Charter School Commission Taking Shape

I’m taking a break today from discussing the ETS's Factors That Influence Learning to report on the May 28th meeting of the WA State Charter School Commission (WSCSC). For what it’s worth, I continue to be impressed with the commissioners. They are bright, articulate people, who seem genuinely determined to do they job well. Currently, they are concerned about their organizational documents and processes; ByLaws, visitation protocols, and collaboration with the State Board of Education (SBOE).

There were two items of discussion relating to the SBOE; recommendations to the board and areas of collaboration. The SBOE accepted two of the WSCSC’s recommendations; including requiring a letter of intent from organizations planning to apply & extending the decision deadline to Feb. 24th. A third recommendation on the fee schedule was rejected. Separate discussions with the SBOE related to the criteria the commission is looking to develop for applications, the public hearings on individual applications required by the initiative/law, making letters of intent public immediately as part of a transparency effort, reaching out to authorizers after the fact to establish ongoing contact, and the choice of wording to use in making information about the process public to make sure the laymen can understand it.

Don Shively of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation made a presentation on the background of the charter school movement, the questions to ask in order to best understand the individual proposals, and the Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) likely to show interest in Washington’s new charter schools market. According to Shively, the CMOs interesting in Washington are: Summit Public Schools, Rocketship Education, High Tech High, Green Dot Public Schools, Seed Foundation, Partnership to Uplift Communities (PUC Schools), Great Heart, IDEA Public Schools, AchieveFirst, and KIPP. He provided a lengthy description of KIPP and he was instrumental in the founding of ASPIRE, which apparently is not interested in Washington at this time. It’s interesting that this is the second time a presenter has pitched the KIPP system. Robin Lake did so in her presentation from CRPE.

Representatives of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers made a presentation and offered their help, which was accepted. During the discussion, a concern about the participation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in funding NACSA came up. It seems like a reasonable concern. The Gates Foundation funds CRPE, which reported last month, employs Don Shively, and helps fund NACSA. This will be an issue worth following.

The commission is searching for an executive director and has 13 applications so far. Their search committee will whittle down the apps to four and then select three to recommend to the commission, probably at the next meeting.