A proposal to the Louisiana Department of Education for six charter schools that will form
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- RISKS AND ASSOCIATED CONTINGENCY PLANS Past Scale Efforts
- Leadership
- Louisiana Teacher Reviews of this Proposal
Comparison to the past: We didn’t have these supports in place when we opened our first school, nor when we opened our three new schools in 2005. It was very much a new staff and we were learning as we went along. Today, many of our core staff are still with us from 2005 and we are much better for having gone through the fire and learned from it. We have added a great deal more qualified staff, too. Our plan to embed the fundamental features of our model into the schools we start is interrelated to our entire philosophy of scaling up our model. We are not ambiguous about what programs we are going to implement, nor are we ambiguous about the goals we expect to achieve. We believe in the programs we have selected and we will hire staff who are equally and demonstrably supportive of our programs and we will remain true to them, support them, and insist on their implementation. This is very different from eight years ago when we were still unsure of ourselves and were willing to provide more principal and teacher autonomy.
GEO Foundation has learned a great deal over the past ten years from operating one charter school in one city and then expanding to manage five charter schools in two states and three cities with three different authorizers. Mistakes: --starting too many schools at the same time—we went from one school to four in one year, with two of the new schools being in different cities and different states with two different authorizers. We also built three new buildings at the same time. Not good. We should have slowed down and started only one school per year. --expanding enrollment too quickly—we expanded enrollment at our initial school too quickly and essentially created a restart for the school. We should have started with more students in the first place. Waiting to double enrollment cost the school financially and impacted learning results. --not providing enough structure—we assumed teachers and principals “got it” when they applied to work in our charter and we failed to provide enough professional development and follow up. We should have demanded more compliance with our model, engaged professionals to help us find the right staff, and provided more professional development to our staff. Remedy: --we won’t start more than one school per year and we will limit our work with a new authorizer to one per year, if that. --we will start with an ample enrollment in our new schools to provide a reasonable budget and reduce the need for doubling enrollment in future years and prevent the need for a restart in achievement data. --we will provide solid structure and commitment to Core Knowledge, Edgenuity, PLTW, our early college program, and TAP. Each of these programs are non-negotiables as they provide excellent professional development support and we can fully monitor progress and hold people accountable and/or reward them for success. --we will provide training and support to our future principals and have created a “principal fellowship” in our existing schools for us to learn about the future principal and for them to learn about us and how we operate. Starting with this premise in mind, our ability to scale will be much easier. Threats: The greatest new threat to our success will be distance and trust. We don’t pretend to know Louisiana, much less Jefferson Parish. However, we have already met with two leaders in the Jefferson Parish School System, Jacob Landry, Chief Strategy Officer, and Karen Bucher, Executive Director of the Turnaround Network and TAP District Contact Person, and believe we can develop a trusting relationship. We met Karen at the National TAP conference in Washington, DC and have kept in touch with her, indeed she reviewed this proposal. She is already in agreement with our use of TAP and has indeed implemented it successfully in her schools. Leadership: We have not had any changes in our internal leadership in more than eight years. Kevin Teasley: Founder and president of GEO Foundation, Teasley has extensive experience in public policy advocacy and charter school startups and management. He has served for the Heritage Foundation, Reason Foundation, the Reagan Administration and on Capitol Hill. He is the founding president of American Education Reform Foundation (now known as the American Federation for Children) launched GEO Foundation in 1998 to advocate for school choice. He helped start one of Indiana’s first charter schools. Dana Johnson: GEO has had the pleasure of the services of Dana Johnson, GEO’s vice president, for more than eight years now. Dana is an attorney and MBA with a specialty in special education law. She oversees all legal, finance, business and special education issues for GEO Academies. Because of her leadership and abilities, we have clean audits, have no pending litigation, a budget surplus and a healthy reserve. Pegie Frazier: Former national curriculum director for KIPP National in San Francisco, Frazier serves as GEO’s Director of Special Education Services. Pegie has been with GEO for more than eight years, and assists with the