their growing numbers of students.
States play an important role in determining the options available to help fund charter school facilities. Increasingly, states are enacting and updating state policies to help offset the cost of leasing, purchasing, and maintaining charter school facilities.
Read the full alliance report on those policies below:
The Ultimate Guide to Charter School Facility Financing:
Thinking about a new facility for your charter school or enhancing your current one? This guide shares straightforward and actionable advice on facilities planning, financing options, getting approved, choosing a partner, and much more! Download it here.
What Were Your Biggest Charter School Challenges in 2019?
This year, at the National Charter Schools Conference, we asked the visitors to our Charter School Capital booth one simple question…”What is the biggest challenge that charter schools face?”. We had 248 respondents from states all across the nation, and while not an enormous number to provide clear statistical significance, we did find the results interesting and thought you might too. In this post, we’re sharing the results of our survey with you.
Overall Highlights:
24% of respondents said that increasing or sustaining enrollment was a top challenge
19% said that retaining teachers was their biggest challenge
16% of respondents said that accessing/improving facilities was their top challenge
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Notable Highlights, State Specific:
More than 1/3 of our California respondents said increasing or sustaining enrollment was their greatest challenge
In Michigan, retaining teachers was the leading challenge by a wide margin (20 of 31 respondents)
The leading challenge in Florida, according to our respondents was accessing/improving facilities
More than half of the Texas respondents shared that increasing or sustaining enrollment was their greatest challenge. (11 of 18)
Note: Other state responses were spread across the categories with no notable leader and were therefore not called out here.
Achieve long-term stability with our customized charter school facilities financing options which are designed to meet your school’s unique needs. Charter School Capital offers stable and flexible facilities financing product. This is a long-term lease that allows schools to access funding through all stages of growth. As a long-term partner, our team works closely with you as we explore budgetary and financial options to assist you in achieving your facilities goals.
Since the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We help schools access, leverage, and sustain the resources charter schools need to thrive, allowing them to focus on what matters most – educating students. Our extensive toolbox of innovative and customizable solutions are designed exclusively for charter schools. This wide range of products and services has been developed to address the diverse set of challenges charter leaders face 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 $2 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!
For this CHARTER EDtalk, Michelle Lohner, Sr. Account Manager at Charter School Capital, was joined by BoardOnTrack’s Director of Leadership & Governance Training, Mike Mizzoni to discuss tips on how to build an effective charter school board. Mike shares his expertise on why is it important to put together the “right” board, what qualities you should look for when building an effective board, the ideal size of a board, and how long should people typically serve on your charter school board. Please watch the video below and read the transcript for the complete story.
TRANSCRIPT
Michelle Lohner: Thank you so much everyone for joining us today. I’m Michelle Lohner, senior account manager at Charter School Capital. Today we have Mike Mizzoni, director of leadership and governance training for Board on Track.
Mike Mizzoni: Hey, there.
Lohner: Thank you so much, Mike, for being here.
Mizzoni: Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.
Lohner: Yes, yes. We’re all excited to hear some of those best tips and best practices that you have to share. So get it started, why is it so important to put together the right board?
Mizzoni: Great question. The governing boards of charter schools have a really, really important job to do. We often talk about how the governing board in the school leadership team, so your CEO or your executive director, are really two sides of the same coin governing and leading this organization. Ultimately they’ve got a really important job to do. This is really the board of directors of a multimillion dollar public enterprise.
And so given that, and whenever we use that phrase, we usually see heads nod because it really gives it the kind of gravitas that it deserves. We remind people that serving on a public charter school board is a part-time job, and it’s really important. And so we encourage people to take it as a really serious position. So making sure you have the right people on the board in order to accomplish all of the things that a good charter school board needs to accomplish is key.
This is really what we call shared governance. And the way that shared governance works best is when there’s a school leader and a paid set of expert staff members who are there to run the school day-to-day. And then separately we have a group of laypersons who are not expected to be educators day-to-day who are leading and providing direction and oversight for the organization. So what we want to see with that group of lay people is a diverse background from everything related to their professional and demographic background and expertise.
Lohner: So that’s interesting. You were saying having a wide background. What qualities, though, are you looking for when you’re trying to build that effective board setting yourself up for growth?
Mizzoni: Yeah, so there’s definitely no right answer. And what is important is one of the things that we are promoting is this notion of being really strategic when you’re recruiting your board members. Going back to the notion that this is a multimillion dollar public enterprise. What we want, what we encourage people is that their form should follow their function. So the board that they’re putting together should be specifically formed in such a way that it’s designed to accomplish the thing that the board has set out to do.
So just for example, let’s say that if one of the things you were looking to do this year was to expand into a new location, and you wanted to buy or build a new school. At that point, it might be really important to have somebody who has school financing experience, real estate transactions, school architecture or facilities experience, specifically to help the board accomplish that task of building or buying a new building.
Similarly, if you were going to start a brand new fundraising, capital fundraising campaign, you want to make sure you’re recruiting people who have fundraising experience that they can bring to the board.
Lohner: Makes sense.
Mizzoni: What we encourage people is not to have a board that’s made up of entirely educators or former teachers. One of the common things we see as people are assembling their board for the first time is that they want to go and hire and recruit everybody who’s either been a teacher or worked for a school. And that’s great, and we want to make sure that there’s real depth in the educational experiences and knowledge, but we also want to make sure that you’ve got someone with financial experience, someone who understands how school budgets operate, someone with legal experience. Again, not to be the lawyer for the board, but to have somebody who can think with a different mindset about policies and when it’s important to bring in outside legal counsel.
We always look to have someone with HR experience, so somebody who understands employee relations and how to build a human capital pipeline of teachers and staff and holding your [inaudible 00:04:00] accountable and doing an employee review. Having HR experience and an understanding of that role is critical.
