Charter school leaders are today’s entrepreneurs and education innovators. With more than 6,500 charter schools supporting 2.5 million students today, the power of charter school education thrives. Yet more than one million students remain on charter school wait lists across the country. Why? Lack of financial resources is cited most often as the reason many charter schools don’t succeed as charter schools don’t have the same access to capital as traditional school districts. On behalf of the Charter School Capital team, we’re proud to provide funding and services to support charter schools and the educational opportunities they afford students. We commend all charter school edupreneurs during National Charter Schools Week. These charter school leaders are making amazing things happen in education today. Please join us as we celebrate all charter schools, their mission and the leaders who drive education innovation across America.
– Stuart Ellis, President & CEO, Charter School Capital
Author: Grow Schools, formerly Charter School Capital
Trying to help students with disabilities learn is a tough job. To be successful, school administrators need to focus on educating students, not on charter school funding or operational issues. As a start-up charter school, Learning Path Academy, located in West Palm Beach, FL, found themselves in need of a charter school working capital solution, and turned to Charter School Capital.
Learning Path Academy focuses on students with learning and language disabilities who may struggle in the traditional public school system. After securing school facilities, school administrators were ecstatic to open their doors last August. They believed and planned on state funding, but quickly learned that funding was based on making expenditures that would be reimbursed.
“As we started operating, the implementation grant we received from the state of Florida informed us that we had to spend the money, and then we would be reimbursed,” explains Isis Rosso, co-founder and director of operations at Learning Path. “Our first check from the district was tiny. It was enough to pay the rent and clean the building, but we were basically working for free for three months. That’s when we called Charter School Capital.”
Charter School Capital was able to furnish the working capital Learning Path needed, enabling them to continue offering the special attention and customized learning plans to their students in need.
The school’s special system, which focuses on a low student-to-teacher ratio and staff experienced with special needs education, also asks for heavy involvement from parents and reports on student progress regularly. Because of this, families have been tremendously pleased with Learning Path and enrollment is on the rise. The fairly new school currently serves 118 students in grades Pre-K through 4th, and is already making plans to add 5th grade and grow their student enrollment to 192, the maximum allowed currently.
To address this anticipated growth, school administrators understand that sufficient and flexible capital must be available for them to accomplish their goals.
“Knowing that my budget is going to grow, and knowing that Charter School Capital can help fill in the gaps where necessary, is a huge sigh of relief,” concludes Rosso. “We have developed such a wonderful relationship with the Charter School Capital team. They have great patience and help us do what we’ve got to do. These are the people who are helping me build my dream school.”
Providing a quality education to at-risk students often requires multiple resources. One-on-one teacher instruction, access to current technology and customized lesson plans for students with special needs are just a few of the tools necessary to help children from underserved communities reach their potential. This formula has lead to success for Skyline Education, a charter management organization in Arizona.
The multi-disciplined approach to education that Skyline’s six campuses provides “comes at a fairly high up-front expense,” says KJ Weihing, vice president of finance at Skyline Education. “We wanted to make purchases but didn’t have the up-front funding. That’s why we called Charter School Capital; they helped us get that short-term funding.”
Skyline opened its first campus in 2000, but it wasn’t until 2009 that organization began to experience rapid growth, adding five new campuses from 2009 to 2012. Skyline now serves more than 1,000 students in socially and economically diverse communities, including the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona.
Such dramatic growth created a real need to access working capital funding, explains Weihing. Skyline Education knew that it would be receiving its funding, but given the uncertain payment schedule from the State of Arizona, they didn’t know when. Skyline administrators knew they needed some form of help to even out their budget throughout the year but were very wary of outside funders until they met Charter School Capital.
“I was impressed with them and their fee structure,” says Weihing. “A lot of times there are organizations that will lend for high interest because they know you can’t get funds anywhere else. Charter School Capital’s fee structure was not outrageous [like that].”
The relationship Skyline has developed with the Charter School Capital team is rooted in much more than just financial terms. Weihing would recommend to any charter school needing funds to start-up or for growth, that they just “start the process,” stating that the two organizations have formed a real partnership dedicated to the success of all Skyline Education’s schools.
“Last year, we wanted to make new computer purchases for one of our schools, but we didn’t have the current funding on hand to make that happen. So we worked with Charter School Capital to provide us with the funding in order to get those computers into the classroom sooner than we would have been able to if we were waiting on funding,” concludes Weihing. The whole process has been “extremely seamless, quick and easy; I’m glad we did it.”
“Without Charter School Capital, we honestly wouldn’t exist.”
Those are the words of Ricardo Mireles, executive director of Academia Avance charter school in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Fortunately, Charter School Capital was there so that he and his team could focus on what really matters – their students. Academia Avance was founded in 2005 with 100 students in the 6th and 7th grades. Today, it serves 500 students grades 6-12, preparing them for college and career.
