Category: Charter School Information

charter-like schools9 Tips For How To Create More Successful Charter-Like Schools In Urban Districts

Editor’s Note: This article from The74, was originally published here on September 19, 2018 and was written by David Osborne and Emily Langhorne. David directs the Progressive Policy Institute’s education work and is the author of Reinventing America’s Schools: Creating a 21st Century Education System. Emily Langhorne, a former English teacher, is an education policy analyst and project manager with the Progressive Policy Institute.
This article highlights how, over the past 15 years, the fastest improvement in urban public education has come from cities that have embraced the key tenants that have led to charter schools’ success — autonomy, choice, diversity of school designs, and real accountability for performance. In order to compete, many districts have recently tried to spur charter-like innovation and increase student achievement by granting their school leaders more autonomy.
Interestingly, studies in Boston, Memphis, Denver, and Los Angeles showed that public charter schools outperformed both traditional public and in-district autonomous schools on standardized tests in three of the four cities studied. But getting a charter isn’t always an easy road in today’s political landscape. In this case, in-district autonomous models may be the second-best option. Learn how districts can increase the success of these schools if they take guidance from these nine lessons learned from districts already embracing this new charter-like model.

Osborne & Langhorne: Where Politics Make Charters Difficult, 9 Tips for How Urban Districts Can Create Charter-like Schools — and Improve Their Success

charter-like schoolsOver the past 15 years, the fastest improvement in urban public education has come from cities that have embraced charter schools’ formula for success — autonomy, choice, diversity of school designs, and real accountability for performance. To compete, many districts have recently tried to create charter-like schools to spur innovation and increase student achievement by granting their school leaders more autonomy.
District-run autonomous schools are a hybrid model, a halfway point between charters and traditional public schools. They’re operated by district employees, but they can opt out of many district policies and — in some cities — union contracts.
Our recent analysis of state exam scores from 2015 and 2016 in Boston, Memphis, Denver, and Los Angeles showed that public charter schools outperformed both traditional public and in-district autonomous schools on standardized tests in three of the four cities studied. In the one exception, Memphis, the district concentrated its best principals and teachers in, and provided extra funding and support to, its autonomous iZone schools.
However, when the political landscape makes chartering difficult, in-district autonomous models may be the second-best option. Districts can increase the success of these schools if they heed these nine lessons learned by the four cities in our study.

1. Protect unrestricted autonomy

When autonomy is limited, so is principals’ ability to meet students’ needs. Districts need to give these schools unrestricted staffing and budgeting authority.
Staffing autonomy allows school leaders to hire effective staff who believe in their school’s vision and to evaluate staff based not only on performance but also on cultural fit. Forced placement of teachers not only harms student learning; it can also undermine a school’s culture. As one autonomous school principal in Los Angeles said, sometimes a principal needs to “lose a teacher and save a school.”
Budgeting autonomy enables principals to hire staff according to their schools’ unique needs — for example, bringing on additional guidance counselors rather than a dean. Leaders who control their own budgets can fund hands-on learning, purchase tablets for blended learning, hire a full-time substitute teacher, or employ any of a hundred other innovations.

2. Create a district office or independent board to support and protect autonomous schools

Autonomous school leaders spend a significant amount of time fighting to exercise the autonomies they have been promised. Sometimes, they get so frustrated, they leave. Districts with autonomous schools should create a central unit dedicated to supporting them, defending their autonomy and advocating on their behalf when disputes arise.
An alternative is to create a 501(c)3 nonprofit board, as Denver has. These boards are appointed, not elected, so they are free to make decisions that benefit students and schools without fear of political backlash. The boards oversee school progress, provide financial oversight, select school leaders and evaluate their performance, and protect them from district micromanagement.

3. Articulate a district-wide theory of action and secure buy-in from central office staff

Changing the mindset of the central office requires a huge cultural shift. Autonomous schools necessitate that many parts of the central office do things differently, so employees need to believe in the connection between school autonomy and student success, rather than seeing autonomous schools as an inconvenience and/or a challenge to centralized authority. District leaders need to openly discuss why they believe school autonomy will produce better performance, share this information publicly with school leaders, central office employees, teachers, and the community — and constantly reinforce the message.

4. Turn some central services into public enterprises that must compete with other providers for schools’ business

The fastest way to change the mindset of central office staff who provide services to schools — such as professional development, food, maintenance, and security — is to take away their monopoly. When internal service shops have to sink or swim in a competitive market, they almost always swim, because they are much closer to their customers than private competitors are. But, in the process, they increase their quality and reduce their costs.

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Five Reasons Independent Charters Outperform In-District Hybrid Schools

5. Authorize district-run autonomous schools like charter schools

Rigorous authorization has been essential to the success of strong charter sectors. Districts should use similar processes to authorize their own autonomous schools — allowing only the most promising applicants to open schools and removing those that prove ineffective. A careful authorization process weeds out weak proposals at the beginning reviews performance along the way and replaces schools that fail with stronger operators.

6. Ensure continuous improvement by using a clear system of accountability to close and/or replace failing schools

A common shortcoming among districts with autonomous school models is their failure to impose consequences that create real urgency among teachers and principals — closing and replacing failing schools. Every district should implement a performance framework that requires schools to show academic growth. If they fail, the district should provide additional supports during a probationary period but replace them if they still don’t meet targets. If a school is successful, the district should provide resources and incentives to encourage it to open another campus, as Denver does with its Innovation Schools.

7. Invest in developing autonomous school leaders

Giving schools autonomy does nothing to help student achievement if school leaders follow district procedures rather than looking for ways to be innovative. Districts need to invest in developing school leaders so they can take advantage of their freedoms. Careful selection of and support for principals has been a large part of the Memphis iZone’s success. Novice principals there are placed in partnerships with experienced principals, meeting over the summer and throughout the year to collaborate on strategies for leveraging autonomy to achieve results.

8. When possible, give families a choice of autonomous schools

Families and students who can choose their school tend to show more commitment than children who are assigned to one. Choice empowers them, and people who feel empowered are more likely to give their best efforts. In addition, systems of choice allow for the creation of schools with a variety of learning models, so students can select a school with the culture and curriculum that best fit their needs.

9. Explore district-run autonomous models from other cities

By examining a variety of successful strategies, districts can find and adapt the model that best fits their political climate and meets the needs of their community.
In addition to the four cities we studied, Springfield, Massachusetts, and Indianapolis, Indiana, have launched interesting in-district autonomy strategies.
The Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership, created as an alternative to a state takeover of several schools, contains nine struggling middle schools and one high school that have been given significant autonomy, overseen by a seven-member board of four state-appointed officials and three locally appointed members. The teachers union negotiated a new contract that includes longer hours, increased pay, and some compensation based on performance.
Indianapolis’s Innovation Network Schools, which start with full charter-like autonomy rather than with waivers from district rules, are the fastest-improving in the district. They have the same exemption from laws, regulations, and contract provisions as charters, and while the schools operate in district buildings, the principals and teachers are employed by the nonprofit corporation that operates the school. Each school’s board hires and fires the principal, sets the budget and pay scale, and chooses the school design. The nonprofits have five- to seven-year performance contracts with the district. If schools fail to fulfill the terms of their contracts, the district can refuse to renew them; otherwise, the district cannot interfere with their autonomy.
By following the recommendations above, districts can create self-renewing systems in which every school has the incentives and autonomy to continuously innovate and improve. At the same time, they can offer a variety of school models to families, to meet a variety of children’s needs.
Whether school boards will have the courage to close failing autonomous schools full of unionized district employees will always be a question. The long-term sustainability of in-district autonomy after the leaders who championed it have left is another Achilles’ heel. But if done well and sustained, such schools have the potential to improve public education in urban America

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public charter schoolsUnderstanding The Value And Importance Of Public Charter Schools
Todd Feinburg with Amy Wilkins

In this informative podcast, Todd Feinburg from Radio.com interviews Amy Wilkins, Sr. Vice President Advocacy National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
They answer the question if charter schools are the only alternative for poor, minority and urban students to find alternatives to public schools, why aren’t there more of them, and why don’t Democrats fight for them? They go on to discuss the need for more charter schools as well as the benefits of charter schools in a failing public school system. Finally, they’ll dispel some common myths around charter schools and the charter school movement.
Please listen to the podcast or read the transcript below to learn more.
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 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.

