Charter School Growth Archives

Search?! Social?! Mobile?! Web?! Email marketing?! All these words along with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are enough to make any charter school leader’s head spin. We’ve teamed up with our marketing friends at barber&hewitt to bring the next installment of our webinar series to help leader learn more about digital marketing for charter schools…Digital Marketing 101: What Charter Leaders Need to Know.
Join our own VP of Marketing, Kim Brater, along with digital marketing expert and founder of barber&hewitt, Michael Barber, on Tuesday, March 8th at 9:00 a.m. PST / 12:00 p.m. EST for an informative webinar about digital marketing for charter schools and how charter leaders can leverage digital marketing to drive enrollment and connect with students, parents and the community.

Speakers:

Kim Brater, VP of Marketing, Charter School Capital
Kim Brater is VP of Marketing at Charter School Capital leading marketing, communications and digital efforts. Previously she founded and managed Ant Hill Marketing in Portland, Oregon for 15+ years focusing on brand strategy, marketing, public relations, and digital for healthcare, technology, manufacturing, and education clients. Kim holds a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst and an M.A. in Communications from the University of Oregon. As an adjunct professor at Portland State University, she taught upper level PR and Communications courses in the School of Business Management. Kim currently lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.

Michael Barber, Founder, barber&hewitt
Michael Barber is the founder of barber&hewitt, a consultancy dedicated to helping brands blend creative and data to tell better stories. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and Mashable. When he isn’t tinkering at barber&hewitt, you’ll find him teaching at various universities and honing his obsessions with donuts, planes, the Arizona Wildcats, and his two Westies, McDoogle and Bowie.

What you will learn:

Why digital marketing matters for charter schools
Digital marketing tactics for charter schools to consider
Digital marketing resources for charter schools

Charter schools face multiple challenges from Year 0 inception in establishing the school and a different set of challenges once in operation through their growth. What are the charter school growth strategies that will help your school succeed? What are your plans for charter school replication? How do the challenges faced by charter leaders change as they expand?

Join us for a webinar focused on charter school growth strategies. We’ll feature the challenges schools face during various phases from start-up, expansion through to a mature school as well as highlight best practices schools use to achieve success.

REGISTER TODAY!

Speakers:

Marshall Emerson, Co-founder & CEO, I CAN SCHOOLS
Marshall the Co-founder and CEO of I CAN Schools, overseeing seven charters and more than 2,000 students. I CAN began in 2010 and the schools have been one of the country’s most successful charter school concepts in closing the achievement gap for low-income students.

Stuart Ellis, President & CEO, Charter School Capital
Stuart is the Co-founder and CEO of Charter School Capital, the nation’s leading provider of growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. The company has provided in excess of $1 billion in support of 500+ charter schools educating more than 500,000 students across the country.

What you will learn:

Best practices for growth and replication
Funding options specific to your growth stage
Lessons learned from charter school leaders

Join us for our upcoming webinar – Building a Growth Strategy for Your Charter School on Tuesday, September 22 starting at 9:00 a.m. PST / 12:00 p.m. EST. This one hour webinar session will feature challenges schools face during various phases of growth from start-up, expansion through to a mature school as well as highlight best practices schools use to achieve success.

Register today!

Speaker: Stuart Ellis, President & CEO at Charter School Capital. Stuart is one of the founders of Charter School Capital, the nation’s leading provider of growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. The organization has provided in excess of $850 million in support of more than 500 charter schools educating 500,000 students across the country.

What you’ll learn:

Best practices related to growth strategies for charter schools and charter school replication
Charter school funding options specific to your growth stage
Lessons learned from charter school leaders

Register now.

Join us on Wednesday, February 18th at 9:00 a.m. Pacific / 12:00 p.m. Eastern for our webinar, “Building a Growth Strategy: Start-up, Growth, Maturity.”

We will cover a variety of challenges charter schools face at each stage of growth. Our speakers will outline stages of growth from start-up to expansion to maturity and highlight the challenges schools experience at each stage. Our panel of experts will offer best practices from their experiences.

