This week, we are profiling the extraordinary Shara Hegde, Chief Executive Officer of Alpha Public Schools in San José, California.
Shara Hegde was preparing to apply to law school when she realized something critically important: She didn’t want to be a lawyer.
But she was interested in education, so she joined Teach For America and taught elementary school in Miami. She had taken some education classes in college, so she had a line of sight into the world of education, but being at the front of a classroom, of course, was different. Her time teaching in Miami “catapulted” her interest in education reform.
“I wondered how a different type of system than our traditional district schools could potentially be more effective,” Shara said. And she sought to find that out.
Starting a charter school
As a graduate student, Shara took a class on charter schools. She was pulled in by “the ability to be responsive quickly to the data that you’re seeing, to the challenge that’s in front of you, without going through red tape and bureaucracy.”
“Here’s a need in front of me that my kids are showing and I can respond to that and not have to worry about making sure everybody’s happy, I can really prioritize the needs of the kids and their academics and be innovative in how I do that,” she said.
She landed a fellowship with BES, an organization that identifies and prepares leaders to transform education in their communities and deliver on the promise of excellent education for every child. The fellowship enabled her to found Cornerstone Academy, a charter school in East San José, in 2010.
Cornerstone produced positive results—including being named a California Distinguished School in 2014 and 2018, an honor bestowed on California public schools that “demonstrate exemplary achievements.”
To improve the school and make operations more efficient, Shara merged Cornerstone with the existing Alpha Public Schools, which was founded by families in East San José who wanted stronger academics and more support for their children. This grew the organization into four schools across grades TK-12. Alpha now serves 1,900 students and has an 89% high school graduation rate and an 80% college matriculation rate.
In 2023, Shara was honored as the California Charter Schools Association’s Hart Vision Equity and Innovation Leader of the Year.
Also in 2023, Alpha was highlighted as a “gap-buster” in the 2023 National Charter School Study from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). (The CREDO study defines “gap-busters” as schools or networks with overall average achievement above the state average and yearly academic growth that was as strong or stronger for Black or Hispanic students or low-income students or English Language Learners than their non-disadvantaged peers in the same school or network.)
‘Lock arms together’
Despite the successes at Cornerstone, Shara encountered opposition in 2019 from her local authorizer. This set off major alarm bells for her—and helped spur her affinity for advocacy.
“It can be tempting to put your head down and focus on your own school. I was that way for many years,” Shara said. “Then 2019 came along … and my authorizer tried to shut me down, despite having incredibly compelling data. If that can happen to me, when my data tells the world that it shouldn’t happen, it’s a wakeup call that collectively, we’re not doing something right.”
Cornerstone was ultimately approved on appeal, but the experience nudged—or, perhaps, shoved—Shara into making advocacy work a priority.
She felt like it was “time for everybody to put their heads up. Lock arms together. And say, ‘No, we’re actually going to stand for quality.’”
For Shara, charter school leaders absolutely must make advocacy a priority, including by leveraging media, allocating resources to personnel and creating short- and long-term plans each year.
“That means making it something you budget and plan for. You have to find the resources for advocacy. I think every leader needs to expect to devote time to that work and to collaborating with other leaders in that space,” she said. “I think that if we continue to put our heads down and splinter off and focus only on our own issues, we’re so much weaker.”
Supporting champions
In that spirit—and completely outside of her time as Alpha’s CEO—Shara launched a political action committee, raising money for thoughtful, reasonable local political candidates in Santa Clara County who carry the torch of making sure every child has access to an excellent education.
In this capacity, she’s garnering respect from elected officials and supporting champions of high-quality education for kids in Santa Clara County.
“Our opposition is so well organized, and they sense weakness very quickly. By not supporting the movement as a whole, we make it easier for them,” she said. She’s also making sure her efforts send a clear message: “Charter schools have a place here and parent choice has a place here.”