Weekend greetings, CharterFolk,
Five years ago today, I sent out the first CharterFolk post.
We had about 600 readers then. Today, we’re about 20 times that.
That first post described how a promise to an ailing friend — a promise that his voice would forever be heard in the movement — grew into something broader: a commitment to ensure that the voices of thousands of CharterFolk shall be forever heard.
Later this week, we’ll announce the winners of the Brian’s Voice Awards. The three top vote-getters will each receive a $1,000 check from CharterFolk.
The resources aren’t meant for personal gain. They’re to fund dinners or some other gatherings where Folk may come together to discuss more deeply the issues that the writers have so compellingly brought to light.
Because that’s one of CharterFolk’s purposes — to surface ideas that bring us together, so that we can make better shared decisions for the future.
Only a couple days remain.
A Movement on the Move
Last week brought us the sixth edition of Mollie Mitchell’s CharterFolk on the Move.
If anything gives me hope about the future of the charter school movement, it’s the stunning new leaders we’re drawing to it.
Mollie’s posts capture the energy that NewFolk are bringing in great abundance.
It’s unmistakable proof, CharterFolk:
Our movement is definitely on the move.
Her writing always takes me back to an earlier moment — a personal one.
A couple decades ago, I was rushing to an ed reform gathering in downtown LA when I saw someone literally sprinting toward me on the sidewalk.
It was Mollie.
“Jed Wallace, Jed Wallace!” she yelled.
I thought I was in trouble.
“I bought your house!”
“What?”
“I bought your house! The one on Berkshire?”
She meant the first home my wife and I bought — an eleven-hundred-square-footer right in the flight path of the Santa Monica Airport. It was the only place two teachers in love could afford.
Mollie had bought it from the people we’d sold it to. A few days earlier, while reviewing the deed, she had seen my name. Thus, the sprint down the sidewalk.
That little house keeps on connecting us. Just last month, Mollie pinged me about “our house” being on the market again.
Just like our shared work keeps connecting us — our shared obsession to place great new leaders into advocacy roles.
In recent years, I’ve been fortunate to have tag-teamed with her on several successful searches, and I’m excited about our latest collaboration going on right now — the search for a great new leader for the Pennsylvania association.
Why CharterFolk Exists
In 2019, just after I left CCSA, Kevin Hall at Charter School Growth Fund — who I was pleased to interview a couple months ago — offered me a travel grant to visit as many states as possible so that I could assess whether our advocacy ecosystem was ready for the challenges ahead.
By the time Covid arrived, I’d visited nearly 30 states.
It was that series of trips, more than any other thing, that convinced me that something like CharterFolk was needed.
In state after state — old, new, red, blue — I found something unsettling:
A creeping ambivalence in the way we talked about ourselves.
A loss of confidence.
A fading sense that we were still on the right side of history.
Even more troubling was my sense that many states lacked the urgency, the awareness, and the infrastructure needed to support the advocacy our schools and students deserve.
And so, with the support of a great board and many others along the way, we created CharterFolk to serve as a new kind of gathering place — one where we would highlight again and again what it is that puts our schools on the side of kids and families, especially those who have been historically underserved, such that it is easier to keep sight of the fact that our entire movement is on the right side of history.
And, yes, one where we could relentlessly — some might even say insufferably — remind our people of the critical need to build advocacy organizations.
But not just any advocacy organizations.
Strong state associations.
Membership organizations.
Truly representative ones.
Entities whose ownership — like that little house by the airport — is shared over time by the very people who power our movement.
The “Let’s Go” Moment
Last week, I gathered with a dozen state association leaders, many of whom Mollie helped recruit — great new leaders from Georgia, Tennessee, Indiana, Idaho, Washington, Rhode Island, Iowa, Alabama, and Wisconsin — as well as more seasoned leaders from many other states.
It afforded us the chance to:
- take stock of the remarkable policy progress we have made in recent years
- reflect on the large number of organizations that are now evolving into the C3/C4 structures we have so long needed
- appreciate that school leaders are contributing membership dues to their associations at levels never seen before
- recognize that our funders are beginning to understand anew the unique potential that membership associations have
It’s a shift of mindset that is now settling across the country.
Here’s how Starlee put it in our recent CharterFolk Chat:
School leaders, who are an association’s most important constituents, and funders, are probably more aligned than they have ever been around the idea that there must be a strong, effective voice for the charter community focused only on advocacy and focused on the state capitol.
That has to be an essential principle that there is agreement and alignment around. That creates the conditions then for people who want to win for charters to come and take these jobs at state associations …
We are seeing what Noah in Missouri was able to pull off. He was willing to use the political power that the charter community has to push the district to give them money or we would defeat their bonds.
Like, are you kidding? That’s freaking awesome!
So we have to be way more willing. We have more political power than we act like we do …
We have to agree that we have it. We have to harness it. And then we have to be willing to use it …
I feel like I’m seeing this all over the country now — people coming into these jobs at state associations who are like:
“Let’s go!”
Shared Ownership of the Charter School Mansion
The deeper into this work I go, the more hopeful I become, because more of us are realizing we don’t truly own the homes we occupy.
We own them for a while, and then we pass them on to others who prepare them for an even bigger future.
That little eleven-hundred-footer Mollie and I used to own?
It’s had several additions over the years. It’s now twice the size it once was.
And if anything is contributing to an expanding advocacy footprint in the charter school movement, it’s our growing understanding that each of us must do our part.
Schools being members of their state associations really matters.
Schools providing higher membership dues really matters.
Schools contributing to collective action efforts really matters.
Each time we do, we embrace the NPR business model at the heart of advocacy strength.
All of us benefit, whether we pay or not.
But each of us does pay.
Not because of some transactional benefit to our schools in isolation.
But because of the collective benefit that comes to all of us when we contribute to something far bigger than ourselves.
The potential to transform public education in this country.
It’s what makes our house not just a house, but a mansion.
In the Charter School House …
This week, I had the privilege of attending the first graduation of Westlake Charter High School.
When my kids first attended there, and when I first served on the board, it was an elementary school only.
Call it an eleven-hundred-footer.
But parents kept asking for more. So we added a middle school. And for many years we worked to open a high school. Several times it seemed a hill too steep to climb. The politics were too complicated. The financial needs too high.
But Westlake never gave up because we kept hearing from parents that our community needed another option.
Last week, one of the speakers at the ceremony was Chigozie Igewegbe.
She shared that when she was in eighth grade, her mother had scanned the high school options in Sacramento and concluded that none were right for her daughter. The family planned to send Chigozie to boarding school in Ireland, until, at the last moment, they heard Westlake was opening a high school.
So Chigozie stayed.
She graduated last week, one of 111 students in Westlake’s inaugural class, nearly all of whom are headed to college. Chigozie is bound for USC.
Kids and families receiving options they otherwise wouldn’t have had.
Happening over and over in communities across our country.
It’s why I say, CharterFolk:
In the charter school house, there are many mansions.
A Movement on the Sidewalk
To all of you who keep supporting our many mansions …
Places like Westlake …
And the advocacy organizations that help our Westlakes grow …
I extend yet another thank you.
It has been an incredible first five years.
But I sense our first five won’t hold a candle to our next five.
Or the five after that.
Can you imagine the names we’ll read on our movement’s deed at that point?
Enough to keep us sprinting down sidewalks …
An entire movement on the move …
Calling one another’s names …
In celebration of our shared ownership …
Of a house wherein one of the most important stories of our country will unfold.
So, rather than concluding with my typical “on we go” signature …
Let me conclude tonight with Starlee’s:
CharterFolk …
Let’s go!