Good morning, CharterFolk.
Today we are honored to share with you a very special Contributor Column from Mike Huguelet, the Executive Director of the Iowa Coalition for Public Charter Schools.
We provide a bio for Mike below.
Mike spent most of his childhood in Coral Springs, Florida and finished his secondary education in the Chicagoland area. Mike earned his Bachelor’s degree and teaching licensure from the University of Iowa. You may have unknowingly seen Mike during his years at Iowa, as he performed as Herky the Hawk, the school mascot! He began his career in education as a middle school social studies teacher and coach in Minneapolis. He then moved back home to pursue his Master’s degree in School Counseling at Loyola University Chicago. While earning his Masters, Mike ran an educational non-profit that supported inner city students as they attended private schools around Chicago. Mike then joined the founding team member of Gary Comer College Prep, a public charter school, which is a 6-12th grade campus of Noble Schools. While serving at Comer for over a decade as a teacher, counselor, athletic director, and administrator, Mike was proud to help its students graduate from college at a rate 3 times higher than the national average for low-income students.
Most recently, Mike ran the School Counseling & Future Ready programs for Des Moines Public Schools. He lives in the Des Moines area with his wife and two daughters. He is proud to champion the public charter school movement and open high-performing schools across Iowa. Mike invites you to join the Iowa Coalition as we work to improve educational outcomes for our most precious citizens, our children.
My Mother’s Legacy: The Importance of Building Relationships One Person at a Time
Relationships Matter
In 2021, I stood aside my mother’s casket and greeted one of her former students. This man was 43 years old and had not seen my mother in 30 years, but he came to share a story that mattered to him. He wanted to explain that his special education teacher, had convinced him to run for student council president as an 8th grader. He said that despite the behavioral issues documented in his IEP and frequent trips to the principal’s office, Mrs. Huguelet saw his natural ability to lead others.
He reluctantly ran and won. 30 years later, he wanted her family to know that she believed in him more than he believed in himself and that he never forgot it.
It was heartwarming to hear, but not surprising. My mom’s superpower was making people feel like they mattered. That is the most important lesson she taught me and I see it in action everywhere the charter movement is flourishing. I’m proposing that Jed add that theme inside his recent diagram of North Star for the charter school movement:
Relationships Matter!
Rewind a bit.
In 2008, I was running the Visitation Scholarship Program (VSP) in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. The VSP was founded in 1989, predating the charter movement. Our mission was to provide scholarships and college prep programming to graduates of Visitation (K-8 school) to attend Catholic High Schools outside of the neighborhood.
My favorite VSP student, Ariel Johnson, now leads the DC Charter School Alliance!
Although I loved every minute of my time with the VSP, I had always dreamed of starting a new school. That spring I was recruited to join the founding team of Gary Comer College Prep, the 7th campus of the Noble Schools in Chicago.
That is where my charter journey began.
The Lack of Relationships Leads to Surrender
After working for Gary Comer for 11 years, we made a family move to Iowa and I began working for Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS). This was my first experience working in a large traditional public school district and I drastically overestimated my ability to create systems change. Leading the School Counseling Department, I tried to design programs and initiatives that targeted data points that impacted students’ lives and whose outcomes were mainly in our control. At that time, only 33% of DMPS seniors were completing FAFSAs prior to graduation. We surveyed all seniors and 65% them planned on pursuing some form of postsecondary education/training. We set a districtwide goal of 60% FAFSA completion for seniors, which was in line with their stated future plans. This goal also seemed realistic since we were hitting over 90% FAFSA completion annually at Noble. The team of 30 high school counselors designed a comprehensive plan to support students and families, then worked towards reaching that goal. At the end of the year, we had increased the overall district FAFSA completion rate to 45%. Most counselors and district administrators were ecstatic with the 12% increase.
