The Charter School Capital team is packing up and heading to Washington, D.C. next week, June 11-14. We’re proud to once again be one of the Gold Sponsors of the National Charter School Conference — you can find us in Booth #501 in the Exhibit Hall. And, our team is presenting at two breakout sessions as well.
The theme of this year’s conference is Educate. Innovate. Engage. The content presented throughout the conference has a strong focus on what makes charter schools unique as well as new solutions to many of the common challenges all charter schools face. With so much going on, the theme will be well represented throughout the dozens of meet-ups, happy hour events and 100+ breakout sessions.
Solving challenges starts with sharing ideas. This year’s conference has a number of learning and networking sessions designed to break away from the traditional presentation model. The conference officially kicks-off on Sunday, June 11, with the Unconference which is a participant-determined and facilitated experience. With no script or agenda, the topics discussed will be solely determined by those attending. Attendees are invited to share what they’re learning with the hashtag #unconfNCSC.
Also happening throughout the conference, Charter Talks are similar to a Ted Talks style of short presentations focused on a big, compelling idea (in this case charter schools), and will be held in the Exhibit Hall during the lunch hour. Informal meetings will also be happening throughout the day, designed to bring together specific groups, such as charter school teachers, school board members and education leaders from different regions.
Keynote sessions will include presentations from Nina Rees, the President and CEO of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix and board member of many educational organizations, Dr. Steve Perry, Head of Capital Preparatory Schools, and Luis A. Miranda, Managing Partner of the Mirram Group.
Learn more about the conference and our two breakout sessions on our website. Hope to see you in D.C. Stop by our Booth #501 and say hi!
Category: Charter School Conferences
We are presenting two breakout sessions at this year’s National Charter Schools Conference. One breakout session focuses on providing solutions to one of the most common challenges charter schools face —finding adequate facilities and the financing to secure them. The second is focused on using digital marketing best practices for student enrollment as well as engaging students and parents.
Our first breakout session is on Monday, 6/12, from 11:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Eastern, I Need a Better Facility for My School. Now What? addresses the challenges many charter leaders face in acquiring adequate charter school facilities. The panel includes Mike Morley, President and CEO at American Charter Development, Kevin Lynch, Senior Director of Cushman + Wakefield, and Michelle Lynch, Director of Regulatory Affairs, California Charter Schools Association. Our President and CEO, Stuart Ellis, will facilitate this session. Charter leaders will take away information around funding options available to charters, how to plan for facilities expansion and best practices for finding a facility that will best suit your school’s needs.
Our second breakout session is happening on Tuesday, 6/13, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. Eastern, Digital Marketing 101 for Charter Schools – What You Need to Be Successful. This panel includes Michael Barber, Founder and President of barber+hewitt and Scott Kauffman, Partner at Lucid Agency as well as our VP of Marketing Kim Brater. In this session, the focus is on best practices in digital marketing designed to aid charter leaders in student enrollment, retention and engaging with students and parents. The speakers will give an overview of the current digital landscape, cover the different types of digital marketing and give actionable tips that charter school leaders can immediately put into practice.
Also happening on Tuesday from 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. Eastern are the State Meetings at the conference, when many state associations will gather to network, catch-up and discuss issues and challenges particular to their state.
Our team is excited to take part in this national gathering of charter school leaders, educators and innovators in our nation’s capital.
If you’d like to follow along with what we’re doing at the conference, be sure to “like” our Facebook page. We’ll be live-streaming our breakout sessions outlined above for those not attending the conference. Be sure to also follow our LinkedIn company page and check our Twitter feed, where we’ll be live tweeting from our breakout sessions and other key events with the hashtags #NCSC17 and #GrowCharters.
If you’re at the conference, stop by our Booth #501 and say hi.
This year’s California Charter Schools Conference was packed full of great keynotes, sessions and networking opportunities and we think it was one of the best conferences from CCSA! We enjoyed meeting other charter leaders in person at our booth and at our breakout and poster sessions on facilities funding, growth strategy, growth capital, student enrollment marketing, and social media marketing.