hiring of all special education staff at each GEO Academy and monitors students and teacher progress throughout the year, making sure the schools are compliant and serving special education students appropriately. Brian Beck: Serves as GEO Academy’s technology director and has been with GEO for more than eight years, as well. Because of his knowledge and experience, we have a very robust technology system complete with disaster recovery systems and have achieved economies of scale that benefit the schools. Connie Pulliam: Serves as each GEO Academy’s HR Director and has been with GEO for nearly 14 years. Connie assists all GEO Academies in obtaining affordable health care, retirement plans, and keeping the schools compliant with HR rules and regulations as well as addressing unemployment issues as well as any and all claims. Leanne Koekenberg: Serves as GEO Academy’s Director of Instructional Technology to assist teachers with the implementation and use of technology in the classroom—not the hardware, but the software. Teachers need daily assistance and follow up support with using technology in the classroom with students. The blended learning model needs constant support and Leanne provides it. Dr. Percy Clark: Serves as mentor to principals at all GEO Academies. Dr. Clark is a former Superintendent of Lawrence Public Schools in Indianapolis and has been with GEO for four years. Jeff Botteron: The most recent addition to our team is Jeff Botteron, former director of Teacher Effectiveness for the Indiana Department of Education for Dr. Tony Bennett. While Jeff joined us in January, he has already made his mark on our schools. His title says it all—Director of Education Effectiveness—as he is tasked to work with the principals and the teachers to make sure our model is implemented and effective. He monitors educational progress regularly and works to correct things and/or improve things daily. Countermeasures: As stated before, GEO Foundation is a much different organization today than it was ten years ago. We have a great deal more experience and lessons learned under our belt today than we did ten years ago. We also have a healthy bank account. This is not to boast, but rather to say that we have both a belief and experience in what we are doing and the ability today to replicate success. In past years, we may have had a good idea, but weren’t able to fund it. We would have to wait until we actually raised the funds to do what we wanted. Today, we have the ideas AND the funds. We can turn on a dime. No waiting necessary. While we can move fast, it doesn’t mean we will. To minimize the possibility of failure, we will be thorough in our hiring process. We will take our time to find the right leader to start. We will also provide this leader with extensive supports and constant oversight and insist on implementation of our stated model. If for any reason we believe we have not found the right person and/or can’t find the right person to lead the development of the first GEO-Louisiana campus we won’t open the school in 2014-15. We will delay our opening by a year. It is better to delay the opening and open with the right leader than to move full speed ahead with the wrong leader. This is about serving students properly in the first place, not about growing GEO. BOARD CAPACITY GEO Foundation has a national board of directors and it has been stable for the life of GEO Foundation which started in 1998. However, we do not have any Louisiana representatives on our board. To start these schools, we propose to spend the next year searching for specific community leaders with relevant business, community, nonprofit, education, and volunteer organization experience to serve on the board of the first campus we open. We plan to access resources from the charter school association, New Schools New Orleans, local chambers and local educators. Our board members will serve as ambassadors for the schools, to monitor the budget and policies and to work in support of the school’s programs and growth over time. We will have a Louisiana-based board of directors in place six full months prior to the opening of the school. It will be our plan to have the same board members serve as the board of directors for both proposed campuses and additional campuses in years to come. We will plan to provide our board members various resources relevant to supporting our proposed charter schools. Specifically, they will receive copies of the book, “The Seven Outs,” by Brian Carpenter, which describes effective charter school board leadership. Our Louisiana school boards will also meet with our existing charter school board members and visit the school sites to see the reality of what we propose to do in Louisiana. We have a track record of building strong boards over distance and have assisted with board transitions. Our current schools have highly qualified board members. Our Pikes Peak Prep school in Colorado Springs is chaired by the CFO of the U.S. Olympics Committee and includes numerous bankers, real estate, and education leaders. The board has been stable for the past five years. We have two board members who have served for more than 5 years of the school’s eight year life, while most others started their tenure five years ago. Our 21st Century Charter School Board is the same board