TRANSCRIPT
Todd Feinburg:  WTIC. You know I love Charter Schools. I want everybody to get a great educate in America and we are far from that point. Joining us now to talk about it is Amy Wilkins, Senior Vice President at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. How about that? Amy, welcome to WTIC. Thanks for talking to us.
Amy Wilkins: Hi, Todd, how are you this afternoon?
Feinburg: I’m psyched to have you here, so let’s talk Charter Schools and what’s going on. What are the trends going on in the choice world in providing alternatives, particularly in poor communities where it would be nice if people had Charter School options and more choices for their kids for schools. What’s your assessment of where we’re at right now?
Wilkins: Demand far outstrips supply, especially in communities of color. There are far more families who would choose Charter Schools for their kids than currently can, just because of limited space and really, the biggest obstacle we face, to opening more high quality Charter Schools for kids, whether they’re low income, urban, rural, wherever they are, is the facilities question, the school building question. You know, if you’re a district-operated school, the district just gives you a building, right? You get a school building. Charter Schools have to finance their own buildings and finding appropriate and adequate space is really among the things that are holding back growth for these much-needed schools.
Feinburg: And what is the … well, before I ask you that, I’m surprised by what you’re saying about the facility. I understand. I’ve seen Charter Schools that are in church basements and in what were industrial buildings, where they throw up some dividers and make classrooms and those aren’t ideal, but what you find out when you see those schools in action is that the facilities maybe are over-emphasized in our public schools. And what’s really important is having a great education in whatever kind of walls you can find.
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Wilkins: Oh, absolutely. You know, what matters most, what is the heart of any school are the teachers and the curriculum, I would agree with you 100% on that, Todd. But, I also think the kids whose families choose Charter Schools deserve libraries, labs, playing fields, all of those facilities as well. So, yes, better to go to a strip mall and get a really strong educate, than to go to a palace where you get a not so strong educate. In the best of all worlds, you go to a high-quality Charter School that has a lab, a library, a playing field, all of those facilities.
Feinburg: So, how do Charter Schools get the buildings?
Wilkins: Well, you know, too often they have to buy a building and then they face the same mortgage problems that all of us face when we want a mortgage and the problem, as you know, is Charter Schools, when they’re looking for a building, are often brand new and don’t have much of a track record to stand on, so it’s hard for them to get financing or they pay rent for a building. And what happens then, as you know, you have district-operated schools where their building is just free, it’s given to them by the district. Charter Schools, when they’re paying rent or financing a mortgage are having to take funds that would otherwise be directed to their instructional programs and pay building costs.
Feinburg: Have Charter Schools proven to be worth the investment? We hear all this conflicting information about whether they’re actually a successful alternative or not.
Wilkins: I think like anything, we have some really great Charter Schools and we have some Charter Schools that I think should be closed. But, in general, the general trend suggests particularly for urban kids and for kids of color, Charter Schools are their very best bet. We have solid evidence that kids, those kids in particular, gain months of learning over their peers in district-operated schools. So, the trend seems to be telling us, yes, this is really important from a data point of view, from a student achievement point of view, they are absolutely the right answer. From a parenting point of view, they are the right answer as well. I mean, parents deserve a choice. Not every school fits every child, you know? You may want a different type of curriculum for your child. Your child may have special needs that the district schools are unable to meet. So, both from an academic point of view and from the point of view of parents having some control over the kind of educate their kids get, Charter Schools are absolutely a vital part of kind of a healthy public education ecosystem.
Feinburg: We’re talking to Amy Wilkins on Charter Schools. I love talking about Charter Schools because my belief is, particularly in urban areas, that there is a crisis going on, and I don’t feel, Amy, as a country that we can afford to have millions of kids, rich, poor, minority, white, whatever … we can’t afford to have millions of kids not getting a great education.
Wilkins: Absolutely not. I mean, at bottom, it’s sort of inhumane and, you know, no adult should look at a child who’s not getting an education and feel good about it. But, I mean, there are certainly strong implications for our future economy, including who’s going to pay your Social Security and mine, Todd. There are big implications for national security. Educating our kids is the foundation of our future and Charter Schools are a proven sort of winner in that for our kids and so, to me, it’s a no-brainer, that we just have to do it. We have to do well and we have to do more of it.
Feinburg: Do you see a way to make this argument, though, for cities? So, in Connecticut, we have so many cities and they’re not particularly large, but they are part of a pattern of a city being a place where minority kids, poor kids are essentially stored and not given an opportunity to get out. It just strikes me, as you say, as some kind of human rights violation, if you want to argue from the humanity point of view, that the system is rigged to be mediocre, at best and oftentimes worse and there’s no economic opportunity. There’s really not a way out and that drives a lot of minority kids into gangs and bad behavior that puts a lot of boys into prison. And how does that pattern get broken through education, because that’s the only tool I think we have available?
Wilkins: No, you’re absolutely right. Education is the surest way out of poverty and the strongest weapon, I think, we have against racism. It really is up to … I hate to say this, it’s up to communities. You know, they have to stand up on behalf of their kids and demand something better, demand something different. Now, you could also … I don’t know, this is like being really kind of out there … you know, you saw the kids at Parkland saying, “We’re not happy with the kind of safety of our schools and we’re afraid of guns in our schools.” I think, you know, the kids know when they’re being short-changed. We really sort of have to start talking to the kids about how they feel about the schools they’re going to and, unfortunately, they’re not old enough to vote, but I think conversations … if elected officials had conversations with kids at some of these schools, some of the kids I talk to and hear what goes on in their schools, I think that would spur some action that we’ve yet to see.
Feinburg: Have you ever seen that kind of thing going on where there are public displays of rebellion or unrest over the idea that oppression, the educational oppression of minority students?
Wilkins: Well, I don’t know if I would call it unrest. I have seen groups of students in various parts of the country … I know it’s happened in Wisconsin. I know it’s happened in California, who do lobby days and go to their state legislatures to lobby and testify about the conditions in their schools. One could certainly see the same things happening at School Board meetings and City Council meetings in Connecticut, if there were folks willing to help these kids begin to organize.
Feinburg: Yeah, but there has to be a spark of something bigger because the rigged education system, the partnership between the Democratic party and the Education Unions, there is this fixed system that says this is the only way education can happen, and we live in times where we need educational agility, where policy can change quickly, where schools can adapt over the very short term to the needs of the kids. How do we get from here to there if there’s no model if there’s nothing for people to look at and say, “We want that.”
Wilkins: Well, there are models. I mean, that’s the thing. In Connecticut, for example, you have the Amistad Charter Schools which are among the best in the country and people should really go see them. They have done a wonderful job with those schools. So there are things … part of this … part of the challenge here is people don’t … and I’ve been doing education for years, and years, and years. What’s so sad is that people really don’t see schools beyond the schools that they attended and the schools their children have attended and they don’t know that something else is out there, that something else can be better and you know, part of the responsibility of groups like mine, in doing interviews like this one, is to let people know there are better alternatives and to say that it’s easy to create one, it’s easy to sustain one, I would be lying. But you know, there are better things, but like most better things, they require work and commitment.
Feinburg: Amy Wilkins is the Senior Vice President at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. So, what exactly do you folks do?
Wilkins: We represent in Washington, primarily. The Charter Schools out there in America, we lobby Congress to ensure that there’s funding to start more and better Charter Schools.
Feinburg: So, the Federal dollars are a critical part?
Wilkins: The Federal dollars really are start-up dollars. Once you’ve started, then you really are reliant on state and local funding, but the Federal government does supply … it’s a program called the Charter Schools Program and it supplies seed money for new Charter Schools to get started.
Feinburg: What are the … can you shoot down the basic arguments against Charter Schools, the kind of superficial ones that have appeal to people who aren’t very involved, and they hear about how, for example, that Charter Schools are taking dollars away from the public schools, it’s an attempt to destroy the public schools.
Wilkins: Well, that just doesn’t make any sense because Charter Schools are public schools. Charter Schools are part of the public school system, so I don’t understand how they could take money away from a system that they’re already a part of. It’s just a nonsensical argument that the Teacher’s Unions have sort of … it’s a catchy phrase, but it means nothing.
Feinburg: How about Charter Schools just have to … they get to pick whatever kids they want. They don’t have to worry about the special ed kids?
Wilkins: That’s not … in fact, Charter Schools currently are serving a slightly higher percentage of special needs kids than our traditional public schools, so that’s just not true. Charter Schools serve as many and, in some cases, a few more special needs kids than do traditional public schools.
Feinburg: I forget what else the arguments are. Is there one more you can give us?
Wilkins: Yeah, that they’re a plot to tear down the traditional public school system. At this point, Charter Schools make up less than 5% of all schools in the country.
Feinburg: So it’s a failing plot?
Wilkins: Yeah, we’re doing a pretty bad job. I mean, if the traditional public schools, which are educating 95% of the children are so scared of something that only represents 5%, there’s something deeper going on there, you know? And I think that that’s one of the things we really have to understand about Charter Schools. The demand for Charter Schools, to me, reads like an indictment of the traditional public school system. If everything were hunky-dory in traditional public schools, there wouldn’t be this enormous demand for Charter Schools. And so when the traditional public schools point to Charter Schools and say, “Oh, they’re a problem, they’re a problem, they’re a problem,” they really should turn and look more in the mirror to say, “Why are these schools even existing? Why do people demand them?” They demand them because public schools have fallen so far short for so many kids.
Feinburg: Amy Wilkins, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. What’s the website?
Wilkins: It’s www … I have to get some help here, www.publiccharters.org.
Feinburg: What is it?
Wilkins: It’s publiccharters.org.
Feinburg: Publiccharters.org. Amy, thank you so much. Great to talk with you.
Wilkins: Thank you so much. It’s great to talk to you. Have a good afternoon. Bye-bye!
Feinburg: Bye-bye. I hit her with a tough surprise question at the end.

