Month: February 2021

Diverse Charter Schools Coalition

The Diverse Charter Schools Coalition is a national association of 190 racially, culturally, and socioeconomically diverse student populations. Their goal: Band together these diverse populations with a focus on intentional diversity and inclusion.

We had the pleasure and honor to attend this year’s Converging of Diverse Schools Coalition – Interrupting Equity – named “Creating anti-racist and liberatory practices at intentionally diverse schools.”

The Keynote Speaker was activist, educator, and writer Brittany Packnett Cunningham. Brittany is a former teacher, education leader, and fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

The convening split its agenda into four tracks: Academics, Community, Culture, and Operations. We found the schedule of this conference comprehensive, and it was great to have the ability to choose from these various tracks. The sessions themselves were so content-rich that it was hard to decide what to attend.

Under Academics, there were sessions on grading, AP courses, and removing barriers that perpetuate inequity in learning. Under Community, sessions dived deep into the definition of Diversity, disrupting the opportunity gap, and communal classrooms. Under culture, the sessions focused on shifting mindsets, restorative circles to build community, staff culture, and creating an authentic and inclusive community. Under operations, the focus was on centering BIPOC, along with time management and distribution.

One thing that struck us was the school visits. These were breakout sessions where the convening’s guests got to witness virtual classrooms and environments at six intentionally-diverse schools. The vulnerability displayed by the schools, and the teachers themselves, was remarkable. They invited us to watch, critique, and discuss. It was a commendable example of transparency and a fantastic opportunity to assess, ponder and learn.

The schools delved into their intentional cultures, including their “crews,” which might be comparable to homerooms but with a heavy diversity focus. One school had different cohorts of second-graders through fifth-graders, where they tackled a curriculum focusing on racial equity. One group created a poem and a quilt for Black History Month.

It was beneficial for the teachers to be able to compare approaches. We watched videos of schools engaging in virtual teaching, and we had honest discussions as to what seemed to be working well and where there might have been room for improvement.

During these visits, we were particularly impressed with the Yu Ming Charter School of Oakland, CA, a Mandarin-language immersion school with a highly diverse student population.

This K-8 charter school won the Diverse School award for the year. It’s easy to see why this charter school has a 500-person waiting list.

The Convening also organized three affinity groups, including a healing & solidarity space for Black participants, a healing & solidarity space for Non-Black People of Color, and an awareness & accountability space for White participants.

The conference’s sponsors included the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, PANORAMA Education, The Walton Family Foundation, the Cohen-Schneider Law firm, the NWEA, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Tommy Alberini - Director of Acquisitions & Underwriting at Charter School CapitalA Los Angeles native, Tommy is passionate about family, authenticity, and analytics. He graduated from Boston University, where he focused his Bachelor of Business Administration on Marketing and Marketing Management.
After graduation, Tommy started as an intern at a family-run real estate firm. Now, nearly a decade later, Tommy leads the facilities acquisition team here at Charter School Capital (CSC). Tommy lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their two-year-old daughter. In his team spotlight, he reflects on his field and his journey with CSC.

Tommy’s Beginnings

Tommy is one of five children and a first-generation American from Argentinean parents.

After graduating from Boston University, Tommy worked in real estate firms in New York for several years. Then, a job offer brought him to California. It was a good move for his career and brought him closer to his family.

After a couple of years, Tommy and his wife decided to move to Portland. He continued to work in real estate until a recruiter reached out to him. The recruiter told him about a real-estate related position, but in the education space. Tommy was intrigued.

The conversation with the recruiter piqued Tommy’s curiosity and led to an interview with Jamie Bradley (Director of Facilities & Financial Risk at CSC). Tommy fell in love with the notion of combining his expertise in real estate with a real opportunity to make a positive impact in the charter school movement.

Joining Our Team

One of the many things Tommy enjoys about CSC is how we contribute to bridging gaps in education by supporting schools financially. Charter schools help many students achieve a solid education, and CSC helps these schools thrive.

Tommy’s role within the company focuses on facilities, which are then leased back to schools. CSC acts as a landlord, a partner, and a champion for charter schools. Once schools begin working with CSC, our team continues to find resources geared at helping the schools succeed.

Tommy finds his work invigorating. He credits to the fact that he gets to work on complex challenges with people who are passionate about finding solutions, people who are genuinely interested in their organization’s mission, and people who care about the impact of their work.

In terms of work/life balance, Tommy believes it’s possible to take time for yourself and be productive. And in his field, keeping his mind sharp and his vision fresh is a necessity. Tommy loves working with numbers and doing creative problem-solving with those numbers.

Tommy is an ardent believer in following one’s passions, whether professionally or personally. He believes that making decisions with his passion in mind led to many of his most fulfilling journeys. His advice, “Go and find what your passions are and follow them.”

Thinking about the nation’s youth, Tommy would like young people to have access to, Tommy volunteers “Career Building.” This would be a mix of personal finance and workplace skillsets. How to manage your funds, invest, how to save, and ultimately think about your future. Combined with how to sell yourself in an interview, while staying humble, and building your resume.

Looking at our world today, Tommy would like to see less arrogance, more curiosity, and more open minds to our society’s inequities.

Focusing on the Future

Tommy would like to see people be more willing to be vulnerable and open themselves up to conversations that may be uncomfortable. These conversations lead to growth and help develop a well-rounded perspective.