Another thing that people don’t think of often when they’re assembling their board is having previous governance experience. So having somebody who has either served on a school board before or a nonprofit board or charitable board, again, brings that perspective of how group processes work and how serving on a board is like serving on any other team where you want to make sure that you’re working together for the common goals.
Lohner: So that’s really interesting. You’ve talked a lot about the different qualities that go into making up a good board. What would you say is the ideal size of a board?
Mizzoni: Yeah, again, actually again, I will say is that there’s not a specific right answer. So again, I think every board, it’s important for them to say, do we have the size board that meets the needs of our organization today?
One of the things we talk a lot about is how boards government for growth. And specifically when it comes to charter schools, we know that there’s a need for more seats to be opened up in charter school programs. So whether it’s by serving more grade levels or by expanding into different locations, most charter schools that we work with are on some growth trajectory, again, either adding students to their current schools or expanding to new schools.
And so as the organization does that and evolves, what we find is that the work of the board just by necessity becomes more complex as well. So as the organization is older, it tends to be that you need to expand the size of your board to keep up with all of that work that needs to get done.
So as a general rule, it’s very common for boards, especially when they’re in their planning years, maybe they haven’t applied for their charter yet or maybe they just have recently applied for their charter, it’d be very common for them to have a board of anywhere from five to seven or nine board members.
My recommendation is that you do not go out and start a governing board with fewer than seven people because that’s usually about the minimum size that we find where you have enough diversity of opinion and background, but you’re also able to have a manageable sized group that you’re working with, and things like quorum are usually not a problem.
As the organization evolves and things like the need to have really robust committee work in between your full board meetings, as that tends to happen, you need to recruit more people to serve on all of these committees and to help pull the weight of really a sustainable, well-run charter school board.
So what I recommend is that once you’ve got your feet under you, and you become a well oiled machine, you should strive to have anywhere from 11 to 15 board members as part of your team. Again, it’s important that boards reflect and say, “What do we need right now?” Because it’s not always the right solution just to add board members. And what we find is that if boards don’t have the right processes and structure in place, then once you get to 13, 15 board members, you quickly hit the point of diminishing returns, and having more board members on your team actually becomes more problematic than beneficial.
Lohner: I could see that. Almost having too many, too many cooks in the kitchen, right?
Mizzoni: Exactly. And we see that a lot.
Lohner: Yes. So in terms of you talked about sort of that best practice, five to seven as you’re just getting started, and it grows as the school grows. What would you say most board members, how long do they actually serve on a school board?
Mizzoni: Right. And so what we find is general rule is that we recommend total terms on the board of about six years, and there are a couple of ways we do that. The way that the length of somebody’s term on a board is determined is typically by the term limits in bylaws. So we encourage every charter school board to have term limits in their bylaws, their governing documents. Because to the point that we’ve been making that given the fact that these charter school organizations are run by a group of interested people with all of these different backgrounds, it’s important that you’re bringing in new life, new blood, new experiences to the board and that the board doesn’t get stale, or very frequently we have what we call founder fatigue. If the board, if you have the same founding group of board members for 10 years, the board tends to get stale, and we want to bring in that new life.
So what we encourage people is to set term limits in their bylaws. What we typically recommend are either two year terms that are renewable up to three time, so you could serve for a total of six years, or the inverse of that would be to have three year terms that are renewable twice. So again, we don’t recommend serving for longer than a six year period on a board. It’s great after six years to get some separation from the board, maybe take a couple of years off and always have the opportunity to come back. But we recommended having some sort of structured term of six years at a most that way board members have an out, and they can elect to not renew their term.
And then also your colleagues on the board have the option to say, “We might need to now go in a different direction. And if the board members we need now serve a different purpose, we want to have the ability to thank you for your service and then attract a new board member to the team.”
Lohner: So Mike, you had mentioned that, you know, it’s good to set terms for your board members, you know, somewhere around six years. But with that, how do you ensure that you have longevity for your board when there’s this turnover, you know, every six years or so?
Mizzoni: Yeah, it really all comes down to succession planning for your board members and being really strategic when it comes to your recruitment efforts as a board. So what we would encourage people to do is on an annual basis, is to be very methodical about having a conversation about their recruitment needs and you want them to have a conversation about what it is that the board needs to do in the next two, three, four, five years in order to be successful. And then to recruit people specifically who meet those needs, as we talked about the diverse skill sets and backgrounds and experiences that we want on the board. And this is the challenge that just about every charter school board that we work with faces is keeping a continuous pipeline of people who are aligned with the mission and then serve one of those particular purposes.
And so there are a lot of tips and strategies out there that boards can use to improve their recruitment efforts that make it so that it’s not just going out and finding people and begging people to serve on your board but such that they’re actually applying and knocking down your door because they want to serve and continue and further the mission. So people are interested in finding more information on how to recruit really strategically and effectively. I know that we at BoardOnTrack and at Charter School Capital both have resources on just how to do that. The one, the two tips actually that I’d leave you with are …
Lohner: Please.
Mizzoni: One is to consider having a written job description explaining what it means to serve on your board. That way when people are interested in potentially serving, there’s a document that you can point them to for what the expectations of their role will be.
Lohner: Definitely.
Mizzoni: And then the other thing I would consider boards to do is to add, consider adding people to their board who are not full voting board members but are volunteer committee members. And so what we find is that bringing somebody into the work of the board by asking them to serve on a committee while not being a full voting board member is a great way to get them ramped up and interested in the work [crosstalk 00:02:09] so that when you’re ready for a seat to open, you’ve got some people that you can look to who are, you know, familiar with the work and ready to get up to speed.
Lohner: That makes perfect sense. You know, they can really just kind of get their feet wet, right, and get to experience what it’s like to be on a board and then you know, hopefully you know, have be ready to just step on board one day and be board president.