The learnings we gained from attending sessions and connecting with partners and clients at the many events were invaluable. It was a privilege to be a Diamond Sponsor and we’d like to thank the California Charter Schools Association for putting on a great conference. If you couldn’t attend this year, definitely put it on your calendar for next year…in San Diego!
Whether you attended the conference or not, we invite you to access our conference session presentations and Facebook Live recordings by visiting our website. Also, sign-up for our newsletter and ongoing outreach to continue building your charter school knowledge. Please reach out if you have questions. And, keep an eye out for our upcoming webinars.
Hope to see you at next year’s conference!
Join us on Facebook Live for Growth Strategy and Facilities Financing knowledge with:
- Dr. Darlene Chambers, Senior Vice President for Programs and Services at the National Charter Schools Institute
- Mike Morley, President and CEO American Charter Development
- Clint Satow, Vice President of Operations Performance Academies
- Stuart Ellis, President and CEO Charter School Capital
More than 300 charter leaders attended the Ohio Auditor of State‘s first Charter School Summit in Columbus, Ohio, last week (August 11-12). There were two days of workshops and keynote addresses from thought leaders on charter school funding, best practices, changes in the state laws, and other training topics.
Featured keynotes came from Ohio State Auditor Dave Yost, Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone, Mike Feinberg of the KIPP Foundation, Dr. Steve Perry of the Capital Preparatory Magnet School, and Paolo DeMaria, the new Ohio Superintendent of Public Instruction. The two-day summit provided options for charter school funding and facilities financing, compliance training around Ohio’s charter school laws, record keeping and enrollment best practices, teacher development and retention, cultivating public-private partnerships, and charter school board governance.
Charter School Capital’s own VP of Business Development/Facilities Jon Dahlberg was the panel session, The Challenges and Opportunities of Facility Expansion, presented Thursday morning. Moderated by Dr. Darlene Chambers, Senior Vice President for Programs and Services at the National Charter School Institute, the panel will also include Tom Babb of Constellation Schools, Brian Schneiderman of Self-Help and John Zitzner of Friends of Breakthrough Schools. The panel discussed the availability of charter school funding for facilities expansion and compared the benefits of leasing versus purchasing facilities, tenant improvements.
You can recap the event, watch speaker videos and see photos provided by the Ohio Auditor of State’s office.
We thank the Ohio Auditor of State’s team for inviting us to participate in their first event!
We’re having a party and you’re invited! Our team is heading to the California Charter Schools Conference in Long Beach next week and we’ve teamed up with Kevin Carroll for an evening of catalytic conversation and cocktails. You can RSVP here!
Tuesday, March 15 from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. in The Empire Ballroom at The Sky Room. 40 S. Locust Street in Long Beach just a few steps away from the convention center.
Kevin is an author, speaker, mentor, and an agent for social change. He has inspired organizations and individuals — from CEOs and employees of Fortune 500 companies to school children — to embrace the spirit of play and creativity to maximize their human potential and sustain meaningful growth.Tonight Kevin will be helping us launch a program series for charter leaders to focus on four key themes – Storytelling, PLAY Matters!, Delivering/Enabling the Unexpected, and Got GRIT?!
Join us as we journey through these themes and learn more about how we will capture and embody these themes throughout 2016.
RSVP
When:
Tuesday, March 15
6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Where:
The Empire Ballroom at The Sky Room
40 S. Locust Ave
Long Beach, CA 90802
(One Block from the Convention Center)
The Charter School Capital team is packing up and getting ready to head to Columbus, Ohio next week to celebrate the 18 years of charter school growth in the state.
We’re proud of our continued partnership with the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools and be the Diamond Sponsor of this year’s Ohio Charter Schools Conference.
Our focus at the conference will be on the 4T’s – teachers, textbooks, transportation, and technology – and how our growth capital can help fund these and other operational needs. Our facilities team will also be on hand to help schools learn more about our facilities financing options and how we can provide schools more control over their facilities needs.