REGISTER TODAY!

Speakers:

Marshall Emerson, CEO, I CAN Schools
Marshall is co-founder of I CAN Schools, overseeing seven charters and more than 2,400 students. I CAN began in 2010 and the schools have been one of the country’s most successful charter school concepts in closing the achievement gap for low-income students.
Stuart Ellis, President & CEO, Charter School Capital
Stuart is co-founder of Charter Schools Capital, the nation’s leading provider of growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. The company has provided in excess of $800 million in support of more than 450 charter schools educating 450,000 students.

You’ll learn:

Best practices for growth and replication
Funding options specific to your growth stage
Lessons learned from charter school leaders

What attendees have said:

A similar presentation was held at the 2014 National Charter Schools Conference to a standing-room only audience and was rated as a top 10 session out of 200 offered. Below is feedback received from attendees:
“It was beneficial to hear other school leaders explain how they overcame the same challenges that my school is currently facing.”
“Once I understood the different stages, I could see that our school was in expansion stage, but our organization was still making start-up stage decisions.”

REGISTER TODAY!

We are so excited to learn that Mosaica Education was selected as the highest performing Education Management Organization (EMO) in Ohio, out of 41 organizations. This honor comes on the heels of Columbus Preparatory Academy, a Mosaica school, receiving a 2014 National Blue Ribbon designation by the U.S. Department of Eduaction. Columbus Preparatory Academy was recognized in the category of Exemplary High Performing Schools.
The ranking was published by Beacon Journal in a report that analyzed the overall performance of all EMOs in Ohio.
Mosaica Education is a valued partner of Charter School Capital, and has previously won awards for Columbus Preparatory Academy and Lorain Preparatory Academy. They operate over 100 schools worldwide, including 17 schools in Ohio, serving a total of 3,774 Ohio students.
“The staff at the Mosaica schools in Ohio are tremendously dedicated to building high performing academies, and that’s evidenced by the remarkable growth of the schools and academic achievements of the students,” said Cris Worrel, Charter School Capital Client Services Representative for Ohio. “We look forward to many more successful years as partners to Mosaica Education.”

In an op-ed published recently in the Wall Street Journal about school choice, charter leader Eva Moskowitz says when it comes to test scores and charter school attendance, the numbers don’t lie.
Responding to charter school critics who say that cherry-picking by charters means that academic gains by charter schools are offset by losses in district schools, Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, uses statewide exam scores to refute this claim.
Moskowitz claims that the unique environment in New York City’s 32 school districts make for an ideal real-world experiment:
“New York City has 32 community school districts. The availability of free facilities in some of them has spurred rapid charter-school growth, while in others, the absence of such facilities has thwarted it. As a result, charter enrollment varies widely, from nearly half of students in the Central Harlem district to none at all in other districts.
We can examine the 16 districts where charter school enrollment is highest (charter-rich districts) and the 16 districts where it is lowest (charter-light districts) and see how their relative rankings, based on their results on statewide English and math proficiency exams, changed between 2006 and 2014.”
The full article with the results of Moskowitz’s analysis is available on the Wall Street Journal’s online edition.