Mizzoni: That’s exactly right. That’s what we like to see.
Lohner: Those are some great best practices and like you said, you know, be sure to check out the website. But thank you so much, Mike, for being with us today.
Mizzoni: Thank you.
Lohner: Thank you everyone for tuning in to our Ed Talk and hope that you have a great afternoon.
The Ultimate Guide to Charter School Board Governance
EBOOK/ MANUAL
For your school to reach its goals, meet its mission, and be set up for success, you need to build a well-structured, well-staffed, and well-trained Board of Directors. In this important webinar, our partners and industry experts on Board Governance, BoardOnTrack, will be sharing their expertise on the ins and outs of recruiting, building, and managing your governance team as you grow.
Watch and learn:
Board basics: Who should be on your governance team and what should they do?
How to build a strong board: Strategically recruiting for diversity and skills
Tips to govern for growth: How to face challenges and changes at any stage
Download it now and get the tools to be more strategic about your school’s board governance practices!
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published here on July 23, 2019 by The 74 and written by Sonia Park, the executive director of the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition. 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.
Charter Schools Can Be an Important New Tool for Fostering Integration. Our New Coalition Is Working to Make That Happen
It’s been almost 50 years since Kamala Harris stepped onto a school bus and out of her racially redlined neighborhood amid the desegregation of the Berkeley, California, schools. Five decades later, the question of who goes to school where remains pivotal to kids’ and families’ lives and to the communities we build in this country.
In those years, much has changed. School segregation has gotten worse. Yet our understanding of the issue has changed for the better, and the evolving picture of public schooling offers new solutions. One important, and overlooked, element is charter schools, which are numerous in many places where segregation is common. Charter schools, independently managed public schools, are offering new approaches to this decades-old issue.
America’s painful history with segregation was injected anew into America’s dinner-table conversations after Harris’s exchange with Joe Biden at the second Democratic presidential debate. Finding solutions to this persistent problem remains fundamental to justice and opportunity in this country — and in an increasingly diverse nation, it’s more pressing than ever. Desegregation in America’s schools peaked in 1988; since then, the proportion of schools that are intensely segregated — more than 90 percent nonwhite — has tripled. This, in a country where most public school students are children of color.
But evidence shows that racial and socioeconomic integration offer benefits not just to children of color and low-income students but to all, ranging from test scores to college attendance to critical thinking skills. Scholar Richard Kahlenberg wrote after the debate, “If we want to break the cycle of poverty, few interventions are as important as efforts to give children a chance to attend high-quality integrated schools.”
High-quality public charter schools are among the new tools we have to advance desegregation and deepen our understanding of successful diversity.
Public schooling in 2019 looks far different than it did in Harris’s day – in part because charter schools have opened in places where there are large numbers of low-income students and students of color. Our student bodies are more diverse; so are the choices their families can make.
Charter schools are open to whoever chooses them, and some reflect the highly segregated neighborhoods in which they exist. As a consequence, some have criticized charters for supposedly worsening segregation, though that confuses correlation with causation. (There is also a vast difference between being placed in a school based on your zip code and choosing a school because it’s culturally affirming.) Charters offer choice to families that haven’t had that in the past.
The Diverse Charter Schools Coalition is proud to have assembled charter leaders determined to work with school boards and to recruit intensively to make their schools a force for diversity of all kinds and at all levels. We’re a small but rapidly growing alliance representing more than 175 schools nationwide that have a vision of what education should look like in today’s society — encompassing families, students, staff and leadership. We are determined to take on not just learning gaps but also an empathy gap that is far too clear.
It takes expertise and planning to create such schools successfully. Intentional diversity goes far beyond simply enrolling students of different races, wealth levels and other socioeconomic markers; it embraces a deepening understanding of an inclusive school community. Too often, desegregation means only that students attend school in the same building — often experiencing separate and unequal education under the same roof. We’re working to help schools not just attain diverse enrollment, staff and leadership, but foster inspiring communities where students can form bonds that cross boundaries, learn from one another and together develop a vision for their world.
We’re seeking to grow the number of these schools, in part by recruiting and preparing future leaders with a clear vision for new diverse-by-design charter schools. Our fellows are matched with a host school, exposed to exemplary models, given access to experts and resources, offered a tailored residency and provided with individualized learning. Leaders of our member schools receive coaching and support, which we plan to expand to district leaders as well.
America is a different and more diverse place than it was when Harris started school, yet our schools are just as segregated. We need to use every tool possible to change that, and charter schools must be part of that.
Since the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We help schools access, leverage, and sustain the resources charter schools need to thrive, allowing them to focus on what matters most – educating students. 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 $2 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!
This year, for our 3rd annual Richard Dewey Awards, we were so honored to have received such amazing, touching, inspirational submissions. Close to 75 stories about how teachers have made a difference were shared with us. The caliber of submissions made selecting our three winners a very challenging task for our panel of judges.
And the 2019 Dewey Awards go to…
In no particular order, here are the winning stories that will receive the $1000 grants that will be given to a charter school of their choosing! Read these three heartwarming stories about teachers who have truly impacted the lives of their students.
Teacher: Joshua Curry Subject: History and Social Studies School: Options Charter School Noblesville, State: Indiana Submission from: Conner Reiff
“How has Joshua Curry impacted my life?
Prologue
To answer this question, allow me to review the two previous years of my life. I had been told that I had ADHD, but in 6th grade, I had actually become seriously ill with Narcolepsy with Cataplexy. I was put on homebound restrictions through my previous school for almost two years. Having to do online work was not fun and sometimes I fell asleep halfway through my work! Sometimes I fell asleep for weeks at a time! I was put into a clinical trial for a medication where I had to frequently fly to California. Then I had to be seen by the top research doctor at Stanford University because I was still sleeping so much. It was there that I was also diagnosed with Klein-Levin Syndrome, a very rare sleep disorder. I have no idea how, but I somehow survived through those painful two years on an online school and traveling. After successful medical interventions, my homebound instructor suggested Options Charter School in Noblesville, Indiana. Today I am a successful student at Noblesville Options Charter School. Let me tell you about one of my teachers, who has made it his mission to ensure my success in school.
