What's Wrong With Not Knowing What You Don't Know?

The majority of charter school governing board members in Colorado are well-meaning parents who get involved in their child's education by serving on the charter school's governing board. The rest are community members who are giving of their time for altruistic reasons or simply to build their resume. Either group of people, while attempting to do their very best, often don't even know to look out for things they don't know about.

Take for example, a mother who serves as a Board President and the board decides to terminate a Principal. Soon her children are being cussed at on the playground and her children's classmates are saying mean things about her to her kids. On the surface it would be easy to try and defend the Board President's position with a strong rationale for why immediate removal of the Principal is the best thing for the entire school. But the legal liability of talking about personnel issues leaves the Board President without anything to say--to her children or her (former) friends who side with the Principal.

While drastic experiences like this can be a great learning opportunity, it's best to be able to reason through similar scenarios before they happen. This is what the Board President's Council is about. The next meeting is this Friday, Oct. 21st, 9 to 11:30 a.m. at the Colorado School District Self-Insurance Pool.

For any type of personnel issues the best response is no response. It's impossible for board members to explain their reasoning, which is exactly what upset parents push for. It's even more difficult when the upset parents are friends of the volunteer charter school board member. In fact, the board member's family often suffers from the thankless job of being a volunteer board member.

This potential conflict for parents is why many states have predominantly "professional boards" without any parental involvement or else only one or two parents on the board. But board members who aren't prepared for a personnel termination can easily get the charter school into trouble by talking about the issues for a termination.

There's a Board President's Handbook that every charter school Board President should keep handy for easy reference. It's a compilation of years of questions that have been posed by Board President's and ideas for how to address various scenarios.

Wondering how to cut off a disgruntled parent who takes up all of the Public Comment period at every meeting? Is the meeting getting heated and you don't know how to get the board to return to the issue at hand? Do you think your school is doing just fine, but then find out the school's School Performance Framework (SPF) is in the Priority Improvement category? These and many more practical resources are in the Board President's Handbook.

Whose Standards are they Anyway?

This week a group of charter school authorizers met for their regular quarterly meeting. These authorizers are the school district or Charter School Institute (CSI) staff who work with charter schools.

The authorizers group discussed the authorizer standards currently being considered by the State Board of Education as a result of a mandate in HB 10-1412, which created an advisory committee to make recommendation on these standards. In discussing the standards, the group identified what evidence would demonstrate that standard and then what was quality and what was not quality. Evidence oftentimes includes financial statements, charter contracts, accreditation documents, board policies and past actions. The philosophy for quality charter school authorizing will vary in each district. Further, there is quite a range among the 62 school districts with charter schools: Denver has 34, Jeffco 13, and CSI 19.

The discussion about charter school authorizer standards became very interesting when what was quality was compared to what was not quality. Many times there is a very fine line between being a good authorizer and allowing a charter school to operate autonomously versus micromanaging or simply being too "hands off." This dilemma is inherent in authorizers' daily discussions. It's easy to move the line when a charter school is experiencing difficulties and asks for additional assistance. However, the charter school philosophy is to let charter schools operate on their own and if they fall flat on their face, so be it. But the traditional public education mentality is that once a school is open, almost nothing should cause it to close.

Moreover, many authorizers are unsure their charter schools can actually operate successfully (in compliance and financially sound) without providing regular assurances to the authorizer. For example, some districts have a philosophy for regular monitoring that could be construed as being a mother hen and actually trying to control the charter school. Where is the healthy balance in that relationship? Especially when every authorizer-charter school relationship is unique?

That's why it's important to flesh out these authorizer standards to the point of what is quality and what is not quality. Regarding governance, should an authorizer require that they approve any changes made to the charter school board's bylaws? Would there ever be a situation where the school district board would prohibit a specific individual from serving on a charter school board? Should the authorizer approve charter school board policies before they are finally adopted? Each of these questions are in the "shades of gray" category between what is and isn't indicative of a quality charter school authorizer.

It's easy for authorizer to take the standards to a wholly different level -- too far! If a district takes a good thing too far, is it still a good thing? Or a bad thing? Is it even possible, in regard to the standards, to identify when a district crosses the line and has taken it too far?

Sometimes it is possible to distinguish that line. Authorizers should not be determining, or rejecting, who should be on a charter school governing board. But it's happened in Colorado several times. Charter school board bylaws should be in the charter school application and approved by the authorizer board and then it should be delineated in the charter school contract if making a change to those approved bylaws would be considered a material change and therefore requiring district approval. This can be handled either way, and is across the state's authorizers. Many districts require their charter school boards to submit new or revised board policies to the authorizer. Primarily this is done so that the district is cognizant of what the charter board is doing and can help ensure the charter board isn't doing something that's not aligned with federal or state laws or regulations.

Eventually, through enough discussion, a draft of these authorizer standards will be distributed. It's certain these standards will be modified over time and as more experience and lessons learned are gained to provide additional insight. In the meantime, the discussion among authorizers is, in itself, invaluable!

Glade Park Charter School Visit

Last Thursday I visited Glade Park Charter School for the first time. The school opened just two years ago, as a district-operated school, but then faced closure due to budget cuts. Community members and parents quickly wrote a charter school application and received approval from the Mesa County 51 Board of Education to operate as a charter school beginning this school year.

Glade Park sits atop the Colorado National Monument. The drive up to Glade Park is spectacular, to say the least. Glade Park has a community store and the charter school. The school's building is a modular unit with two classrooms.

The charter school has two teachers and a part-time administrator. The school uses a Project Based Learning model educate their 22 students in grades K-5.

Get Involved in School Board Elections

The odd numbered years is when Colorado residents have the opportunity to vote for their school district's board members. Throughout the state many candidates are running for school board. Now is the time to talk to them about their position on school choice and charter school issues. There are more than 170 charter schools operating in Colorado, which means many of these candidates have at least one charter school in their district.

For more information on how to get involved, check out the Colorado Charter Advocacy Network.

Friday is Constitution Day

September 16th is Constitution Day. This is the day when the federal government says every public school in the nation should teach about the U.S. Constitution. Several sites are offering suggestions for how to teach the Constitution.

State Board Begins Process to Adopt Charter School Rules

Next Wednesday, Sept. 14th at 10:30 the State Board of Education will hear a report on the state evaluation of online schools and the final report from the HB 10-1412 advisory committee on charter school authorizer and charter school standards. The presentation begins the process for the State Board to act on the 1412 recommendations.

The meeting is audio streamed and available here.

In October the board will consider the first draft of rules and HB 1412 mandates they must be adopted by January 15, 2012.

There will be a meeting at the Department of Education on Monday, Sept. 26th, 9:00 a.m. for anyone with comments or questions about the proposed rules.

Union Colony Asks for Another Charter

Union Colony Preparatory School in Greeley is asking for a new charter in a neighboring school district, the Thompson School District. After years of operating a secondary school in Greeley, the school wants to expand and open a new campus.



Pat Gilliam is a founder of Union Colony, which began when several teachers formed and asked the district to form a charter school. The school operated very closely with the district for quite some time and only gained more autonomy in the last few years. Previously the district referred to them as an "internal" charter school, but that changed during the school's last renewal.



Now a developer has committee five acres to a new school in the Loveland area (within the Thompson School District boundaries). The proposed school is for K-12 grades. This second campus would operate with a cooperative agreement with the first Union Colony school so that the two schools can share business services and other functions.