Weekend greetings, CharterFolk.
One of the things I enjoyed most about the early days of CharterFolk was writing CharterFolk X Columns – posts celebrating the contributions being made by extraordinary Folk in CharterLand.
CharterFolk Extraordinaire 2020-21
For the first year and a half, in addition to the other posts we do here, we were able to get out a weekly column about school leaders …
… and teachers …
… and board members …
… and advocates …
… and other supporters …
… who are shining examples of what our movement is all about.
People who first, of course, are doing great things with kids within their respective organizations but who also reserve an additional increment of effort to support advocacy and other activities attesting to the fact that we’re all part of something far bigger than ourselves.
Last week, we had a chance to hear again from Sobeida Cruz from the Charter School of Educational Excellence in Yonkers, New York.
Sobeida is a part of an extraordinary team that we recognized in September of 2020.
And they have gone on to make even greater contributions within Charterland in recent years …
… just like so many other CharterFolk X.
… has gone on to found Seminar supporting hundreds of schools across the United States.
Pagee Cheung and Arthur Samuels …
… and the whole team at MESA Charter School in Brooklyn have gone on to become one of the few organizations approved to open a new campus in New York City.
And Margie Lopez-Waite …
… from Las Américas Aspiras Academy in Newark, Delaware has gone on to run for State Representative …
… and is out canvassing the weekend with Kendall Massett, the Executive Director of the Delaware Charter Schools Network …
… to name but a few CharterFolk X who continue forging on.
These examples and countless others like them demonstrate that CharterFolk truly are the heart of the charter school movement, and profiling their ongoing efforts must be a central part of what we do here at CharterFolk. But as my travel schedule and other work responsibilities ramped up after the pandemic, it became simply impossible for me to continue writing weekly CharterFolk X Columns in addition to generating and curating the other content we publish here. So I had to let it go, but I vowed that, should CharterFolk ever get to the size of community and volume of resources that would allow us to add CharterFolk X back into the mix, it would be the very first thing we do.
Well, I’m excited to say that the CharterFolk community has now grown to exceed 10,000 readers. And when our Board met last month, we determined that our fledgling little nonprofit has been able to enlist the support of enough organizational subscribers, individual subscribers and donors that we have the resources needed to resume CharterFolk X posts.
The team at Larson Communications will be helping us generate this content. It was natural we would turn to Larson given that Gary and I have worked together for decades, and I know that he and his team bring the same movement-orientation to the work that everyone here at CharterFolk does.
Our first resumed CharterFolk X post will go out later this week. So be on the lookout for it!
Meanwhile, over the next few weeks, you will see us settle into a new cadence for sharing CharterFolk content generally.
We will start each week with a Contributor Column like Colleston’s great one this week …
… featuring a broad array of voices stimulating new thinking about the charter school movement.
I will continue cranking out a couple posts per week, a shorter one mid-week and my typical “New Yorker” length articles on the weekend.
Three times a month, we will wrap up weeks sharing good news being generated by CharterFolk X, and in the final week of the month, Andy and I will release a new WonkyFolk podcast sharing thoughts about the national landscape.
For anyone wanting to pitch in, we would love to have your support. If you have an idea for a Contributor Column, or if you would like to suggest someone to be profiled in an upcoming CharterFolk X post, please email me directly at jed@charterfolk.org. For individuals wanting to support our work, you can always sign up for one of our subscription options. And for Folk who might want their organization to become an organizational subscriber, please ping either myself or my main co-conspirator here, Daniel Assisi from Copernicus Solutions. He can be reached at daniel@charterfolk.org.
To all who have helped get CharterFolk off the ground, I extend again my deepest thanks.
It’s been a great first four years, but as the beginning of our fifth attests, we’re just getting started.
And we’re delighted to have you along for the ride.
On we go.