—————————————————————————
Actual Story
The school I am at now, Options Charter School, has put me on a brighter path by inspiring the student in me to wake up (no pun intended) and to be free. Regardless of my disorders, I am able to function at school and complete my work every day, sometimes with no homework at all!
The one teacher who helped me through a lot of this was my social studies teacher, Joshua Curry. He had some secondhand experience with Narcolepsy and it came from a surprising source! My family and I attended the Center for Courageous Kids in Scottsville, Kentucky. There I met other children who have narcolepsy including one of Josh’s school friends named Nick who had a daughter with the same type of narcolepsy as me! Nick tutored Josh on every possible important thing for a narcoleptic like me. He taught him the wants, needs, and level of care needed to help. Josh then suggested extended time for assignments, minimal homework, and that the goal was to help me succeed with whatever it took. Over a short period of time, Josh became not just a teacher, but my best friend and someone who cared for me. He came to my awards ceremony for the community project I had done. He even spoke at the ceremony despite his nervousness toward the thought of public speaking! He even drove me back to school afterward and bought me a giant-sized Dr. Pepper when we stopped at Speedway! We laughed all the way back! It was the best day of my life!
Josh has always had my back and he gives me somewhat ridiculous deadlines for school assignments. When I bring this up, he would say, “Just take the two weeks, Connor. Besides, it’s only just in case you fall asleep.” We would both laugh for a while after that and then I would go on to my next class. Every day at school I wish one thing for myself, “I wish to be in Josh’s classroom all day, every day!”
The reason that I like his classroom so much is because when I was undergoing treatment, I read a lot of historical articles, books, and movies. In the classroom, he makes history relevant and interactive. He uses constant hilarious dark humor that keeps my mind engaged. He engages the students by demonstrating that he is an authority about each topic. It makes me ask questions about the sequence of history.“History is not wrong unless you record it wrong” is one of his favorite quotes. He has many books in his classroom for different perspectives and time periods. This allows me to gain historical knowledge and draw my own conclusions.
There isn’t a teacher more deserving of being recognized than Josh Curry. Often times, charter school teachers are not recognized for helping individual students and for the good that they do in the world. Thank you for the opportunity to nominate Josh Curry. He is most deserving of this national honor!”
Teacher: Betty Williams
Subject: Academic, 2nd Grade
School: Frostproof Elementary School
State: Florida
Submission by: Mary Milton
“In loving memory of Mrs. Betty Williams:
As a first grade student, I hated school. I couldn’t read in first grade and everyone knew it. My first-grade teacher told me that I wouldn’t amount to anything because I couldn’t read and she wasn’t very pleasant or patient with me. I didn’t want to go to school. That all changed when I started second grade and had Mrs. Betty Williams as a teacher. Mrs. Williams was an older woman that had taught for years. She had a sense of calm that every student should encounter in a classroom. Mrs. Williams genuinely cared for her students and took the time to know each of us.
I remember the day I cried to her about not being able to read. She told me that I may not be able to read today, but she promised I would be able to read. Mrs. Williams patiently worked with me, she met with my mom and tried different strategies to help me read. One day, she moved my seat closer to the front of the room. I was able to see the board a little more clearly, but still not perfectly. I had never told anyone that things were blurry to me, but Mrs. Williams noticed that I was squinting and trying to figure out words on the board, that is why she moved me closer. When she requested a meeting with my mom I thought she was going to tell my mom the same thing my first-grade teacher told me. Instead, she told my mom that she thought I should have my eyes checked. We were a very low-income family and my mom told her she didn’t know if she could afford to take me to the eye doctor, but would try to get me in as soon as possible.
Mrs. Williams gave my mom her eye doctor’s name and told my mom to take me there and she would take care of the bill. I remember the doctor telling my mom that I needed glasses, I was far-sighted and had astigmatism. I was so proud when my glasses came in and begged my mom to take me by Mrs. Williams’s house so I could show her my glasses and tell her that trees had leaves now, not just blurry blobs. She didn’t mind that we stopped by her home after work and was so happy to see me smiling with my glasses on. Mrs. Williams continued to work with me on reading and I stayed in contact with her after her retirement. Her caring personality, her patience, and her observant eyes helped me believe in myself, taught me how to read, allowed me to see, and inspired me to become a teacher.”
Teacher: Chantal Haskell
Subject: Drama, Strings, Choir
School: Greenville Technical Charter High School
State: South Carolina
Submission by: Savannah Cannon
On my first day of freshman year, I was scared out of my mind. I didn’t really want to go to Drama Class, because I knew I would be the only freshman in Drama 2. I came inside and sat down on the third row. I was encouraged to come sit on the front row with my six other classmates and reluctantly agreed. We instantly started introductions, but Ms. Haskell didn’t do it like any of my other freshmen teachers would. We were asked about our summers, and Haskell showed us pictures from her wedding. We started improv, and I quickly became very aware of the energy in the room. My upperclassman classmates were performing scenes about babies in blenders and crazy things I had no idea how to react to. But Haskell quickly showed me that we were a family and that our family liked to have a lot of laughs.
Within only a couple weeks, I became more and more comfortable in Drama 2 class. With Haskell leading us, it wasn’t only about learning or getting the grade. It was about teaching us things that we would never forget. It was about making friends and gaining relationships I could treasure forever. Every project had a different twist and turn that scared me at first, but always came back, in the end, to teach me a bigger lesson.
