Early Monday morning, Spokane resident Brenda McDonald caught a flight, slightly delayed by the October fog, for an 8 o’clock meeting in Seattle. Until last summer, McDonald was a public-school principal, as were the two women she was coming to see, Kristina Bellamy-McClain and Maggie O’Sullivan. Then they all left their jobs and leapt into the state’s emerging charter-school scene.
Facilitating their jump was the Washington State Charter Schools Association, a Seattle-based group that formed last spring with $800,000 in start-up money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Created in response to the charter-school initiative that passed in November 2012, the association picked McDonald, Bellamy-McClain, and Sullivan as the first cohort of charter leaders it hopes to nurture. Each received a $100,000 stipend for a year of planning.
They’ve been meeting weekly in Seattle to go over ideas and consult with WSCSA staff who have had experience with charter schools around the country. The three have also traveled to San Francisco, New Orleans, and Denver to visit charter schools.
“What we saw are two different types of models,” McDonald says, taking a break with her other cohort members from their Monday meeting to talk with Seattle Weekly. “We tend to think of them as charter school 1.0 and 2.0.” The former, she says, emphasized college readiness, with a “lot of data-driven dialogue.” The latter added “soft skills,” like those needed for leadership. Now, McDonald continues, she and her peers are trying to create “3.0” charter schools, distinguished by their incorporation of online learning and a more individualized approach.
As her observations reflect, the state is coming late to charter schools: public schools funded by taxpayer dollars but
Initiative 1240, the fourth and last charter-school initiative, which allows for the creation of 40 charters over five years, only narrowly passed. So this has not been the most receptive climate for aspiring charter-school leaders.
Yet such leaders do exist, and are now showing their hands. On Tuesday, “letters of intent” from would-be charter founders were due to the newly formed state Charter Schools Commission. Full applications must be in by November 22.
By the end of Tuesday, 24 individuals and organizations had expressed interest, some declaring an intent to launch schools next fall and others the following fall. The Los Angeles–based Green Dot, one of the better-known charter organizations (unusual in that it boasts a unionized work force), submitted a letter indicating that it wants to start a middle school in Tacoma. Summit Public Schools, a Silicon Valley–based organization focusing on technology-heavy “blended learning,” registered its intent to start two schools, including one in Seattle.
Also submitting letters were a number of locals: an individual from Grays Harbor who envisions a military-style school; one in Spokane who plans to focus on highly capable students; yet another in Yakima who proposes a dual-language program.
McDonald plans to stay in Spokane with her charter school, in which she says students will take on eight-week internships or community projects intended to develop leadership skills. The Spokane school district is unique in that it has enthusiastically embraced charters. It surveyed families asking what kind of schools they would like to see; is about to launch a center that will coordinate charter schools with regular public schools in the district; and may have a common enrollment system for both kinds of schools, according to McDonald. It is also the only district in Washington allowed to authorize charter schools on its own; all other charters will have to go through the state.
The Seattle district has taken the opposite approach, having voted last year to oppose charter-school Initiative 1240. So perhaps it’s no surprise that neither Bellamy-McClain, the former principal of Seattle’s Emerson Elementary, nor O’Sullivan, a South Seattle resident, are eyeing Seattle for their schools. Bellamy-McClain intends to open her charter in Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood; O’Sullivan is scouting south King County locations.
Yet even in Seattle, charter aspirations flourish. Hannah Williams, a 30-year-old former teacher at Aki Kurose Middle School who just got a master’s in education from Harvard, says she’d like to start a charter school in a Pioneer Square warehouse. “I dream of what MOHAI looks like,” she says referring to the inventive open spaces of the rebuilt Museum of History and Industry.
Williams’ plan for an untraditional space matches her envisioned curriculum, which she says will not revolve around classes per se. Instead, students will pursue “deeper experiential learning opportunities” through individual projects, with their teachers acting as “coaches.” Every two to three weeks, they will pick a new theme to work on—say “power” or “equilibrium,” she says. While doing so, she continues, they might write blog posts or “make an episode for their YouTube channel.” As with the Charter Schools Association cohort, the Gates Foundation is aiding Williams’ aspirations with a $100,000 planning grant.
More indirectly, the Foundation is also playing a role in the decision by Seattle’s First Place to turn into a charter school. A small private school that serves homeless kids, First Place charges no tuition, making it possibly the only school of its kind in the country, according to emeritus board member and former legislator Dawn Mason.
Yet Mason says the cost of serving its students—around $25,000 per pupil—is unusually expensive because First Place offers free meals and social services in addition to classes. The school has survived with grants from a number of organizations, including the Gates Foundation and Microsoft.
When First Place becomes a charter school, however, it will get public funds. That fact was central to First Place’s decision to convert, according to Mason, who just finished six months of consulting for the school as it worked on its transition. Not only will this allow the school to expand (from 45 students this year to perhaps 75), but it will make First Place less reliant on grant dollars—something Mason says the school assumed the Gates Foundation and Microsoft would want, particularly given the strong support both have given to charter schools.
Not all those who want to start charters will necessarily get the chance. All applications must be approved by either the state Charter Commission or, in Spokane, the local district.
The commission has set a “very high bar,” says Jim Spady, the Dick’s Drive-In entrepreneur and longtime charter advocate. The application is extensive and requires documentation of all aspects of a school plan, including “a very capable team,” Spady notes. He says he’s nevertheless confident that a number of proposals will win the commission’s approval.
Winning broader approval in the state may be a dicier affair. But Bellamy-McClain, for one, is optimistic. “Once I’m able to prove that our model works,” she says, “I’ll be open to starting other schools.” E
nshapiro@seattleweekly.com