The 5 Essential Steps to Charter School Facilities Planning

Charter school facilities planning can be daunting. If you think that finding the perfect facility for your charter school seems like a huge, complicated undertaking, you’re in good company. This handy, information-packed guide, will help as you move towards realizing your facility expansion or relocation goals.
In it, we cover these five essential charter school facility planning steps—in detail:

  1. Charter School Facilities Planning Plan – Begin planning at least one year in advance
  2. Fund – Understand your options to make savvy decisions
  3. Acquire – You know what you can afford and how you’ll pay for it … now go get it
  4. Design – Partner with experts to design your new space
  5. Execute – Let the construction begin and get ready to move in
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run a charter schoolHow to Run a Charter School as a Non-Educator

For this CHARTER EDtalk, Janet Johnson, Charter School Capital CMO, and our Head of Business Consulting, Tricia Blum sat down with Sharon Thompson, the Board Chair for Wayne Preparatory Academy in Goldsboro, North Carolina. We wanted to talk with Sharon in order to understand what, if any, specific challenges she faces running a charter school as someone with a non-education background. Watch the video and/or read the transcript to hear Sharon’s tips on how to run a charter school as a non-educator and what she’s learned over her time as a charter school leader.

Janet Johnson (JJ): Hello, and welcome to Charter EDtalks. I’m Janet Johnson, with Charter School Capital, and we are very fortunate to have Sharon Thompson, who is the Chairwoman of the Board of Wayne Charter School in North Carolina, and Tricia Blum, who is also with Charter School Capital. We’re going to talk a little bit about being a board member and the challenges thereof. Thanks for coming.
Sharon Thompson (ST): Thank you for having me. I’m excited.

 Why do you love charter schools?

Tricia Blum (TB): So, Charter School Capital is doing a campaign We Love Charter Schools. Can you tell me, please, in a sentence or two, what you love about charter schools?
ST: I think it’s the fact that not every child fits into the traditional school format, and so especially in the life of my children, who are now adults. I was very excited to find that the charter school, at least in our area and I’m sure in other areas as well, were going to offer something different for those students that just needed a choice to go to a school that more exemplified the way they could learn and what was going to be best for them. so, it’s exciting to have that option because we’ve not had that in our county at all except for one other charter school.

Day in the life of a Board Chairman

TB: So, since you’re a board president, tell me a little bit about the day in the life of a Board Chairman. What’s that look like?
ST: Well, I think it’s different for each person. For me, personally, I spend, some weeks, 30 hours, some weeks, 60 hours. I mean, it just depends on what we have going on. Of course, we’re in the project of a great new building, so I’m excited about us opening that this summer and having a picnic and to cut the ribbon, with all of that going on. So, that will be great.
It’s like it is for any other business. As Chairman of the Board, my responsibility is to make sure that everything is moving the way it should be from the business standpoint. That was the commitment that we made to our Managing Director because we wanted our administrative staff to focus on the scholars and our academic side, and the board was willing to take on the other responsibilities from the financial side.
I’m doing those things that a typical business would do. I’m answering emails, I’m on the phone, texting, having meetings with different people, but once we get this set up and I’ve got a working relationship with a vendor, then I can turn that over to our business person at the school, and then they’re able to continue and work with that. They should give us reports—to the board, so that we know what’s going on. I’m running the business. It’s not just sitting back and hoping somebody does it. You’ve got to get in there and actually get the work done.

Building a solid foundation

TB: Do you think that once … Like, you said 30 and 60, and I know that’s legitimate, but do you think once some of the challenges that you’re facing, that’s going to become less, or do you think you’re going to find new tasks and projects that keep that at that kind of … You know, what I call part to full-time job.
ST: Right. I think that it can certainly go to more of a part-time position once we get some of the things kind of nailed down. I want a foundation put there, so that all you have to do is come in – the next Chair or the next board member in a particular area – and all they’ve got to do is tweak that policy, or the thing that we put together—that strategic plan, so that it’s not reinventing the wheel every year.
We actually got to see what that was going to look like this summer. We just had our annual strategic planning session, and so it was very nice to be able to sit down and just kind of tweak a few things that we needed to do, and then we can move forward.
We’ve got still a lot of work to do as far as putting those policies together and making sure that they’re sound and where they need to be. But, once we get the foundation laid, then we’re going to be able to go do some of the fun stuff! More focus about the community and marketing, and then going back into the classroom and seeing all the fun programs that the children do. We don’t have that opportunity right now because we’re running a business.

How to run a charter school as a non-educator

TB: So, I think we’ve talked a little bit about challenges, but specifically, I know you don’t have an education background, so tell me what challenges do you face in running the board with a non-education background?
ST: That was huge because I didn’t expect for the education side of the business to look so different from the private sector, but it does. It’s a very big difference, so there was a huge learning curve for me.
You still have to have those good, sound business practices, but I call it knowledge by fire hose, not water hose. I really had to [quickly] get up to speed on how the educational side of things really worked, even though again, we’ve asked the Managing Director and the administrators to handle the education side.
I still have to understand it and so does the board.
A lot of times, I may go to different conventions or conferences. Any time the state offers something, I try to be there for that training. I know some people say, “No, no, don’t deal with the state because we’re a charter school,” but I don’t find that to be the case.
If you build those relationships, and then everybody’s on board with it too, and if you go and let them know you’re really trying to be a part of it, you want a great school, and you’re trying to set the right example, then they’ll come on board with you as well, if they weren’t to start with.
We’re very fortunate in North Carolina, in my state, that we have a great supporter of charter schools, and that we’re able to go and do that.
TB: Early on, what was it like, since you didn’t have a background in that, right? I think there might be more to that, even.
Relying on mentors, administrators, and personal experience
ST: I had to rely very heavily, at the beginning, on the administrators, so that they could explain. When you start talking about all these different testing elements and things that you’re using in the curriculum, that is really tough.
You either need a mentor that you can go and ask the questions of. You know, what is MAT and what is DIBELS, and how does this work? Or do they really expect me to have an 8% contingency set aside, and those kinds of things? You really have to have someone that you trust to be able to do that with. It never hurts to ask more than one person. It’s always great to have a mentor, but it’s okay to get the views of other folks to see what they’re thinking as well.
It was a little bit different for me because I had two children that had high-functioning autism, so I had kind of dealt with the school system from that level, and for me, that was why I was so excited that the charter school had come along in our county because we needed something different.
My children were very high-functioning, but they just, again, didn’t fit in that public school education setting. Had they been in this school setting, I think they would have flourished so much more.
I’ve kind of been able to look at it from both sides, from the school aspect and from the parent side of what that looks like, so that’s been a help in some areas dealing with our children with special health care needs or special needs within the school system.
Again, you can’t figure it all out at the start by yourself. You’ve got to have some help, and so you’ve got to rely on someone that will be able to explain it to you, or hopefully you’ve hired the right people, and those educators that are there in the school, those administrators, will be able to explain it to you.
One of the things, too, that we do at our particular school, is we have two board meetings a month. The first one of the month, we discuss financials and operations and kind of what’s going on with that, and then the second meeting of the month, it’s academics, so that we know exactly where our students are as far as where they’ve been placed in testing, and how they’re progressing along in their school for that year.
That’s been great in helping the board understand because most of our board members aren’t educators, and so they need to understand how we’re doing. Because although testing’s not our goal, it is a byproduct of what we have to do in North Carolina and all the other states. We’ve got to have that outcome as well as financially being responsible.

The Board’s commitment

TB: Do your average board members or your standard board members, do you think that they instead of working 30 to 60 hours a week, do you think they work 10 hours a week, five hours a week, and then with meetings they have a little longer?
ST: Right, and we’ve got some board members that have just come on that, I think, are going to be a little bit more active, and so it’s kind of that old rule. You know, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. It doesn’t change on the Board.
Now, I think there are those times that you really do get that group that’s just going to mesh really well and everybody will be able to kind of take the load. I can see that starting to happen, but we’ve had to gel as a board first and get to know each other, and the strengths.
We’re looking for particular strengths now when we bring on board members, so that helps a lot as well because having one person that’s trying to figure it all out is not good for several reasons. I told a group earlier today, you know, if I get hit by a Mack truck, that’s a problem, but if there had been other people there with me that had been in the same trainings, then they’re going to know what I know, and that’s most important, to spread out that knowledge – all the way across – as much as you can.

On working with Charter School Capital

TB: If you would, please tell me or us a little bit about your experience working with Charter School Capital?
ST: Oh, I could talk a long time about that. It has really been a knight a shining armor for us. It’s been amazing having you to be able to come in and deal with us, or help us one-on-one as we were at the beginning with our partnership. That was a big help because you want that liaison with that person you know you can call.
Then to find out there was a whole team, and Janet was part of that team, and some of the other folks, was really very reassuring for many because we had not been in that position where we had had that kind of support.
To have Charter School Capital provide not only that for us, but the opportunity to get our building built that we’ve been waiting for for a long time (that we’re all going to celebrate in the next month or two) has been very, very exciting! I would highly encourage anyone, if they’ve got the opportunity to work with Charter School Capital, to do so. And you [,Tricia]. You’ve been a wonderful, wonderful support.
JJ: Thank you, Sharon.
TB: Thank you. Thank you, Sharon.