Ms. Haskell wasn’t only teaching us inside of her classroom either. Haskell is the only teacher I have ever met that was brave enough to open up her own home to her students. Over Christmas break, when she should have been thanking God that she didn’t have to deal with us hooligans, she invited us to come bake cookies and spend time together. Haskell was not just a teacher that we sometimes talked to because we felt like we needed to, Haskell was someone I knew I could always come to for advice about anyone or anything.
Only about a month into the school year, auditions were held for Alice in Wonderland. I performed some little monologue about a school play and I loved every little second of my two minutes, but I was scared out of my mind. Only a couple of days later, I received callbacks for the show. I ended up playing the Red Queen, but what Haskell told me just a short 12 hours later would change everything I thought about myself. Before class, she pulled me to the side and told me that she believed I had really good talent and that if I kept working, she knew I would do big things. That statement has stuck with me for over two years now, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
Haskell has continued to teach me things throughout my high school experience. She has worked harder than any teacher I have ever seen. She has given up her after school time four, if not all five days of the week. She has Musical Theatre class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, holds an acapella club for her students on Wednesdays, and stays after school on Mondays so that I can have meetings for our annual Murder Mystery Dinner, and so other kids can rehearse lines. She puts in more commitment inside and outside of the classroom than any teacher. She might leave our building with hours of work to do, but you can always count on her to have it done the next day when we return.
When I was having a tough time handling school, sports, friends, and family, Haskell was the only adult I knew I could come to. She never judged me, never looked down upon me. She only gave me the greatest advice and endless support. But most importantly, she just kept on telling me she loved me.
In my opinion, being a teacher is about sacrifice. Sacrificing your time, your effort, and probably sometimes your sanity. Only the best teachers truly care about their students the way that Haskell does. She is always there for a laugh, but she is also always there for a hug and to be a shoulder to cry on. Haskell is the kind of teacher that you cry about on graduation day because you’re not really sure what you’re going to do without their smile, support, and advice every day when you’re gone. Someday, when I become a teacher, I hope to have just as much passion for my kids as Haskell does for hers.
Thank you again to all of those who shared your amazing submissions, we were so very inspired reading (watching) them all!
Our Esteemed Submission Review Panel:
Darlene Chambers – A national leader in education reform, Dr. Darlene Chambers is the Senior Vice President for Programs & Services at the National Charter Schools Institute, and a review alum from both 2017 and 2018.
Janet Johnson – Chief Growth Officer at Charter School Capital and internal teacher/ inspiration officer herself (though she’s too humble to admit it), Janet is a review alum since 2017.
Amanda List – Amanda is a principal of AList Consulting and served as Texas Charter School Association’s first director of advocacy. Amanda has extensive state government affairs and public charter school experience including strong ties to the Texas Capitol and the Texas Education Agency. We welcome Amanda as a first time review panelist for the 2019 Dewey Awards.
Juana Garcia – With more than 25 years of experience in education, Juana is the Founder of three Montessori Charter Schools and has served as a Magnet Lead Teacher, the Educational Excellence School Advisory Council Chair and United Way Ambassador. We welcome Juana as a first time review panelist for the 2019 Dewey Awards.
If you missed this year’s submission window, but still want to share your story and honor a special teacher outside the awards program, post it on social and tag @GrowCharters and use hashtags #WeLoveCharter Schools and #DeweyAwards and we’ll share it on our social platforms.
Since the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We help schools access, leverage, and sustain the resources charter schools need to thrive, allowing them to focus on what matters most – educating students. 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 $2 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!
How Changing the School Environment Can Effect Student Outcomes
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published here on July 18, 2019 by VOA . Kim Cook reported this story for the Associated Press. Pete Musto adapted it for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor.
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 found this article particularly interesting because we know that school health equals student health and school buildings are environments that when designed properly, can positively affect student health and enable students to grow and thrive. We hope you find this—and any other article we curate—both interesting and valuable.
Educators, Designers Look to Change Traditional Classroom Furniture
For much of the past hundred years, classrooms have been designed with the teacher seated in front of desks for students. The desks are almost always positioned in lines facing the teacher.
But many educators now say children can do better in a less structured learning environment. And designers have been providing spaces and seating to meet those suggestions.
Bob Pearlman works as an education consultant in the United States. He helps teachers and school administrators with educational planning and other issues. He told The Associated Press that traditional classrooms are a thing of the past. Now students work in “extended learning areas” that include project-planning rooms, workrooms, and laboratories, as well as learning spaces for groups and individuals.
Pearlman points to Albemarle County Public Schools, in Charlottesville, Virginia. The school system invited teams from all its schools to develop learning spaces that would help students deal with complex ideas and work on creative building projects. Now, its elementary school classes have exchanged traditional desks for things like soft seating and connectable tables.
Another change to the design of classrooms is the ability to connect to the internet.
“Classrooms, libraries, and [laboratories] used to be the only spaces where students spent their school hours. Wireless, laptops and project learning have changed that,” Pearlman said. He noted that this has made all school spaces into possible extended learning areas.
Jo Earp is with Teacher magazine, a publication of the nonprofit Australian Council for Educational Research. She notes that in the 1970s, American Robert Sommer was urging a critical look at traditional classroom designs. Sommer was a psychologist. He believed that in any given room, the lighting or heating will be better in some places than in others.
Earp said that in addition to newer “freeform” classroom designs, some teachers can find good results with designs that combine new and old ideas. They could try lining up desks at the start of the year and then placing them in groups as the classroom relationships become clearer and project work begins.
Natural light, reduced outside noise and good air quality are all considerations in classroom design, says Aaron Jobson. He is with the Quattrocchi Kwok Architects in Santa Rosa, California.
“More and more evidence connects the physical environment to learning outcomes,” Jobson said.