for Gary Middle College as the two schools share the same mission and building. The board is chaired by the former vice president of community affairs of the local power company and she has been with us from day one (9 years). We also have the former chief of staff for the City of Gary on our board (she is a founding board member, too), several lawyers, representatives of special education service providers and health care providers, too. Each of our school board have had to make tough decisions over the life of the schools. In Colorado, our school board had to decide if they wanted to switch from our Colorado Springs District 11 authorizer to the Colorado Charter School Institute. The board decided to make the switch, not because of any bad relationship with D11, but rather because CSI promised more support for Title One programs at the school. Nonetheless, this was a tough decision as it involved politics and an uncertain future for the school. We counseled the school board through the process and indeed we wrote the new charter application and the transition was successful. The school has receive a full five year renewal from CSI since. Our Gary school board demonstrated its toughness, too. In the early years, the board had to remove one of its founding members as he sought to engage in improper dealings with school funds. We counseled the school board appropriately, and the board was successful in removing the board member immediately. Again, this was tough, but necessary to do. Over the years, from time to time, it becomes necessary to remove/replace a principal. GEO Foundation provides the board of directors for each school the information necessary to make a proper decision on who to hire and if necessary, when it is time to remove/replace a principal. All of these efforts are done with one thing in mind—providing an excellent opportunity for students to learn. We intend to assist future GEO- Louisiana campus school board members with similar support.
To help us with this proposal, we invited several licensed Louisiana teachers to review our plans. The following four leaders have reviewed our proposal and endorse our plans: Karen Bucher Network Executive Director, Turnaround Network District TAP Contact Person Jefferson Parish Schools
Elizabeth Bryant Towe Network Support Specialist Turnaround Network Jefferson Parish Schools
Lynn Gallagher TAP Master Teacher Hazel Park-Hilda Knoff Elementary School Jefferson Parish Schools
Superintendent of Schools Recovery School District, Region #2 (Greater Baton Rouge) 1 The average combined median student growth rate for our three Indiana Schools from 2010-2012 in Math and English Language Arts was 61.98%, 60.75% and 55.5% respectively. A growth rate of 50 percent represents approximately one year of academic growth in one year’s time. It is important to note that only 2010 and 2011 growth data was included for Fall Creek and Fountain Square Academies. 2 In 2009, Fountain Square Academy was recognized by the Indiana Department of Education and Indianapolis Mayor’s Office as 8th highest levels of academic growth in the State of Indiana. In 2011, Pikes Peak Prep received the “Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award” for the demonstration of exceptional levels of student growth in writing and reading. 3 On the state accountability report card, 21st Century Charter School received a perfect score on measures of college and career readiness. 4 Growth analysis based on 2010-2012 NWEA Fall to Spring Map data. 5 Performance-based tasks include model lessons, analysis and review of student performance data, and written responses to question prompts. 6 GEO schools use a combination of NWEA, Acuity, and state provide growth and proficiency data to assess the impact our educators have on student growth and achievement. 7 The gap between the median student growth percentile achieved by our top and bottom tier teachers is in excess of 30 percentage points. 8 GEO is presently consulting with experts from Edgenuity on the development of lab-based rotational models. 9 Students in our blended learning classrooms are grouped according to multiple measures of performance, include NWEA RIT bands, Acuity test results, progress through the online curriculum, and locally created assessments. 10 The average combined median student growth rate for 21st Century Charter School @ Gary from 2010-2012 in Math and English Language Arts was 61.98%. During this same time period, Gary Public School students achieved an average median student growth percentile of 30.33%. 11 The combined school-wide proficiency score on ISTEP increased from 29% to 63%. Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2014 2014 -> For want of a nail 2014 -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 2014 -> Ihbb asian Championships 2014 middle school bowl Round 4 First Quarter 2014 -> Ihbb european Championships 2014 Bowl Round 4 First Quarter 2014 -> International History Bee and Bowl 2013-14 Asian Division Question Set Bowl Round Six 2014 -> United states patent and trademark office 2014 -> Coffs harbour eisteddfod vocal syllabus 2014 -> Listen News Programs Schedule pledge now 2014 -> Slow club announce third album complete surrender Download 93.62 Kb. Share with your friends:
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