Despite my pride for the counselors who put in many hours to move the needle for hundreds of kids, I could not believe the level of satisfaction and complacency. Many felt as if we had peaked and we could just click repeat in the future. Almost nobody asked how we could reach the hundreds of students that we missed. The missing ingredient was relationship. The system in DMPS did not provide counselors the time and space to develop meaningful relationships with the students in their caseloads. Over time, the counselors had collectively surrendered to the notion that there was no way for them to change the system in which they worked to create that space. To be clear, this phenomenon occurs in public charter schools and traditional districts alike. When we lose focus of the humanity in the work that we do, it allows us to settle for mediocrity. It helps establish the permission structure for us to do less and say, “Well we’re better than that school or district over there.” In my experience, the catalyst for innovation and the antidote to complacency in the charter movement has always been focusing on students as people with names, stories and dreams, as opposed to data points in a sea of students.
Time for a Change
Historically, the state of Iowa has boasted one of the best public-school systems in the country. I moved here from Chicago for the high-quality public schools that my daughters now attend. Unfortunately, the quality of Iowa’s traditional public school system has declined significantly over the past decade. In 2024, over 85% of the students in five of Iowa’s largest cities (Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Sioux City, Waterloo) were enrolled in public schools that were rated “Below Acceptable” on the state report card. The acceptance of systemic failure and the disconnect from the humans it impacted was too much for me. I knew I could not stay in DMPS forever. Then in the fall of 2021, my mom was shot and killed on the expressway coming home from a White Sox game.
Rival gang members were shooting at each other from two different cars and she was caught in the crossfire. All of this occurred only a little over a mile from Gary Comer College Prep. At that point I needed a new professional journey to keep my passion in education alive.
Mark Jacobs, the board chair of the Iowa Coalition, successfully advocated to pass the charter law in 2021.
Eventually he raised the seed money to start a state association and he called Andrew Broy at the Illinois Network of Charter Schools to ask if he knew anyone with charter experience in Iowa. Andrew did not, but he asked his then Chief of Staff if she did. Ariel Johnson, my favorite former student said, “I know one guy in Iowa and he knows charters. You should call him!”
Relationships matter.
Building a Charter Movement in a New State From the Ground Up
We launched the Iowa Coalition for Public Charter Schools as the state’s charter school association in July of 2023. In our first two years, we have doubled the number of public charter schools in the state and grown student enrollment by 4x! We currently have 6 new schools approved to launch in the fall of 2026 and hope to get all of these projects off the ground if awarded a CSP State Entity Grant this month.
In building a statewide charter movement in a state that is actually larger than New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in square mileage, I have leaned on the lesson that I learned from my mom and from Noble. I hopped in the 2017 Pacifica minivan and began building the Iowa Coalition one relationship at a time. I attended neighborhood association meetings, presented to chambers of commerce, collaborated with non-profit organizations, met with elected officials, and held community events across the state. I recruited CMOs to expand to Iowa by driving them around the Hawkeye state to meet people and learn about the communities they could serve. These relationships slowly paid off and helped facilitate the launch of 5 new schools, pass 3 new laws, and establish a $7 million Charter Start-up Fund.
It Takes a Charter Village
We have a long way to go in Iowa to replicate the incredible work being done in the charter movement nationwide. A huge amount of credit goes to the charter community and its willingness to teach the CSA basics to a guy in a state they have never visited. Appropriately thanking everyone would take up all 1,500 words here, but I will mention a few to illustrate the generosity and collaborative spirit of our charter community:
- Terry Ryan (BLUUM in Idaho) & Royce Van Tassell (Utah Public Charter School Association) – taught us about facilities policy and financing
- Tim Nicolette (Massachusetts Charter Public School Association) – taught us how to structure membership dues as a percentage of state revenue; we’re currently at roughly $25 per student
- Andrew Broy (Illinois Network of Charter Schools) – provided mentorship for six months
- Charlie Bufalino & Todd Ziebarth (National Alliance of Public Charter Schools) – continue to provide invaluable policy expertise and legislative advocacy assistance
That willingness to go the extra mile and the desire to build meaningful relationships is what attracts students and families to public charter schools. It is why staff choose to work in them. It is the secret sauce driving all high-performing schools.
Ultimately, we’re trying to build a charter movement in Iowa that is rooted in a powerful legacy. We want the foundation of the movement to be meaningful relationships. If you are an educator, CMO leader, funder, or charter supporter in any way, we have room for you here in the Iowa Coalition!