Charter School Capital logoSince the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. 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!

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charter school fundingThe Charter School Funding Misconception: Who’s money is it?

This article was originally posted here on September 5, 2018 by The74 and written by James V. Shuls, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. It is an opinion article that challenges one key assumption about charter school funding: does the funding for public schools belong to the child or to the district? This question is at the heart of education reform arguments.
Proponents of school choice believe that every family deserves to choose the best educational option that suits their child’s specific and unique needs—whether that school is a traditional district public school or a public charter school. Opponents of the charter school movement believe that families that choose the public charter school are “taking” money away from traditional district schools. As this writer suggests, this may hold true if you believe the child, and the funding that follows them, are district property.
Do the traditional district schools have less money if the student opts for a public charter school? Yes. That is the natural result of freedom of choice as it is within any other industry, so why should it be different for education? If your local charter schools are outperforming your local district schools or offer your child something unique to their needs, shouldn’t you be able to make that choice?
If you think the funding belongs to the district and not the student, this writer makes an enlightening comparison to shopping at Walmart versus shopping at your local farmer’ s market, “It presupposes that the customer belongs to Walmart; that any time the individual chooses to buy cucumbers from a local grower or salsa from an aspiring entrepreneur, he or she is “robbing” the dominant grocer.”
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 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.
Read on for the complete article.

Shuls: Do Charter Schools Take Districts’ Money? Only If You Think Children, and the Funding That Comes With Them, Are District Property

How would you respond if you stumbled across a headline that asked, “How much do farmers markets cost Walmart?” It’s a ridiculous question. It presupposes that the customer belongs to Walmart; that any time the individual chooses to buy cucumbers from a local grower or salsa from an aspiring entrepreneur, he or she is “robbing” the dominant grocer. That’s just absurd. Yet this is the standard frame we use when talking about education. We blithely assume that education is wholly different from any other field.
Consider, for example, a recent headline on the Education Writers Association’s website: “How Much Do Charter Schools Cost Districts?” It’s the same question, and it is just as absurd as when talking about groceries. Worse, it is unethical, because it dehumanizes children, reducing them to economic units. In this formulation, neither they nor their parents are individuals with aspirations, endowed with free will and the ability to act in their own self-interest; they are a mere funding stream for public school districts.
This type of headline is all too common. Most people wouldn’t even bat an eye at it. But this isn’t just semantics. It gets at the heart of the way many people view public education.
It is only in education that we presume the customer is the rightful property of a specific supplier and therefore “costs” the supplier when he or she goes somewhere else. Indeed, this is the fundamental problem with the public education system in the United States: We presume the tax dollars that fund a child’s education belong to the public school district and the child belongs in a public school seat.
If, heaven forbid, parents want to use those education funds at a charter school or a private school, they must prove that “choice” works. We demand that school choice programs justify themselves by increasing student achievement on standardized tests, or increasing graduation rates, or fixing decades-old segregation issues. We would never ask the farmers market to prove its tomatoes are bigger and juicier than Walmart’s as a condition of operation.
It doesn’t stop there. A few years ago, one writer went as far as to say, “You are a bad person if you send your children to private school.” You can almost hear Snowball from Animal Farm repeating the mantra, “Four legs good, two legs bad.” It’s us versus them. We treat public education as if it — the system, the school district — were the ultimate good to be served. Just google “school vouchers” and look at the images. The internet is replete with political cartoons that characterize school choice programs as systematically dismantling traditional public schools, brick by brick.
Challenges to this concept are not new. In his 1958 book, Freedom of Choice in Education, Father Virgil Blum wrote that “our educational policy must be philosophically based on the dignity and transcendent value of the individual, on the integrity and freedom of the human person; it must be legally based on the Federal Constitution, recognizing the individual student clothed in all his constitutional rights.” We are no closer to that reality today than we were 60 years ago.
Our commitment to educating every child, regardless of wealth or ability, is a reflection of our highest and noblest ideals. What we do today in our public education system is a feat that was almost unthinkable even 100 years ago. Yet in the process of building that system, we somehow lost our purpose. Instead of the system serving the children, we now insist the children must serve the system.
If we are ever to change this, we must first change how we talk about public education. We can’t presume, as the author of the Education Writers Association piece did, that children and their funding inherently belong to the public school system. Do public school districts have less money when a student goes to a charter school or a private school? Absolutely — as they should. This is what happens in any industry when customers choose to spend their dollars at one place instead of another. More to the point, it is what happens when students leave a district school for any reason.
In the final analysis, we must realize that public education is not about the school system, but the students that it is supposed to serve. They have value. They have worth. They should have choices.
James V. Shuls, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Charter School Capital logoSince the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. 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!

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California charter school
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on August 13, 2018, here, by EdSource, and was written by John Fensterwald, who writes about education policy and its impact in California. They interviewed Gary Hart – the “father” of California charter school law – and he shares how he feels about things now, 25 years later. Is it as he envisioned? What would he change? What is working/not working?
Our mission is to see continued charter school expansion, the overall growth of the charter school movement, and more students better served by having educational choice. 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 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. Please read on to see EdSource’s original post.

Gary Hart, author of California’s charter school law, reflects on its impact
He’d change the appeals process if writing it today.

What does the “father” of California’s quarter-century-old charter school law think of it now? EdSource recently caught up with former State Sen. Gary Hart, a Democrat who represented Santa Barbara in the Assembly and Senate for 20 years before retiring in 1994. In 1992, as chairman of the Senate Education Committee, he authored the nation’s second charter school law. Sue Burr, a consultant to the committee at the time and currently a member of the State Board of Education, played a major role in drafting it. EdSource writer John Fensterwald asked Hart in an interview and in writing what he was trying to do then and how, in hindsight, he might write a different law today. The answers have been edited for length and clarity.
The original law capped the number of charter schools statewide at 100, with no more than 10 in any one district and 20 in Los Angeles Unified. In 1998, the Legislature raised the limit to 250 charter schools plus an additional 100 more each year after that.
EDSOURCE: Is it as you envisioned, that we would have more than 1,200 charter schools in California?
HART: No. It’s always hard to predict how legislation is going to play out. Although it was very contentious, I didn’t view it as something that was going to be earth-shaking or have the magnitude that it has.
The original law called for up to 100 charter schools. That was changed a number of years later. When the law first passed, we had no idea as to whether there would be any charters. It was like you give a party and you don’t know if anyone will come or not. It was kind of slow in the beginning. The accelerated growth has been just extraordinary, and it’s not something that not only myself, but I don’t think anybody else could have predicted or even imagined.
EDSOURCE: So what do you attribute that growth to? Are the charter schools from what you can tell doing collectively or individually what you would have hoped?
HART: It’s really hard to generalize because charters vary so much. Generally speaking, I’m supportive. With any legislation of this magnitude, there are always going to be issues and concerns. I do think there has been such a focus on how many new charters, it’s focusing on quantity and I had hoped initially there would be a lot more focus on quality, a more careful review of charters.
EDSOURCE: One of the questions originally was whether charters should be seen as a way to innovate and set examples for other district schools to learn from or to give parents a choice in high-poverty neighborhoods where they are dissatisfied with their schools. Those are really two different focuses.
HART: I think it was both. First and foremost was innovation and reform, giving an opportunity for people to do things differently and not be constrained by all of the rules and regulations from the district, from collective bargaining.
I heard over and over again from school folks, “Stop passing all these laws. We’re spending all of our time being compliance officers and bureaucrats and we’re not able to do our jobs as educators.” I thought that there was some truth to that and so passing this law really gave an opportunity for educators to be educators and not be as concerned about rules and regulations.
After the law was passed, there wasn’t much that came forward either from teachers or administrators or school board members who had complained bitterly about state laws. Instead of going out and doing it, a lot of people resisted. That’s not to say they were wrong because going through the whole process can be quite time-consuming and there’s a lot of blood on the floor sometimes for establishing these things.
This other aspect was also important — the people who felt that the existing schools, particularly in low-income areas, were not serving their needs; their school districts were too large or dysfunctional. They needed to have something that would be their own.
One of the concerns was, “This charter law will be for sophisticated parents who have a lot of time on their hands.” It was somewhat of a surprise to see that places like LA Unified and Oakland and other large urban school districts were where the charters were taking off. I think there was a dissatisfaction on the part of parents, but also because the business community and the foundation community got behind these efforts and provided resources. I never anticipated that charter management organizations would have such an important role.
EDSOURCE: The financial impact on a district was not part of the law. Was it brought up at the time?
HART: I don’t think so. The law didn’t have large-scale financial ramifications. We were talking about 100 charters statewide.
The bill was a major effort to try to defeat the voucher proposal that was going to be on the ballot and we saw it as an alternative to vouchers that would not go down that path of providing the large taxpayer subsidies to private schools and violating the church-state separation right. (Editor’s note: Prop. 174, which would have given parents a tuition subsidy to a private or parochial school equal to half of per-student funding at public schools eventually did make the November 1993 general election ballot; voters defeated it 70 to 30 percent.)
There was strong teacher opposition to the charter legislation from both AFT (American Federation of Teachers) and CTA (California Teachers Association) even though ironically, I got the idea from Al Shanker (the late president of the American Federation of Teachers) who had written about it. I was a great fan and Shanker had come out and testified on a number of occasions to legislation that we were considering.