RELATED: Learn the nine foundations of a healthy school from a Harvard School of Public Health study and how your school building affects student health, attendance, and performance
New designs include glass walls inside buildings and doors that increase connectedness among students and create more open space for teachers.
A major supporter of nontraditional, explorative learning spaces is David Thornburg, who wrote the book “From the Campfire to the Holodeck.” He says schools should provide spaces based on how humans learn. That could mean one room is used in different ways at different times, or in different ways at the same time.
Loren Myers teaches at a public charter school in San Jose, California. She says redesigning traditional schools can be costly, and teachers do not have big budgets. So she noted that many teachers get creative with what little money they have to create a specially designed classroom.
In her class, Myers set up a space where students can calm down and a special workplace for students who demonstrate good behavior.
Over the years, famous designers have lent their abilities to school furniture — among them, Jean Prouve, Alvar Aalto and Arne Jacobsen. Today, classroom furniture includes all kinds of seating, with work tables of different heights.
Imagine Charter Schools, which operates schools in nine U.S. states, offers colorful seating that turns in different directions and other soft seating. Montessori schools have soft lighting similar to home environments, and simpler furniture than traditional classrooms.
Marianne Box is a design specialist at school-furniture maker Hertz Furniture, in Ramsey, New Jersey. She says movable pieces are big sellers at the company. They are designed to help control children’s energy levels, and give them places to center their attention.
Self-contained study areas have power supplies for computers, footrests and armrests.
Teacher Loren Myers loves that designers are coming up with more seating choices for young students.
“Children shouldn’t be expected to sit still in a chair for more than 20 minutes at a time,” she says. “Sometimes it’s as simple as switching where and how you sit that can set the tone for the rest of your day.”
I’m Pete Musto.
Since the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We help schools access, leverage, and sustain the resources charter schools need to thrive, allowing them to focus on what matters most – educating students. 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 $2 billion in support of 600 charter schools that have educated over 1,027,000 students across the country.
Charter School Energy Powered by BioStar Renewables is a full-service facility upgrade program with flexible financing options. This full-service program allows charter schools to access efficient and renewable energy solutions for their buildings—improving the learning environment for your students.
For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!
Preparing Your Charter School Board to Govern For Growth
For this CHARTER EDtalk, Michelle Lohner, Sr. Account Manager at Charter School Capital, was joined by BoardOnTrack’s Director of Leadership & Governance Training, Mike Mizzoni to discuss how a charter school board can best govern for growth. Mike shares his expertise on why charter school boards should be governing for growth, what that means, planning your board so that evolves over time, setting board priorities, and choosing the right people on the board to effectively navigate every stage of your charter school’s growth.
To hear all of Mike’s tips and guidance, please watch the video below or read the complete transcript below.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Michelle Lohner: Hi, I’m Michelle Lohner with Charter School Capital, senior account manager, and have Mike Mizzoni here with us today, director of leadership and governance training from BoardOnTrack.
Mike Mizzoni: Happy to be here. Thanks so much.
Lohner: Thank you so much, Mike. So, really I know so many things we want to talk about, but we’ve been hearing a lot about having boards prepared for growth. Can you tell me a little bit? What does that mean?
Mizzoni: Yeah. We’re going around and promoting what we call this notion of governing for growth, and it’s a message that our company BoardOnTrack is really promoting, because we work with charter school boards around the country, and what we’ve found is that there are so many students who need the kind of programming that charter school offer, so we see schools with wait lists that are twice the size of their enrollment. We have schools that are actively looking to expand into other geographic locations, or to expand into new grades that they can serve, or new schools together.
What we’ve found is that as organizations go to evolve and to expand to the number of students that they can serve again either by growing into a new physical location or by expanding their grade levels that the governance that the board provides of the organization doesn’t always keep pace with the organization itself, and so what we’re doing is we’re really trying to promote this idea that boards need to be very methodical, intentional, about not just promoting the strategic direction of the organization, but also improving their own governance capabilities as well in some of the key areas of board governance.
Lohner: That’s actually really interesting that you mentioned that because like you said schools are growing. The board may or may not be keeping up with that, so how would you suggest that they do that? What does that look like?
Mizzoni: Yeah, so what we try and get boards to focus on are what we call the five Ps of good board governance, and so really these are the five key areas that good boards need to do well, and so these are the five areas that we say especially if you’re an organization that’s governing for growth that you need to keep your eye on. What we would call those are like I said the five Ps. They’re your priorities, your people, your process, your performance, and your progress. So quickly what we mean by that, when it comes to your priorities is making sure that the organization, the school leadership, and the board, are fully aligned on the direction that they’re headed, what it is that we’re trying to accomplish, what’s our vision of excellence look like for the organization.
With the people we’re talking about making sure that you’ve got the right people on your governance team, so the right board members with the right backgrounds, skills, demographics. Also, your officer positions and the leadership of the school, so your CEO, your school leader, and their designees, so those senior staff members. Those are all people who are involved in governing the organization.
Next thing is the process, so the way the board goes about doing its work, so complying with things like the Open Meeting Law, and your state’s authorizers requirements, things like your meeting, schedule. Little things like whether your meetings last for too long. We feel really strongly that good board meetings don’t need to last longer than two hours, and anything longer than that quickly leads to burn out of good board members.
So the way you do your work needs to change and evolve. When we talk about performance we’re talking holding each other accountable on your board to the performance metrics you’ve set for each other, but then also for the organization as a whole, and holding your CEO accountable. So one of the things we look for is how you evaluate and support your CEO at the end of the year.
And then, lastly when we talk about progress we’re talking about whether the board itself makes progress in these areas, so in its governance capabilities is the board improving its own capabilities, so things like watching CHARTER EDtalks, and getting professional development for your board is what we would look like there.
