2021

2021 Year in Review

Good morning, CharterFolk. What a year it has been since I posted the 2020 Year in Review. Somehow against a backdrop of challenge in public education more severe than any of us have seen in our lifetimes, on top of CharterFolk finding a way to keep bringing it for kids and for charter school advocacy,

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25x25x25, Pandemic Depletion and the Charter School Advocacy Tax

Good morning, CharterFolk. I start out this morning confessing that I have been struggling with today’s post. I had a draft of it finished in the middle of last week, and I had planned to publish it and then move on to other topics with an additional post before the holidays.  But things kept coming

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Blew’s Blues and Recognizing that We are Not A Silver Bullet But We Are Silver – A New Article Reminds Us Why School District Reform is Elusive and Why Charter School Blowback has Intensified

Weekend’s Greetings, CharterFolk. A few quick things before we get to today’s post. Let’s get on to the post. ________________________________________ I’d like to start off returning to Jim Blew’s smart Contributor Column from last week. In it he lamented that the charter school movement may be more fragile than it’s ever been before. Another title

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CharterFolk Contributor Julio Vázquez – A Charter School Founder Welcomes His Great-Granddaughter to the School He Made: Why We Established Rochester’s First Community-Based Bilingual Charter School

Good afternoon, CharterFolk. Today we celebrate having the privilege to share with you a great Contributor Column from Julio Vázquez, Sr., the co-founder of Eugenio María de Hostos Charter School in Rochester, New York. I provide a brief bio for Julio below. Julio Vázquez Sr. retired as the Commissioner of Community Development of the city

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The “Sunrising” of Bloomberg Philanthropies on Charter Schools – 8 Things the Announcement Did Incredibly Well, and 3 Things We Need to Focus On Going Forward

Weekend’s Greetings, CharterFolk. I hope you are finding a chance to get a breath between busy weeks. I didn’t want to let Monday come around without commenting on the Bloomberg announcement, which I consider to be some of the most important news to have happened in charterland in the Biden era. But before I turn

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Impact, Course Correction, Accepting Conflict, and the Responsibility that Has Been Handed to Us All – What We Can Learn from the Sunsetting of the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund

Good afternoon, CharterFolk. Coming off the Thanksgiving week, I wanted to share a column that, by rights, I should have completed months ago. And it is one that I should be up front about my conflicts. The Fisher Family has been very supportive of organizations that I have worked for, and I personally start from

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CharterFolk X Vol 2.7 – Mike Chalupa, Showing How Kids and Communities are Better Served When We Create Schools “By Design”

Good morning, CharterFolk. This week we are excited to recognize Michael Chalupa, Executive Director of City Neighbors Foundation in Baltimore, Maryland, as CharterFolk Extraordinaire. City Neighbors is the story of a group of people who have been driven by a belief that public schools carefully created by intentional designs and supported by entire communities have

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