“Charter fights in places like L.A. Unified have become almost religious wars, where large amounts of money are spent, and having an appeals process that is less political makes sense to me.”

The focal point of the unions was largely to ensure that collective bargaining laws would not be tampered with in the charter law. That issue was very contentious and I refused to budge. My position was that there needed to be a choice for teachers whether to form a union at a charter school.

Legislative ‘jiu-jitsu’

EDSOURCE: How did you ever get it passed?
HART: It wasn’t easy. The unions were strongly opposed and many other education groups — ACSA (Association of California School Administrators) and CSBA (California School Boards Association) — were neutral perhaps because they didn’t want to antagonize CTA. It was pretty lonely out there. We engaged in some legislative jiu-jitsu and pulled the bill out of conference committee and passed it quickly off the Senate floor with no debate and sent it to Gov. Wilson, who signed it into law. If we had followed traditional procedures and the unions had had time to work the bill, it likely would not have passed.
EDSOURCE: Did it become apparent that there would be resistance and that some folks in many districts at the time didn’t like competition? You knew that, right, because you set up an appeals process?
HART: We did, and it wasn’t that we had a cynical view towards school districts, but there was a potential conflict of interest that made, I thought, an appeals process a good idea. School boards and school administrators might oppose any charter because it might mean less district control, less revenue and more competition. So having an appeals process made sense and I thought county boards, who were also elected and had a sense of local issues, were the right bodies to hear appeals. Six years later the charter law was amended to provide another appeal to the State Board of Education. I understand now the state board spends up to half its time hearing charter appeals, which I’m not sure is a good use of state board time given all the other policy matters on their plate.
EDSOURCE: Would you eliminate that ultimate appeals process because it’s not a good use of (state board) time, or do you think someone else ought to be the ultimate authority or should you just keep it at the county level and whatever happens there happens?
HART: I still believe a charter appeals process is a good idea but charters are now becoming a campaign issue with some county boards of education so I’m not sure they are the right venue for appeals. Charter fights in places like L.A. Unified have become almost religious wars, where large amounts of money are spent, and having an appeals process that is less political makes sense to me. Perhaps the State Board of Education could appoint an expert panel to review and have the final say on charter appeals. I favor making the process less political and handled by more neutral people.

Financial impact on districts

EDSOURCE: Some districts are very frank about the financial impact of charter schools. “Look, we can’t afford it. We’re making cuts and you’re asking us to start new charter schools adding to the financial problems we have.” If you were to redo the law, would you hold a district harmless for the financial impact or compensate it for the impact of a charter?
HART: Some districts face loss of revenue due to charter growth, and many districts face unsustainable long-term employee health care costs and all districts face escalating pension contributions. A review of state financing seems in order. We have had funding adjustments to mitigate for declining enrollment. Perhaps something like that ought to be considered for districts with many charter schools. But a strict “hold harmless” for districts losing students to charters doesn’t make sense, as it would reward districts for not being competitive and it might also provide an incentive for districts to push out “undesirable” students. Trying to accommodate various factors that are affecting the financing of a district gets very complicated. There are unintended consequences you have to be careful about.
Districts have many financial challenges and it seems to me that charters are not the primary or even significant part of the financial problems districts face in the long term — those problems are going to remain with or without charter schools.
EDSOURCE: Looking back, seeing what people are saying now are some of the challenges to the law, what changes might you make?
HART: We now have more than 1,000 charter schools in California and we know little about their successes and failures. Some work has been done comparing charter to traditional public schools on student achievement but, given the great variety of charter schools, I’m not sure about the value of that body of research.
I would be interested in research on topics like school size — charters tend to be smaller. School mission — charters tend to have a specific rather than a comprehensive mission. Accountability — it’s easier to dismiss staff in charter schools. And school governance — charter board members are not elected by the general public and do not have to raise money to run for office. There’s a lot to explore with 25-plus years of experience and data.
I think we’re hungry for highlighting and replicating what is working well, whether it’s in a charter school or in a traditional school. We don’t do a good job of that.

Charter School Capital logoSince the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. 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!

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Charter School ResourcesCharter School Resources: Introducing Our New Client Portal

Our mission is to support charter leaders by providing charter school resources and tools you need to thrive. We pride ourselves on finding innovative solutions to your financing challenges and having the ability to be as creative and flexible as possible to meet your specific needs – when and how you need the support.
Because we specialize in taking on all the administrative pieces of your financing (so you can focus on your mission of educating your students) we recognized that anything we could do to make the process easier would be a win for everyone.
Enter our new Client Portal.
How could we make the process of working with us more simple, coherent, streamlined, and transparent for our clients? How could we provide clients a more holistic view of their unique funding journey? When we began to develop our Client Portal, these are the challenges and questions we aimed to address.

The Idea

A few years back, our Client Services team set out to find a way to efficiently:
• Relay to our school partners what their specific funding requirements are;
• Support clients in being able to easily comprehend those requirements; and,
• Make it easy for them to take action.
School leaders always have a lot on their plate so we wanted to make this process easier for them, but we also wanted to build a solution that – in the future – could offer even more value than just being a transactional tool (read more on this below). The idea of the Client Portal was born from one core aspiration—to deliver a higher quality customer experience to our school partners.

A Team Effort

The Client Portal project was led by our IT Manager and Senior Salesforce Specialist, John Caughie, along with our COO, Kirt Nilsson. But every one of our departments weighed in on the design, navigation, and content requirements—while working alongside our internal Salesforce Team (as well as our external consultants) to implement the Client Portal. Once the project was underway, it took approximately five months of hard work and dedication to see it to today’s first phase of completion.

The Challenges and Lessons Learned

According to our Salesforce Administrator, and a key leader on the project, Jennifer Day, “Deciding what design to go with was by far the biggest question that needed to be answered. Determining what information we wanted clients to see and interact with was easy in comparison to isolating a design that worked within the constructs of the platform but delivered an intuitive and appealing experience for clients. We’ve come a long way since our first user interface designs and are looking forward to streamlining the Client Portal as new features become available.”
One thing we learned was that timelines should never take priority over design and usability. We struggled with that at the onset (our initial timeline was two months), but we extended our deadline to craft a clean and well-designed user experience for our clients.
When rolling out any new “product”, testing is key. So, we beta tested the portal with some courageous clients. Four of our existing clients used the new Client Portal for two months to complete fundings for their schools. During that time, we had some initial bug hiccups when we pushed the Client Portal live, but those were resolved quickly in just a few days. Because of our amazing client and internal staff “testers”, we were able tosuccessfully address all the concerns and suggestions that were made in the first month, and fortunately, the second month ran more smoothly.

The Result

Our new Client Portal means clients can now see what actions need to be taken (e.g., documents that need to be signed, delivered, or returned), on a detailed timeline, to help them more efficiently and more easily finalize their transaction. With this portal, we’re offering our school partners a ‘funding journey’ – from start to finish – that provides more transparency and clarity into what can be a very-opaque process.

“When we first started out in 2014, we had to print out all of the documents, and scan and email, and we had to hurry up and get those things in. And now we have the online portal which really positive. The online portal makes it all much, much easier.”
~Dr. India Ford, T2 Honors Academy

Want an inside look at our Client Portal in action? Watch this short tutorial video!

What’s on the Horizon?

While the Client Portal is ready for all of our clients (currently utilizing our working capital and facilities products) to transition into by the end of the year, we do have much bigger dreams for it. Our ultimate goal with the Client Portal is to provide more than just transactional information. In the future, we intend to provide clients with the ability to:
• Manage all aspects of their transactions (including servicing)
• Discover other products and/or services that support growth and success
• Access all of our handy charter school resources (such as this blog).
One thing that is certain: you have a dedicated, innovative team here at Charter School Capital who will continue to deliver the very best charter school resources, products, solutions, and services that we possibly can to continue our support of charter schools, their leaders, and the movement as a whole.

Charter School Capital logoSince the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. 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 educate 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!


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Editor’s Note: For this CHARTER EDtalk, we sat down with Michael LaRoche, Founder and Executive Director (ED), SALTech Charter High School. We wanted to learn what unique challenges he faces as the ED for a dropout-recovery high school for “at risk” or as he prefers to say “at promise” students. On the flip side, what are the greatest rewards in serving this economically disadvantaged—and underserved— student population. Read the transcript and/or listen to his inspiring story and perspective on both below.

Janet Johnson (JJ): Hello, and welcome to Charter EDTalks. My name is Janet Johnson, I am with Charter School Capital, and we’re honored today to have Michael LaRoche, who is the founder, CEO, and principal of SAL Tech Charter High School.
Michael LaRoche (ML): Thank you for having me, and all those labels are correct.
JJ: Thank you. It’s a mouthful. And Tricia Blum from Charter School Capital. It’s been a really great day, we’re at the national conference where we have an opportunity to speak with Charter leaders here and share with the rest of the charter school folks out there who weren’t able to attend. So welcome.
Tricia Blum (TB): Thank you.
ML: Thank you.