Lohner: That’s interesting. There’s like you said the five Ps that they need to focus on but how do they make sure that they focus on the right priorities, because there’s so many things that are coming their way that they need to give attention to as a board member.
Mizzoni: Yeah, that’s exactly right, and so when we talk about priorities, the first of those Ps, it really is making sure that everybody on the team knows exactly where they’re headed. One of the metaphors that I like to use is that this charter school board that we’re on is sort of an adventure that we’ve all elected to go on, and at some point we all got together and pointed at the mountaintop that we’re looking to head to, and with the nature of charter school governance, [inaudible 00:04:22] we tend to see three to five year charter renewal cycles.
The reality is if this group of individuals is going to get to where we’ve all agreed that we need to go we need to have clear priorities year by year that allow us to get there. And so, when it comes to governing for growth if we as a team, as a governing board, and our school leadership are not totally in sync as to where it is that we’re trying to head then we quickly find people pulling different directions. Leadership really starts at the top and if there’s misalignment as to where our priorities are then that trickles down throughout the organization.
Lohner: That makes sense. How can a board make sure, you talked a lot about the different priorities, but make sure that they have the right people to govern at each stage of this growth?
Mizzoni: Yeah, that’s one of the biggest challenges for sure when we travel around the country and talk to governing boards. One of the things that they have the most difficulty with is keeping a steady pipeline of really high-quality board members who are aligned with their mission, and willing to participate.
And so, that challenge becomes even more difficult as the organization is looking to govern for growth because what happens is the types of skillsets that an individual needs to bring to a board changes as the organization evolves. An example of it would be let’s say that we’ve elected as a team that we’re going to expand and replicate into another location. This might be the first time in a decade that we’ve ever needed to acquire a building.
In this case, we may never of had really a cause for needing somebody with real estate transaction experience, or school architecture, or facilities just in general. What we like people to think about is when they’re planning for the year, and they’re getting ready to set goals around recruitment is as you’re growing we really like boards to say what is it that this board needs to get done this year, and we’re going to recruit people specifically to fill those gaps.
We want to make sure that we always have a diverse set of skills so that we can do all of the things that a good charter school board needs to do, financial oversight, academic oversight, fundraising, all of these key areas. We want to make sure that we have people who meet each one of these needs so that combined as one governing team we have all of the skillsets combined.
Lohner: I like that. That’s actually really helpful in terms of best practices. You’ve had a lot of experience what would you say is the most common mistake that you see boards make?
Mizzoni: When it comes to boards that are governing for growth I’d say hands down the biggest mistake we see is people not prioritizing in governance. We know that a lot of organizations when they’re getting off the ground the governance portion of it is one of the last things that they go to. We know that most people are here because they want to educate students, they want to get results in the classroom, they’re really passionate about the mission.
We put all the focus on strategic planning and the direction and development of the organization, and we don’t put that same kind of spotlight or attention on us as the governing board, and so what we want is for people to not keep making that mistake. We want people to understand that the success of the organization is going to largely depend on the work of the governance team.
Unfortunately, the world that we live in is that not every charter school is successful for a long period of time, and unfortunately a lot of the reasons for why schools close can be traced back to some sort of either action or more importantly inaction on the part of the board, so putting an emphasis on a strong board governance is something that we want to see people do more, and not making that mistake again.
Lohner: Definitely. Mike, was there anything else? I really appreciate you coming on today and sharing some of your insights and best practices for governing for growth. Is there anything else that you wanted to share with everyone?
Mizzoni: No. My final conclusion I would say is that there are a lot of students out there who need what it is that your schools are offering, and so putting a spotlight and making sure that we’re keeping the board governance healthy throughout this sector is important to us.
Lohner: Thank you so much, Mike.
Mizzoni: Thank you.
Lohner: Thank you, everyone, for joining us.
For your school to reach its goals, meet its mission, and be set up for success, you need to build a well-structured, well-staffed, and well-trained Board of Directors. In this important webinar, our partners and industry experts on Board Governance, BoardOnTrack, will be sharing their expertise on the ins and outs of recruiting, building, and managing your governance team as you grow.
Watch and learn:
Board basics: Who should be on your governance team and what should they do?
How to build a strong board: Strategically recruiting for diversity and skills
Tips to govern for growth: How to face challenges and changes at any stage
Download it now and get the tools to be more strategic about your school’s board governance practices!
Do School Choice Programs Reduce Crime? Multiple Studies Say Yes!
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published here by the Washington Examiner, on July 2, 2019 and written by Corey A. DeAngelis, the Director of School Choice at the Reason Foundation and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.
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.
Yet Another Study Shows School Choice Programs Reduce Crime
Schools are expected to prepare children to become good citizens. They can help achieve this goal by producing a well-educated populace and promoting strong character. But not all school systems equally contribute to the public good. Indeed, the evidence shows school choice does more to cut crime than residentially-assigned public schools. Here are the facts.
Yet another study just came out revealing the crime-reducing benefits of school choice. Researchers found that entering a charter school in North Carolina in 9th grade reduced the rate at which students were convicted of felonies by 36% and the rate at which they were convicted of misdemeanors as adults by 38%, compared to their peers in traditional public schools.
But this isn’t the first study to show that school choice reduces crime. There are now six rigorous studies on the subject, and all six studies find that school choice cuts crime.
For example, a study by researchers at Harvard and Princeton found that winning a lottery to attend a charter school in New York City reduced the likelihood of incarceration for male students by 100%. That’s right. Winning a lottery to attend a charter school in NYC all-but completely eliminated the chance of incarceration for male students in the sample. But that’s not all — the study also found that winning a charter school lottery reduced teen pregnancy by 59% for female students.