The National Alliance of Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) recently announced their newest campaign, “The Truth about Charter Schools,” where they clear-up common misunderstandings about charter schools.
All of us in the charter industry understand that even though support for charter schools is widespread, there are still myths and misconceptions that create confusion and resistance.
That’s why we’re so excited about the NAPCS’ campaign, and why we’ve decided to support their efforts by tackling some charter school financing myths and facts of our own.
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MYTH: Charter schools should use their reserves to finance growth instead of looking for outside financing options.
FACT: Using outside financing to facilitate growth can make a charter more financially secure in the long run, and pay for continued growth without depleting cash reserves.
MYTH: Working capital should only be used in the case of state funding delays or deferrals or as a last resort.
FACT: Working capital is incredibly flexible and can be used for operational growth, program enhancements, technology upgrades, school expansion, etc.
MYTH: Running a charter school is not like running a business.
FACT: A charter school is a business and making smart, informed business decisions will benefit your school’s viability, financial health, and overall growth.
MYTH: Bonds are the best way to fund a facility.
FACT: Less than 10% of charter schools can actually obtain bond financing. The process of getting a bond is often time-consuming, arduous and incurs hidden fees from audits, trustees and rating agencies.
MYTH: Charter schools should own their own facility.
FACT: You’re in the business of educating students, not owning and managing real estate. There are many other financing options that will give you control and security over your facility.
MYTH: The cost of getting financing is too high.
FACT: There is a significant opportunity cost to being inadequately funded and being unable to pay your staff, enhance your programs and enroll more students.
MYTH: The most important factor of getting financing is the interest rate.
FACT: Just like getting a car loan or a mortgage, there are fees and transaction costs hidden in many financing deals. Make sure you’re comparing your total end-cost when evaluating different charter school financing options as well as making an apples-to-apples comparison.
Are there other myths you have to add? Let us know in the comments below!

In June of this year, we announced a $500 million facilities fund, and the formation of American Education Properties (AEP), a collaboration between Charter School Capital, the nation’s leading provider of working and growth capital to charter schools, and American Infrastructure MLP Funds (AIM), a leading private investment firm specializing in real property, infrastructure and natural resources businesses.
We’re excited to announce that just months later, the first $75 million in charter school facilities funding has been distributed to 11 schools across six states as part of the $500 million in innovative charter school financing to meet schools’ demand for facilities.
The distribution of the first $75 million marks one of the largest charter school facilities financing deals to date. This investment supports facilities at nine schools in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, and Washington, D.C., which educate roughly 4,550 Imagine Schools students, as well as students at two charter schools run by independent operators in Arizona and California.
With growing enrollment and nearly one million students on charter school waiting lists nationwide, charter school leaders need to find facilities that meet their needs, both now and in the future. AEP launched in June of this year, addresses this increasing challenge.
AEP enables school leaders to determine their long-term facility needs and retain control of their buildings, so they can focus on their mission of educating our children. With facilities financing in place, charter schools can expand their enrollment and academic offerings with confidence, knowing they can access and maintain the facilities to sustain their ongoing programs and growth.
“We are supporting one of the top needs charter schools face – facilities,” explained Stuart Ellis, President & CEO of Charter School Capital. “Charter School Capital has committed more growth capital to support the movement and now we are able to ensure that charters have the best facilities to meet their educational goals. With $500 million to invest over three years, we are dedicated to providing charter schools access to the capital they need to thrive.”
“We are pleased to have an organization that focuses on charter schools supporting our efforts and mission,” said James McFadden, Vice President and Treasurer of Imagine Schools. “Having a landlord who partners with us and others in the charter school movement to support the growth of schools makes our collaboration more meaningful.”
Imagine Schools is one of the nation’s largest and most highly regarded charter school networks. Their unique, full-service model currently administers a single, multi-state “school district” with 67 schools across 11 states and the District of Columbia. With total enrollment at approximately 36,000 students, the network is larger than each public school district in Tacoma, Boise and Cincinnati. The model has been successful. Imagine was one of only three school districts in the nation to be named a “2013 National District of Character” by the Character Education Partnership for promoting positive character development in a school environment.
Charter schools often have difficulty accessing funding and affordable credit. Recently, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) downgraded the value of charter school transactions, and Fitch Ratings downgraded the value of charter bonds. With its committed pool of capital, AEP enables schools to get the funding they need when they need it, without strings or fluctuating interest rates. Charter School Capital facilitates all origination and sourcing, underwriting, asset administration and property management for the fund.
“At a time when many are turning away from the needs of charter schools, we look forward to putting more dollars to work for charters of all sizes that will enable school leaders to focus on what they do best – educating students – while alleviating concerns about their schools’ facilities,” said Ellis.
To find out how we can help you with your charter school’s facility needs, give us a call at 877-272-1001 or email us at GrowCharters@charterschoolcapital.com.

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!

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!