What makes Charter Schools Special?

TB: So Michael, we’re starting this conversation, which I know is going to be great, with a question. We’re doing a campaign called “We Love Charter Schools”, you know that — you have socks that say that. Can you please tell us in two sentences or less why you love charter schools?
ML: Charter schools, I believe offer an opportunity for most educators to be very innovative. No one likes to come into each and every day willing to be constantly told what to do. In the traditional school system, this is just a regular part of your day. In the charter land, as I like to call it, you really have a chance to be an innovator. You are in charge, it’s your school. You can decide what works and what doesn’t work and to me, that’s the ultimate challenge for an educator – or person really – and come to work each and every day. It’s just the best place to work.

About SALtech Charter High School

TB: I know about that. The next question I have for you is, what is the biggest challenge you face as you serve your student population? I thought maybe what you could tell us a little about SAL Tech Charter High School and then we can jump into that question.
“They are termed “at risk”, but we like to look at them as “at promise”, given the right situation, resources and caring staff, we help them get over the next hurdle.”
ML: I serve an underserved population, economically disadvantaged population and at-risk population. I serve those students that are not maybe in the traditional school for one reason or the other. Maybe a new immigrant to the country may have aged out of the traditional schools. And therefore, that’s a very challenging population to serve.
That’s the population that most traditional schools don’t want on their books because it affects their graduation rate and therefore is a huge challenge with helping such a population. They are termed “at risk”, but we like to look at them as “at promise”, given the right situation, resources and caring staff, we help them get over the next hurdle.

Overcoming their biggest challenges

ML: So, one of the challenges, the biggest challenges with that population is attendance. Attendance is huge because as a charter school you are looked at as a special assignment school by choice.
You are not a neighborhood school, students are not sent to you, students made a choice, along with their parents in basically deciding to attend your school.
As a result, there is no transportation provided for these students to come to school. This poses a real challenge—some of them have to sometimes take two buses. We give away bus passes, but even that doesn’t help all the time. So, attendance remains a major challenge.
One of the things we have been doing to sort of combat that challenge is really making the curriculum 24/7, so if they cannot make it to the school building they can at least continue to work using their cell phone, iPad, what have you. But attendance remains a major challenge for the at risk community.

The biggest rewards

TB: You just mentioned that attendance is one of the biggest challenges. What is one of the biggest rewards?
ML: One of the biggest rewards, of course, is seeing that you were able to make a positive difference in a student’s life, if not in a family. Sometimes these students are the first in their whole family to basically finish high school. That’s huge for the home.
So you are not only making a difference with the student that you are seeing, you are making a difference within that home. You are helping that student become a tax payer instead of being incarcerated or just to be dropped out of the system – you are maximizing ones potential.
All those things are very, very important as we look at a capitalist nation that we have where education plays such an important part in really helping us to be competitive as a nation. We don’t want to have to be constantly paying to support folks who don’t have the right education or aren’t prepared for the future. We want to be sure our workforce is well prepared, so I feel very, very positive and rewarded for being given this small part that I am contributing to our nation and future.
TB: I like that.
JJ: Me too.

On measuring academic performance

TB: I know. The next question goes to academic performance. Can you tell us a little bit about, it says, “What do you think about required academic performance measure currently used to evaluate alternative schools serving underserved students?” Now, I know in your situation, with your authorizer, it’s kind of been back and forth, right?
ML: Right
TB: Can you tell us a little bit about that and then maybe moving to more general?
ML: Absolutely. One of the things that you really have to fight for and make sure to see it’s within your contract is that as an alternative school, which SAL Tech is, is we deal with students who were unable, like I said earlier on, to make it in the traditional schools, so we are looked at as an alternative, dropout-recovery school. We are trying to get students to recover credits that may have gotten a D or an F in, recover enough credits so that they can graduate with their cohorts and therefore we are doing so at an accelerated pace.
Even though we are doing a super job, and have done a super job since 2003, the contract itself in measuring academic success in an alternative school is written by the district and the district, obviously in writing that contract, will not not write that contract to favor the market, the situation, as exists, and you have to be very cognizant of that fact and be willing to amend that contract so that you can keep your business, charter school in this sense, operational.
So, at the alternative school, it would be very crazy to say you want to compete with a traditional school by letter grade, A, B, C or D. Therefore, alternative schools are governed by an alternative performance measure (which is written by the Florida Department of Education) which basically asks that we are able to move a student through one grade level, in one year of schooling.
I think that’s reasonable, that’s what the traditional schools do. Move from nine to ten, ten to eleven, eleven to twelve. Or then if you have a student has spent three or even four years in those traditional schools and was unable to be successful in obtaining a high school diploma, why then should we be tasked with any percentage, or basically saying you weren’t able to complete your high school diploma at the same time as your cohorts or you should complete your high school diploma by a certain time.
No, you should be tasked with the very same thing that they are tasked with, one grade level with one year of schooling and therefore the high school diploma is icing on the cake. You have taken an at risk student to now basically having them obtain their high school diploma.
Of course, that’s always going to be a toss-up when your authorizer is the one who has authored the contract and you understand the situation that you are in. It is something those of us in charter land have to be constantly aware of—that we are basically working for our performance to be measured fairly. That’s what we are asking for.
JJ: Sounds like a man who’s had that experience.

What would you like us to know about “at-risk” students?

TB: I really like this question and I think it’s a tie in question, but what do you wish people knew about the students you serve? I think that’s a great question.
ML: It’s a wonderful question, because many a time, when you hear the word at-risk, a lot of folks basically say, I don’t want to have to deal with at-risk student; you conger up this image of what at-risk students look like and therefore you want to deal with students who are very talented, you know you have very little to do to motivate them, inspire. All that is good, and that’s what most educators wish for, but there’s another side of it and that is those students with great need.
You would think that as a district or any company, in recognizing that that’s the area that needs the most help and resources and that you will funnel the correct help and resources and especially to those who are only dealing with that population, groups such as SAL Tech. But, that’s not the case, unfortunately.
And as a result, how we’ve dealt with that population since 2003, now almost 15 years, one thing we do know for sure, is that they are very, very resilient. Stuff that you would think would ordinarily take down people, a regular student…my dad just got incarcerated, my brother just got shot, my mom is pregnant again with the fourth child and I don’t know who’s the father, I just basically found out that I am pregnant or I’m pregnant with my second child, you know, on and on.
Anything you can basically conger up with an at-risk population, and you are dealing with students who live in that environment and to have the resiliency to understand the importance of getting an education so that they can take themselves out of the environment that they are in, they are to be highly commended.
So they are not only resilient, but they are also very intelligent. A lot of us feel that you are born smart or wow this person is really smart or has high IQ, etc, etc… but theory tells us otherwise. You are not born smart. You can become smart.
So it is our job as educators to build a confidence within that group that is so at risk, a promise to let them know that they have the potential, they have the brains, they have the moxy, they have the smarts, they are very resilient and they can do just as well. It is not the start that we get, but it’s how we are going to finish, is the term that is often used.
It is the same thing with this group, they are the best, in my opinion, to work with because they are the ones that are sometimes the most hungry, the most humble, and sometimes the most appreciative of the fact that you have gone out of your way to help them, where they think everything else was lost. So, I enjoy my job tremendously.

school satisfaction surveyThe What, Why, and How-to for Designing a School Satisfaction Survey for your Charter School

Your charter school’s success depends on many things, but key among them is how satisfied your key stakeholders are with your school. The easiest way to understand this is to ask them! For example, here are a few vital questions a school satisfaction survey can answer: How satisfied are your parents? How satisfied is your staff?

What is their risk of defection? What parts of the school are they satisfied with and what parts do they find lacking?

Your students (and their families) are your ‘customers’ so keeping them satisfied with the quality of your school’s offerings is vital to maintaining – and ideally increasing – enrollment, and therefore important to your school’s financial wellbeing.

There are two ways to increase enrollment at your school: attracting new families or retaining more of your existing families. Schools spend a lot of time, money and effort in attracting new families, but retention is often somewhat considered an afterthought.

But, it is a lot easier to keep families than it is to attract new ones—and there is a significant cost benefit. Different sources will cite different costs, but the standard rule of thumb that I have found is that it generally costs five times more to attract a new customer than it is to retain one. This is one very good reason that understanding the true satisfaction levels of your ‘customers’ can be imperative to your school’s health and retention rates.

Many school leaders shape their perception of parental satisfaction by the interactions that they have with parents. But this is generally not representative of how your entire parental base feels, and often, it is skewed towards the very engaged, the often so-named “high maintenance” parents – or simply the loudest voices in the room.

But, parents are just one of your key stakeholders. Your staff forms the backbone of your school, so understanding how to keep them satisfied and motivated in their job also needs to be a critical part of any principal’s (or leadership team’s) goals for the year.

A simple school satisfaction survey, administered yearly to both your parents and staff, will give you a wealth of information and allow you to understand how the majority of your parents and staff feel about your school.