If you’re attending the conference, check out one of our informative breakout sessions:
Charter School Growth Strategies — Start-up, Expansion, Maturity
Thursday, November 12 | 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. | 2nd Floor: Senate Chamber
Charter schools face a variety of challenges at each stage of growth. This panel session will outline these stages of growth from start-up to expansion to mature school and highlight the challenges schools face at each stage. Our panel of experts will offer best practices learned from their experiences.
Panelists:
- Skip Hansen, EVP of Business Development, Learn4Life Concept Charter Schools
- Dr. Darlene Chambers, President and CEO, Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools
- Stuart Ellis, CEO, Charter School Capital
Digital Marketing 101 for Charter Schools
Thursday, November 12 | 2:45 – 3:45 p.m. | 2nd Floor: Senate Chamber
Charter school growth requires solid student enrollment and retention programs that position the school for growth. Attendees will dive into digital marketing strategies with an overview of the digital landscape and learn why it’s relevant to charter school expansion and replication. Best practices will also be highlighted for school leaders to implement for their charter schools.
Panelists:
- Scott Kaufmann, Partner, Lucid Agency
- Kim Brater, VP of Marketing, Charter School Capital
- Michael Barber, Founder, barber&hewitt
Last week, at the National Charter School Conference in Las Vegas, we announced an innovative $500 million charter school facilities program to help charter schools nationwide address one of the charter school movement’s biggest challenges – securing facilities that meet the growing needs of charter schools. The formation of American Education Properties, LLC (AEP) brings together Charter School Capital and investment firm, American Infrastructure MLP Funds (AIM) to help solve the growing facilities needs of America’s charter schools.
The offering is unlike any other facilities financing options available on the market today. Charter schools will now be able to determine their own long-term facility needs and maintain full control of their buildings. This represents a major improvement from the year-to-year lease renewals that many charter schools currently experience. By providing long-term facilities security and an investment partner interested in charter school expansion, charter schools now have the ability to expand their enrollment and educational offerings with confidence.
What does this mean to charter schools?
- Charter schools now have the opportunity to provide the best facilities to match the needs of their educational programs as well as determine long-term facility needs while maintaining full control of their buildings.
- Schools will be empowered with the flexibility to make choices about what to do with their space so it best suits their faculty, staff and student community.
- Charter School Capital will work with all charter schools to facilitate the origination and sourcing, underwriting, asset administration, and property management.
Charter School Capital President and CEO, Stuart Ellis, noted, “The dramatic growth of charter schools – 13 percent in 2013 alone – makes it clear that facilities financing, which is already one of the industry’s largest challenges, will become an even more pressing issue during the coming years. In 2012, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) found that more than half of charter schools would outgrow their current facilities within five years. Collaborating with AIM in the formation of American Education Properties allows us to serve a broad array of charter schools nationwide by freeing-up resources that schools are then able to allocate to classroom instruction or other operational needs.”
The news has charter school advocates celebrating. “Nearly one million students nationwide are on charter school waiting lists. Charter school educators are eager to meet that demand. Fortunately, Charter School Capital has stepped up and created a solution to help parents,” states Caprice Young, President, Education Growth Group and founder and former CEO of the California Charter Schools Association. “These resources will open doors like never before! Public charter schools are now able to expand, offer new programs and customize their space to create the learning environment that best matches student needs.”
Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools added, ” By providing charter schools security in their facilities, this effort helps lift a burden many schools face and will enable schools to focus, as they should, on their students and their academic results. School administrators will be better able to direct their scarce resources and time toward educating students rather than worrying about real estate needs.”
“We are pleased to be partnering with Charter School Capital on this important initiative,” said Bob Hellman, CEO of the American Infrastructure MLP Funds. “Our goal is to help solve America’s infrastructure needs with innovative capital solutions, and we believe that charter schools represent a critical and growing piece of this infrastructure puzzle. We look forward to working with schools and communities in need of secure, long-term facilities to provide the resources to help them continue to grow and thrive.”
Since we made this charter school facilities announcement, the availability of funds has been mentioned in several news media including the Portland Business Journal and Reuters.
What are your facility challenges? Has the inability to secure the right type of facilities impacted your charter school’s ability to enroll and educate more students in your community? Share your experiences with us below or email our team at GrowCharters@charterschoolcapital.com.
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!