Another study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that winning a lottery to attend a public school of choice cut crime in half, a 50% reduction, for high-risk male students in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Two studies — conducted by Dr. Patrick J. Wolf and I — similarly found that students using the Milwaukee voucher program to attend private schools were significantly less likely to commit crimes than their carefully matched peers in traditional public schools by the time they reached 22 to 28 years of age. The 2016 version is forthcoming at Social Science Quarterly.
But why does school choice reduce crime?
Traditional public schools hold significant monopoly power because of residential assignment and funding through property taxes. Families upset with the quality of their public school only have three limited options: They can purchase an expensive new house that is assigned to a better public school, pay for a private school out of pocket while still paying for the public school through property taxes, or complain to the school leaders and hope things change.
Because these options are expensive and inefficient, there is not a lot of pressure for residentially-assigned public schools to provide the best character education possible. In contrast, private and charter schools must cater to the needs of families if they wish to remain open.
School choice puts power into the hands of families. And families usually know what’s best for their own kids.
But competition isn’t the only explanation. School choice could also reduce crime by matching students to schools that interest them, and by exposing students to peer groups and school cultures that discourage risky behaviors.
So, it’s about time we rethink the notion that residentially-assigned public schools contribute most to the public good. After all, every single study on the topic finds that school choice does more to benefit society by reducing crime.
How the Charter-School Backlash Will Hurt American Kids
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 charter-school backlash will hurt kids across America
This graduation season, millions of students are celebrating as years of hard work finally pay off in high school diplomas and college degrees. But the feeling isn’t universal. For many students, graduation season is a reminder that they haven’t reached their goals. A combination of inadequate schools, limited economic circumstances and troubled social conditions drive students off track. Even for many high school graduates going on to college, the cruel reality is that, for those from the lowest-income families, they’re unlikely to graduate from college. The next few years may lead to more debt, but not more opportunity.
We should be incensed by this heartbreaking reality. We should be demanding solutions. Instead, political leaders, including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, want to close off one of the few paths that lead disadvantaged students to college success.
The facts are laid out in a new book, “The B.A. Breakthrough: How Ending Diploma Disparities Can Change the Face of America.” Author Richard Whitmire identifies high schools that are helping students beat the college odds. Despite educating students from predominately low-income backgrounds, these schools are preparing students to graduate not just from high school but from college.
Whitmire shows that networks of charter schools — public, but independent of local bureaucracies and unions — are producing college graduates at a rate two to four times higher than the average for all students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. A few novel things are happening in charter schools to produce these positive outcomes.
One is that many charter schools instill a college-going mindset early. College banners line hallways and homerooms are named after colleges — even in elementary school. Students have their sights set on college and are continually told they have the power to reach their goal.
A second factor driving college success is that charter schools have continuous improvement in their DNA. Some of the most successful charter school networks found that they were getting students to college but that their students were struggling when they got there, undermined by the lack of support and supervision on campus. So these networks have put an emphasis on supporting students in college, for instance by extending the guidance relationship with students into college and by plugging graduates into alumni networks on campus.
A third factor is that charter schools are focusing more of their counseling on helping students find the right college fit for them. Historically black colleges and universities, smaller colleges, schools with strong alumni networks, schools closer to home or farther from home depending on the circumstances: Finding the right fit can make a huge difference for students who are the first in their family to go to college or who are from underrepresented backgrounds and report feeling isolated when they go to majority white and wealthy campuses.
Rich Buery, a former deputy mayor of New York City who now heads policy for KIPP, identifies college counseling as a major driver of KIPP’s successful efforts to help more alumni graduate from college. He notes that the average student-to-counselor ratio nationwide is 482 to 1 — and often higher in urban public high schools. It’s almost impossible for students to get the attention they need to identify schools where they can be successful, let alone apply to them and gain admission.
At KIPP, the average student-to-counselor ratio is 100 to 1. According to Buery, “This is a significant resource commitment and we have seen it pay off.” Forty-five percent of students who graduate from KIPP high schools graduate from college, compared to 11% of students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. One of the great benefits of charter schools is that they have more freedom to direct resources to areas where they see the greatest need, not necessarily where the district bureaucracy decides the money should be spent.
The college success rates for graduates of KIPP, Uncommon Schools, Yes Prep and others are reason to celebrate, to share new approaches with other schools, and to keep pressing until we close the college gap completely.
Unfortunately, the latest trend — from New York City to California and several places in between — has been to halt charter school growth. Sanders has even put charter-bashing at the center of his presidential campaign platform. He wants to make college free, but won’t support the schools that are making college accessible to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
It’s odd, to say the least, that some adults are more concerned with supporting bureaucracies than with supporting students — especially when there are millions of black and brown students who can’t even dream of college because their schools aren’t preparing them to get there, and when wealthy kids are six times more likely to graduate from college than poor kids.
Charter schools are making college success a real possibility for the 3.2 million students attending them today. Anybody truly committed to upending the status quo in our country and extending opportunity to more Americans should be asking how we can help more students access life-changing charter schools and feel the pride of college graduation.
Since the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We help schools access, leverage, and sustain the resources charter schools need to thrive, allowing them to focus on what matters most – educating students. 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!
The Ultimate Guide to Charter School Board Governance
Darlene Chambers – A national leader in education reform, Dr. Darlene Chambers is the Senior Vice President for Programs & Services at the National Charter Schools Institute, and a review alum from both 2017 and 2018.
Janet Johnson – Chief Growth Officer at Charter School Capital and internal teacher/ inspiration officer herself (though she’s too humble to admit it), Janet is a review alum since 2017.
Amanda List – Amanda is a principal of AList Consulting and served as Texas Charter School Association’s first director of advocacy. Amanda has extensive state government affairs and public charter school experience including strong ties to the Texas Capitol and the Texas Education Agency. We welcome Amanda as a first time review panelist for the 2019 Dewey Awards.