Here are the five key questions you should ask yourself when you are planning your school satisfaction surveys:

1. Should you conduct the survey on your own or should you pay to have this done?

The Do-it-Yourself Option:
There are several free online survey vehicles out there. You can use Survey Monkey, Survey Gizmo, or you can even create a survey using Google Forms. If you have the time and knowledge, you can pull together a decent survey.
But a DIY approach can have some noteworthy drawbacks:

  • Parents are often leery of being completely honest if they think that in some way their answers can be tied back to them or their child. Even though you tell them it is anonymous, they may not believe you. You run the risk of getting watered down feedback.
  • If you are doing this for staff – they will never be honest since they feel that this is not anonymous, and it will impact their job if they voice a negative opinion.
  • Writing good questions is an art as well as a science. There is a skill in crafting questions that can get at the underlying issues. You can probably get there eventually, but you might find that this is taking more time than you wanted to spend.
  • Analyzing survey results is another time-consuming task. Is this really where your time is best spent?

Professional Survey Service Options
Market research firms regularly conduct customer satisfaction surveys for their clients. The one caution I would make is to try to find a firm that does these for schools. There are often nuances in education that need to be considered when conducting these types of surveys.
Additionally, these organizations will be able to provide context and benchmarks from other schools similar to yours so you know if you are truly doing well or need to make some improvements.

Some options for survey firms:

2. How long should your survey be?

If this is your first time running a school satisfaction survey, there might be a tendency to ask too many questions. Schools often take the “kitchen-sink” approach in their surveys because, although some of those the answers may be interesting, they may not really be actionable or helpful for achieving your specific survey goals.

Survey Monkey recently published some interesting data about survey completion. They looked at surveys ranging from 1-30 questions from 100,000 users. This research uncovered some interesting data.
school satisfaction surveyThis chart shows that the higher the number of questions, the smaller amount of time people are thinking about the answer. Additionally, Survey Monkey found that the abandonment rate increased for longer surveys. Surveys that were longer than 7 – 8 minutes saw their completion rates drop by 5 – 20%.

3. What should you ask?

This will vary by school, but the most important question to ask is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). This is a simple question and is widely used across businesses to measure satisfaction. It is a simple question and states, “On a scale of 0 – 10, how likely are you to recommend (your school) to a friend or colleague”.

To gain your NPS, you break your respondents into three groups. Parents who scored you a 9 or 10 are your “promoters”. 7-8 are passives and 0 – 6 are “detractors”. To get your score, take the percentage of promoters, subtract the percentage of detractors and throw out the passives. Voila! You have your NPS score.

Understanding how your NPS score compares against other schools is a bit tricky. (Another potential reason to use an outside consultant), but Temkin Group publishes yearly statistics on industry NPS scores. You really want to approach the level of Amazon at an NPS score of 47 versus that of the cable companies which average around -11!

This NPS is a good standard question that you can use every year to track your progress on improvement.
Here are other topical questions that you may want to ask:

  • Opinion on overall academic quality
  • Use of technology in the classroom
  • How safe is the school
  • The effectiveness of differentiated instructional programs
  • Enrichment / after school programs
  • Communication programs
  • The overall trend of the school (getting better, staying the same, getting worse)
  • Quality of the cafeteria and food offerings

The last one may seem to be of low importance, but in the surveys that I have run, this is an important criterion for the younger (millennial) parents.
If you are also surveying your staff – you will want to include questions related to their overall job satisfaction:

  • Do they feel valued by the administrative team?
  • Do they feel that the administrative team supports their efforts in the classroom?
  • Do they feel that they have enough professional development opportunities?

I also generally recommend to clients that we include a number of “open-ended questions”. These are questions such as:

  • What is the one thing you would like to see improved at our school?
  • Are there additional things you would like the administration to know that weren’t covered in this survey?

Since these questions are qualitative in nature, you can’t track them through a simple metric, but they will give you a lot of very interesting insights into what your parents (and staff) are thinking

4. When should you conduct a school satisfaction survey?

Generally, you have three windows to run your surveys:

  • October – November
  • January – February
  • March – April – May

These avoid a lot of the holidays and you always want to give new parents a couple of months to familiarize themselves with your school before you survey them.

You should also consider running your satisfaction survey every year. It can be easy to fall into the habit of just doing a satisfaction survey as part of your reaccreditation process. However, running a survey once every 5 – 7 years only gives you a snapshot, not a trend.

Considering that every year, 15% of your families are new to your school, you’ll definitely want to run this every year to capture each incoming class and be able to map their satisfaction trends over time.

5. What should you do with the results?

Use the data for planning for improvements for next year, and to track how well you are hitting your satisfaction goals. Take them to your board of directors and share with your leadership team so that they have key insights into your school’s success—and an understanding of any areas that may need work.

Be very careful if you choose to not release the results of the school survey to your parent base. I always advocate to my clients that transparency on results is best, but only if you are also telling parents what your plan is to address their critical feedback.

If you choose not to release the results, don’t be surprised if parents don’t answer your next survey, or assume that the reason why you didn’t release the results is because they were bad.

I hope that this information helps you to understand the value of creating and implementing a school satisfaction survey and why it benefits your school to do one each and every year.

Nick LeRoy, MBA, is the president of Bright Minds Marketing and former Executive Director of the Indiana Charter School Board. Bright Minds Marketing provides enrollment and recruitment consulting to private, Catholic and charter schools. For information about how Bright Minds Marketing can help your school improve its’ student enrollment, send an email tonick@brightmindsmarketing.com or call them at 317-361-5255.

Since the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. 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 $1.6 billion in support of 600 charter schools that educate 800,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!

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U.S. Education

Is U.S. Education on the Wrong Track? One Study Says Yes

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published here, by The 74. The most intriguing finding from this study about how U.S. education affects industries was that 85 percent of business leaders surveyed said one or more market-driven reforms must take place: implement greater school autonomy (59 percent), replace underperforming schools (39 percent), and expand charter schools (34 percent). Just 15 percent of respondents said traditional school management models should remain intact.
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 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. Please read on to learn more.

Exclusive: New Survey Shows a Majority of Business Leaders Believe U.S. Education ‘on the Wrong Track,’ Many Fear Poorly Performing Schools Could Harm Their Industries

Source: Business Forward

Cities and towns looking to grow their economies are likely misdirecting their efforts if their priorities are not centered on education, a new national survey of business leaders suggests.
In canvassing 234 local business leaders on the state of their public schools and how they could be improved, Business Forward found that a majority believe that American K-12 schools are “on the wrong track” — and 1 in 4 are concerned that poorly performing schools will negatively impact their businesses.
“When considering relocating, good schools are a primary consideration for both companies and prospective employees,” P. Morgan of San Antonio, Texas, said in response to the survey.
The leaders surveyed represent a wide spectrum of industries, business sizes, and more than 40 U.S. states and territories. Two out of three also have children who either graduated from or are currently enrolled in public schools. Business Forward is a national nonprofit that works with local business leaders across the country for networking, programming, and advocacy.
“My children have graduated. The schools seem worse since then,” E. Karle of Lexington, Kentucky, said in the survey. “We need a strong commitment to education across the country or we will have trouble finding qualified employees. … Whatever else we must skimp on to save money, we must not skimp on our schools.”
Half of those executives surveyed said American schools are underfunded, and half of those business leaders were more concerned with poor students than their own. Many called for increasing funding for the state’s neediest schools as a means of closing the opportunity gap between rich and poor districts, reducing income inequality, and supplying integral talent to their businesses.

Source: Business Forward

This trepidation comes as the U.S. economy surges, readying itself to expand in the second half of this year at the fastest rate since the Great Recession. The rapid growth has allowed employers to continue to hire, driving the unemployment rate — sub-4 percent — toward its lowest level in 50 years.
But there’s a widening gap between the rising number of job openings and the number of workers with enough education and skill to fill them, which could debilitate economic growth in the long term, according to a paper released last week by President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Proposals in the House and Senate seek to allocate more federal funding toward workforce training in fiscal 2019 — albeit at lower levels than advocates have hoped.
Overall, 3 out of 4 business leaders surveyed expressed the need for one of three issues:

  • Greater accountability and autonomy for teachers and principals
  • Practical skills and technical training
  • Equitable and more funding for schools in poor communities

While there is support for greater accountability, the leaders surveyed expressed caution in handling schools like businesses. A number of respondents denounced reforms that create schools modeled like factories, treating students as “outputs” or “widgets.” Instead, they said, schools should act as service providers in which students are the “customers.”
To improve schools so they can provide skilled workers, 85 percent of business leaders surveyed said, one or more market-driven reforms must take place: implement greater school autonomy (59 percent), replace underperforming schools (39 percent), and expand charter schools (34 percent). Just 15 percent of respondents said traditional school management models should remain intact.
Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation provided support to Business Forward for this survey and provides support to The 74.

Since the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. 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 $1.6 billion in support of 600 charter schools that educate 800,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!