Dedicated to the idea that all students have a right to pursue a college education, Academia Avance offers rigorous course work relevant to today’s changing world, from language classes in Mandarin Chinese to computer classes in programming and robotics. However, what makes the school special is that it doesn’t just rely on books and testing to teach their students. With the understanding that hands-on experiences are vital to academic excellence, the school combines traditional classroom study with learning through projects, multi-cultural experiences and even internships at local businesses.
The results of this inter-disciplinary model are indisputable. In 2012, 100% of Academia Avance’s graduating students were accepted to 4-year university programs – a truly remarkable achievement. But it almost didn’t happen.
When Academia Avance was founded, funding for the school from the state of California proved inconsistent. The school wasn’t able to secure a traditional bank loan because they didn’t have a building to put up as collateral. To pay the bills, school administrators went looking for alternative options in charter school financing. That’s when they found Charter School Capital.
According to Mireles, Charter School Capital provided the flexibility, patience and professionalism in charter school funding needed to get Academia Avance up and running. “They allowed us to say ‘this month we need this much.’ I’m really appreciative of how Charter School Capital was able to understand what our need was.” Mireles believes he has a true partner in Charter School Capital, one that genuinely believes in the school’s mission and supports what the school is trying to accomplish. “It allows us to stay focused on our mission and our students.”
The team at Charter School Capital is hosting our next webinar on charter school growth strategy, featuring the stages of growth from start-up to expansion on to a mature school. There’s great information for everyone involved in the planning and operations of charter schools. Marshall Emerson, CEO and Co-founder at I CAN Schools will join Stuart Ellis, our President and CEO to walk through the stages of growth and the key issues at each stage including charter school funding, operations, facilities, and other key topics.
There are still spaces available for this informative webinar. Register today!
Zalika Gardner, co-founder of KairosPDX and Director of Learning for the Early Learning Center, spoke on April 12th at TEDx Portland 2014 conference. In December 2013, KairosPDX became the first unanimously-approved charter school in Portland, Oregon; a feat made possible in part thanks to a letter of intent supplied by Charter School Capital guaranteeing funding support. Charter School Capital co-founder and CEO Stuart Ellis sits on the KairosPDX board.
Listening. It’s a basic concept in education. Students listen to their teachers, and learn valuable lessons that will serve them as they grow to be adults.
But what can teachers learn when they listen to students?
Zalika Gardner’s speech at TEDx Portland served not as a platform to present a radical new idea, but rather to inspire new thought about a very old one: listening, and how our own internal barriers often prevent us from doing it effectively.
Gardner notes that, of all the populations in the world, the one group that always stands at the ready to make a difference, to envision a better future, is our children. Children are not yet shaped and defined by a lifetime of experiences; they don’t accept things for being ‘the way they are.’ Instead, they have the unique ability to see what could be over what is, and every adult – teachers, parents, everyone – has the responsibility to encourage and empower children to believe in themselves and their own thoughts and ideas.
However, we often do not do that. Without even knowing it, each of us often judges what another has to say before we even hear it. The certainties that exist in our own minds prevent us from truly listening, especially to children who we view not as potential teachers but as those needing to be taught.
The three barriers to listening that Gardner identified are:
- Assumption – I know your type. I have a label, and I’m not afraid to use it.
- Arrogance – I have already decided that what you have to say is irrelevant.
- Fear – I’m afraid that listening to you may require something of me. I may feel guilty or judged, or your experience may challenge mine. I see a risk in listening, and so I won’t.
The risk we face when we don’t listen isn’t just to ourselves either. Not only do we isolate ourselves from new thoughts and ideas, we also dismiss and diminish the person we refuse to hear. Children are particularly susceptible to feelings of rejection and often lose faith in their own ideas as a result of not being heard.
Gardner closed her speech with a story, recounting how she asked her first grade class the question, “What’s in charge out there?” and one student replied “Imagination. Because if you can’t imagine it, it’s very hard to believe in it.” Ms. Gardner uses this insight to challenge us then to imagine a world where we all listened differently, a world where every child knew that they mattered, that they were important, and that their voice was heard.
What would that world be like?
The full video of Ms. Gardner’s speech can be found here: http://new.livestream.com/tedx/TEDxPortland2014/videos/47879614
Additional speeches from TEDx Portland can be found here: http://new.livestream.com/tedx/TEDxPortland2014
San Tan Learning Center began its third year partnering with Charter School Capital to manage the school’s incredible growth since the school was formed in 2006. In that time, the school has grown from 250 students housed in a single 20,000 square foot campus to more than 650 students on two campuses totaling more than 60,000 square feet. That type of “whirlwind growth,” as Dr. Kris Sippel, Principal of San Tan Learning Center, refers to it, means that the school has increased their need for ongoing access to growth capital for more desks, computers and space to house the students.