In terms of Charter School Capital, Tommy wants it to continue to help the organization scale up, especially in facilities. He’s passionate about continuing to make the school-onboarding process as accessible as possible so that charter schools can get assistance in a swift, fluid manner.

Tommy would like to see charter schools have more access to strong partners, including school leaders, investors, and champions such as Charter School Capital. He’d like to see more schools learn and leverage best practices that lead them to full sustainability.

Every year for the past four years, Charter School Capital has held the Dewey Awards essay contest. This contest highlights the wonderful impact charter school educators have on their students. Selecting the three.winners is a challenge – all of these stories are inspiring. While our panel has chosen the three winning entries for 2020, we felt this entry needed to be shared.

Here’s a story by Jaci Chuaunsu, student at Kihei Charter.
Jaci writes about Mr. Jake Hamman, engineering teacher and Jaci’s advisor.

How my teacher has impacted my life – by Jaci Chuansu

I was still new to the island of Maui when I first enrolled in Kihei Charter. It was the first time I went to an American school, and I had no idea what to expect. I kept to myself for the most part, but what I didn’t expect was how nice and friendly people were, even if I was just “the quiet kid.”

People in Maui were very open, welcoming, and nice to everyone around them, showing their aloha spirit. I was in middle school when I first came to Kihei Charter, and I tried to adjust as much and as quickly as I could by familiarizing myself with the place and the people around me. My classmates were all cool, and they were friendly enough to me, a newcomer, to make me comfortable while in class. I became closer to some of them as the school year dragged on. The teachers were also nice, though some were stricter, and I learned a lot from them.

My advisor that year, Mr. Jake Hamman, was my engineering teacher. From what I understand, he was part of the school staff the year before, and this was his first time to be a teacher at Kihei Charter. Regardless of how much experience he had, and the little amount of time I was able to spend with him as a teacher, I would say that he was a nice, cool, chill teacher who always had a smile on his face. As an engineering teacher, we did more hands-on activities, rather than papers, and some computer lessons as well. Mr. Jake always made sure that the activities he planned for us had something new we could learn or improve on, all in the most interesting and fun ways!

You see, I was always the type of student with a mindset that there was a given answer to the problem, just like how math problems have a formula to find a solution for every problem. In his class, however, I had to think out of the box to solve all sorts of problems and be creative in our projects. But I also learned to be somewhat resourceful and to simply enjoy all the fun activities set out for us. It was comforting for me, as I was nervous due to not having an engineering class before (because I was homeschooled).

For some activities, especially the messy ones, he would almost always be the one to clean up everything (as it was his room) after a class even if it was supposed to be our (students’) mess to clean up. Although he was a little annoyed about it, I always just saw him brush it off, grab the broom and dustpan, and clean up the mess, ever so patiently. Of course, he would always tell students to clean up after themselves. There were those times where they didn’t, and I felt bad for him every time I saw him cleaning up after students’ messes. I became more conscious of making sure to clean up after myself from then on. At least I hope I wasn’t messy!

There was one activity where my class was divided into groups to assemble a robot. In another activity, we made a bridge (e.g. suspension, truss, arch, cable, beam) using only the given materials such as bamboo skewers, tooth floss, rubber bands, popsicle sticks, tape, and a glue gun. During the bridge project, the whole process of building the bridge was really fun. We used up a few lunch breaks and advisory time, but it was worth the sacrifice! It was also convenient for my group since he was both our engineering teacher and advisor, allowing us to work on it during those times. The fact that he let us use his classroom to work on the bridge during his lunch break (a.k.a. supposed free time from kids), is something I was thankful for and one of the things I admired about him – his love and sacrifice for his students.

Whenever we worked on the bridge during breaks or even in class, Mr. Jake would give us some words of encouragement here and there, sometimes even gave us some beats to listen to while we were working, which really brought up the mood. Later on, I found out that my group and I were the ones whose bridge withstood the most weight. Mr. Jake even had to use something to push onto the bridge until one of the legs of our bridge finally gave in and broke! That made my day, where all our efforts paid off with Mr. Jake’s supporting us.

Remember how I said that he was also my advisor? Well, he was literally the best advisor I could ask for! During engineering class, we had an activity that had to do with vibrations – sound. This was when he showed us how he made a homemade, one-string guitar. He even let us use the strings from his own guitars for this activity. Mr. Jake loved music and he wanted to incorporate something related to it into our class, hence the one-string guitars. When he found out that I liked playing guitar, literally playing with the guitar, since I only knew a couple of chords then, he let me borrow his guitar whenever I wanted during advisory. Throughout the entire school year, during advisory, I would always borrow his guitar as I did not have one at the time. A couple of months later, online school started and I couldn’t play anymore since we could no longer go to school (physically anyway), but I missed having class in person with him and the other teachers even more! Although we no longer met physically, we still had classes online, and it was cool my teachers adjusted fairly easily from what I could see. Because of this, Mr. Jake also had us do a bunch of research and design. We even tinkered around folding a paper airplane that could go further than just a couple of feet. It was a fun school year, and despite some unexpected events.

I’m really glad to have had Mr. Jake as my advisor and engineering teacher. He is a cool guy and a great teacher! He is one of the best teachers I know and has always been there to support his students. To me, there will never be another Mr. Jake.