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Charter School AssociationsHow Charter School Associations Can Help Their Schools Succeed

Editor’s Note: For this CHARTER EDtalk, we were honored to be joined by Eileen Sigmund, the President, and CEO of the Arizona Charter School Association as she generously shares some of the things the Arizona Charter School Association is doing to ensure the high-performance of Arizona charter schools. And, with 70 percent of their charter students sitting in A or B rated charter schools, compared to 56 percent of their district peers, they must be doing something right.
As the voice of Arizona’s charter schools, the Arizona Charter Schools Association engages a diverse coalition of policymakers, school leaders and community members for a fair, transparent policy landscape that allows quality charter schools to flourish throughout Arizona.
They work hard to advocate and strengthen the autonomy, equity, and quality of Arizona’s diverse public charter schools and are driven by the belief that all Arizona students should have access to a high-quality public school.
Watch the video below or read on to hear how the AZ Charter School Association is achieving such outstanding results.

Janet Johnson (JJ): Hi, I’m Janet Johnson from Charter School Capital and we’re here In Austin, Texas for the National Conference for Charter Schools. We are lucky to be here today with Eileen Sigmund who is President and CEO of the Arizona Charter School Association, and Marci Phee from Charter School Capital as well. And today we’re going to be talking a little bit with Eileen about academic performance. Thanks for joining us.
Eileen Sigmund (ES): Happy to be here.
Marci Phee (MP): Thank you. So we’re doing a campaign called “We Love Charter Schools”. Can you tell us in two sentences or less why you love charter schools?
ES: Charter schools meet the unique needs of our children so they can academically thrive and flourish.
JJ: Beautiful, you’ve done that a few times.
ES: I’m a charter school parent.

Measuring Growth Rather Than Just Performance

MP: The state of Arizona recently altered the rating system for charter schools to emphasize improvement and growth of the students rather than just strict performance. Can you discuss the benefits of measuring growth over performance?
ES: So the benefits of growth are really in the K-8 sector. In 9- 12, there’s also the completion of courses. So there are differences as you look at the academic performance for A-F measurement. The benefit of growth is not saying kids need to come to kindergarten already ready, already verbal, already knowing how to hold a pencil, because many of our kids don’t. And so what growth does is it allows to show educator impact on that individual student as compared to their academic peers. And so the growth is really showing how are you moving a child forward to proficiency who may not be at proficiency, who may not know two plus two equals four but is grasping that one, two, three, four. So it’s trying to value a child where they start, and then where they’re going, instead of how ready and prepared they are at a proficiency level. Does that make sense?
MP: It does make sense. It sounds like it allows educators to meet the students where they are and create progress. The progress over the perfection of things.
ES: Correct, correct. And we use in growth, we use the Colorado growth model. The growth model has been used in other states and actually, the Charter Association was part of the federal grant back in 2007, 2008, and the Charter Association was the main catalyst in getting the growth model to Arizona and that growth model has been used consistently for the last decade, the same growth model. So it’s also something educators are aware of, educators have learned. So it was used in our A -F back when we started in 2011.

Using Data to Coach Staff

MP: That’s helpful, thank you. How can charter schools better develop and support their teaching staff to support this model that you just talked about?
ES: Sure, teachers are no different than any other profession, that coaching continuously, constantly. The use of coaching and the use of data. So the use of data to know exactly where your students start, measure again halfway through the year, see their progress, measure again right before they take the state test. And so it’s the coaching around the use of data and then figuring out the academic strengths and weaknesses of each individual child.

Achievement with Accountability

MP: In Arizona, the majority of charter school students are sitting in “quality seats.” Can you tell us a little bit about what that means?
ES: The 2017 letter grades came out, 2018 will be out shortly. The students that were measured were our traditional students. We didn’t measure our alternative students, our online students, or our small schools. So 70 percent of our charter students are sitting in A or B rated charter schools.
JJ: Wow. That’s very impressive.
ES: Right, that’s compared to 56 percent of their district peers.
JJ: Can you say that again?
ES: So 70 percent of our charter students on the 2017 letter grades are sitting in A or B rated charter schools, compared to 56 percent of their district peers. And the reason for this is that our charter schools, the A through F is the reason they’ll keep their doors open. All F rated charter schools have signed agreements that either they’ll improve their academic rating over the next three years, or if they get another F in the next three years, they will be closed.
JJ: Wow, that’s commitment.
ES: Right. And so there were eight F rated charter schools. Three were already closing or are in the process of closing. Five signed a consent agreement. And some may have transferred or surrendered, but those are the ones, the eight is the number I’m consistently stuck on.
MP: Well, and from my experience with schools that have consent agreements in any state, typically I’ve noticed that if they’re going to sign it, they have approval from the board that they are committed to making those changes.
ES: Correct.
MP: I think that’s a great tool for driving improvement.
ES: Correct. And we have a manager of a separate affiliated partner, it’s called the Center for Student Achievement, an LLC under our charter school association, and we actively do professional development with our schools. And we’ve seen schools go from D to A. So there’s commitment and there’s the great leader, the great teachers and then this coaching to move things forward. We’ve seen this improvement. So all of our students benefit.

AZ Charters Outperforming Traditional District Schools

JJ: So the association is a very active, active body in development, professional development, et cetera, et cetera.
ES: And data. Yes, yes. So when I came onboard at the end of the legislative session in 2007, I had some experience with the charter sector, but I’m mainly a litigator, lobbyist, journalist and charters are created to provide student achievement and provide the communities a choice. Improving student achievement is where we’ve spent the last decade to make sure the quality is there for families because it’s our statutory mandate and then choice is also there in all the communities.
So, the charter sector in Arizona is in every one of our 30 legislative districts. If charters were their own state, they would outperform almost every other state except Massachusetts, and our charter sector is bigger than Delaware, Rhode Island. So we are large. And finally, if you look at eighth-grade math, based on the 2017 national report card, our charter students performed first in the country on math results for eighth grade and second in the country for reading results for eighth grade. So we have quite a bit of quality bragging rights.
And then for the last three years that we’ve had a new test, it’s called AZ Merit, our charter students have outperformed the state average in every grade, in every subject for the last three years. So our goal was the improve the quality, working collaboratively with our leaders and our authorizer, we have absolutely delivered on those results. So it is something that Arizona is very proud of.
MP: It should be.
ES: And our leaders are to be thanked because the work they’ve done has been extraordinary. Them and our teachers. It’s amazing.

An Active and Experienced Association is Key

MP: Well, I’ve noticed in my experience with your association, you’re very integrated with the schools and a part of the school and part of the movement, non-negotiable kind of feels like you’re just there. So my experience with other associations is that the membership school has to sort of reach up and self-serve the benefits that are part of their membership. But with the Arizona association, you really push them out and become partners with the schools and I just think that that’s a huge benefit and that other associations could probably model after that.
ES: Well, thank you. We have a team of 20 and we understand how busy our leaders are. They’re there to educate their students. Every Friday, we do a consistent email communication. It comes out at 6:30 in the morning. It’s a summary. Then, as different issues come up, we’ll bring in legal expertise, we’ll do webinars, we actively reach out to our schools based on their letter grades to make sure that they have the training they need, they can customize it, and we try to bring in experts on our team.
We had one of our charter leaders who won the MLK Award, she’s won different awards, she started or turned around three different high-poverty charter high schools and had outstanding academic results. We brought her on as our Director of Innovation. For operations, we had somebody who opened seven schools and so we brought him on our team. We brought on the former head of accountability for the Department of Ed. She’s our Chief Academic Officer.
We really try to bring the expertise and deliver that out to our schools and make them aware of the benefits. We have a 90 percent membership. Well, it’s probably about 88 percent, so it’s almost 90 percent. So we really try to work with our schools.
Now, we’re about to take things to the next level as we build up even stronger our communications around advocacy, as we move forward to the next election, the next session, because whether we like it or not, charter schools and choice has been under attack and even though there’s huge parent demand, we need to proactively get out the message about the benefits of parents being able to choose the right fit for their child. And so that’s going to be a campaign we’re moving forward.
We actively work with the National Alliance, other states, vice chair of the State Leaders Council. So my goal is to strengthen charter school organizations because we’re still a nascent industry and the miss and detractors are starting to increase. So you really need to get out that positive message and I think this conference and the work that Charter School Capital does really helps to get out that positive message.

On Working with Charter School Capital

MP: Can you share a little bit about your experience working with Charter School Capital?
ES: Yes. So I actively brought in Charter School Capital into Arizona. Charter School Capital fills a need that our schools wanted because obtaining financing is difficult. The public markets and bond markets or banking markets won’t always provide the financing our schools will need to get through a difficult situation. So for example, one of my schools, one of my great leaders in Tucson worked with Charter School Capital to buy their building. And it was a really positive experience for our school leader in Tucson.
But even prior to that, I worked with Stuart [Ellis], I had seen the need that was filled, and it’s a unique need and our schools definitely need to make sure they have all financial options because just as our students are unique, so are the school models for creating … We have 550 school models. And as we move forward, all the school leaders are in different places and Charter School Capital can meet the needs of those leaders.
MP: We’re very grateful for Arizona and being able to serve the leaders and the students there and partner with your association.
JJ: And we’re honored to have you here today. Thank you so much for spending time with us. We really appreciate it.
ES: Happy to do it.

Since the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. 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 $1.6 billion in support of 600 charter schools that educate 800,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!

LEARN MORE