A few years ago, a lapse in funding by the State of Arizona combined with the school’s rapid growth meant the staff at San Tan Learning Center, based in Gilbert, Arizona, found themselves wondering where the money was going to come from to meet their changing needs. “I remember sitting in my office thinking ‘how am I going to get that $200,000 that I need’?” recalls Dr. Sippel.
“I was going through the mail and came across a postcard from Charter School Capital so I put in a call and a staff member called me back right away to talk about our needs. Their team got me comfortable with the process, pulled the documents together and presented to our Board of Directors.”
Dr. Sippel recognizes that at first, his board was hesitant. “They were worried about fees and paying back a loan with interest,” says Dr. Sippel. However, once the board understood that the funds provided by Charter School Capital were not a loan, the solution was embraced. “This doesn’t have all the rigmarole of a loan.” Dr. Sippel explains, “when I need funds, I get an email from Charter School Capital, process the paperwork, and provide the documents to get the funding – it’s so streamlined, it’s beautiful.”
Growth and success for San Tan Learning Center means that they are able to provide quality middle and K-6 education to local students in their community. Dr. Sippel knows that what the school has to offer is unique,“we are a very family-oriented community; it just feels different at San Tan.” And he recognizes that Charter School Capital offered the school an equally unique experience, “Charter School Capital has done such a good job making us feel a part of something –that’s rewarding. You don’t get that feeling at a bank –the relationship piece just isn’t there.”
Dr. Sippel concludes with some advice for other charter schools experiencing rapid growth and facing financial concerns, “Ask yourself, ‘who’s going to sign a bank’s personal guarantee?’ Because it is a big deal; at least it was for me.” But Charter School Capital changes all of that. When describing the process, Dr. Sippel refers to something he calls the “3 F’s”: “Finding. Funding. Fast. That’s what they did the first time and that’s what they continue to do.”“It is a big relief to know that, with Charter School Capital, our organization can stand alone.”
Charter School Capital recently attended the groundbreaking ceremony events for Cambridge Prep Academy’s new facility in Arizona. See the article that appeared in the local paper. Read article.
“It’s an exciting time for this school,” explained Jon Dahlberg, VP of Business Development at Charter School Capital. “They currently have 250 students heading toward 1,200 next school year. This new school facility will be a major piece of community development. In the future, the school’s facility will double as a community center and offer other resources for community partnership.”
Our team congratulates Cambridge Prep Academy on their growth and for their support of education in their community. Let us know how Charter School Capital facilities financing options can help your school!
EdSource reported in an article earlier this week that the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) is continuing it’s efforts to recommend closure of under-performing charter schools across the state with it’s criticism of the San Jose school district for approving two new campuses for a local charter school.
Branche Jones, a legislative advocate who works with numerous California charter schools, explained that CCSA is using a metric based on an accountability system that no longer exists. Last year the California legislature suspended the API system because it was deemed outdated and does not conform with the Common Core standards. Currently, the SBE is developing a new set of assessments and accountability system.
“The standards CCSA is following is not the current statute, so when charters are up for renewal they are not trying to meet CCSA’s metrics, they are conforming with the state statute,” said Jones. “As a statewide advocacy organization, CCSA should be helping their members improve their academic achievement.”
According to Jones, CCSA tried to implement their own accountability system through legislation several years ago and were unsuccessful. The EdSource article highlights pushback from both charter schools, school districts and superintendents against CCSA’s efforts.
EdSource Article: Charter Schools Association Continues Push To Weed Out Low-Scoring Schools, by John Fensterwald
“Upping its campaign to root out what it views as its lowest performing schools, the California Charter Schools Association last week criticized a San Jose school district for allowing a charter school to open two more campuses next year…” Read More.
Charter School Capital is getting ready to head to San Jose for the 21st Annual California Charter Schools Conference. This year, we’re proud to support the conference as the Platinum Sponsor, one of the lead sponsors of the conference.
This year’s focus on innovation couldn’t be more appropriate, especially with continued growth in charter schools across the country – 13 percent according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools‘ recent report. There are now approximately 6,400 public charter schools with more than 2.5 million students across the country, with California charter schools at the forefront of this growth and innovation.
Our team will be heading to San Jose the first week in March and we hope to see you at the conference. Stop by and say “hi” at Booth #625 and ask us how we can help fund your charter school.
One of our team members will be happy to meet with you or feel free to schedule a meeting in advance of the conference with us. We’ll also be providing additional information related to the conference, so check back in the coming days and weeks leading up to the conference the first week in March. Or, simply subscribe to our blog.
We look forward to seeing you at the conference!