Good day, CharterFolk.
I hope your week is off to a great start.
On Friday the CharterFolk Board of Directors met. I’d like to make this post a Community Update letting the readership know about important developments happening here at CharterFolk. News includes the following:
- 11 New Board Members Join CharterFolk’s National Board
- 12 Organizations Are Now Organizational Subscribers to CharterFolk
- A Great List of Contributor Columnists Will Be Publishing Soon
- A Partner 501c4 Organization to CharterFolk Is Now In Development
Let’s take them in order.
11 New Board Members Join CharterFolk’s National Board
The first news is that the CharterFolk Board approved 11 nationally recognized leaders coming onto the Board. Our new Board Members are:
Fatih Ay, CEO Harmony Public Schools
Jay Artis-Wright, Executive Director of the Freedom Coalition For Charter Schools
Starlee Coleman, CEO of the Texas Charter Schools Association
Jim Goenner, CEO National Charter Schools Institute
Kathleen Hermsmeyer, CEO Springs Charter Schools
Lydia Hoffman, Partner Charter School Growth Fund
Terry Ryan, CEO Bluum
Preston Smith, CEO Rocketship Public Schools
Chris Stewart, CEO of Brightbeam
Caprice Young, CEO Navigator Schools
Fernando Zulueta, President Academica
We thank our new Board Members for their willingness to serve and see their joining our board to be another encouraging sign that CharterFolk is on a great trajectory for becoming an asset of lasting value to the national charter school movement.
12 Organizations Are Now Organizational Subscribers to CharterFolk
Another piece of news is that we have had several additional organizations recently become Organizational Subscribers to CharterFolk. These are organizations that make a $5000/year contribution to CharterFolk allowing them to provide CharterFolk content to as many people within their organizational orbits as they would like. Organizational Subscribers now include:
- Austin Achieve Public Schools
- College Achieve
- Friendship Public Schools
- Harmony Public Schools
- Illinois Network of Charter Schools
- KIPP Texas
- The National Charter Schools Institute
- Navigator Public Schools
- Northeast Charter School Network
- Rocketship Public Schools
- Springs Charter Schools
- The Texas Charter Schools Association
We thank our Organizational Subscribers for their support and actively seek other organizations that might be willing to join them. If you are interested in becoming an Organizational Subscriber please contact Kerry Flanagan at kerry@charterfolk.org or myself at jed@charterfolk.org.
A Great List of Contributor Columnists Will Be Publishing Soon
As I have been alluding to recently, I will be away during the second half of September and all of October as Amy and I walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain for our 25th anniversary. During my absence, our plan for keeping up a steady stream of engaging content is to double up our Contributor Columns, with two per week coming out through early November. We have been greatly encouraged by the response we have had from prospective writers and we ask you all to be on the lookout for columns coming out in the coming months from the likes of (in no particular order):
- Naomi Shelton, CEO The National Charter Collaborative
- Hanna Skandera, CEO Daniels Fund
- Alex Johnston, President Building Impact Partners
- Matt Pahl, CEO Public Charter Schools of New Mexico
- Erin Studer, Executive Director CHIME Institute
- Kevin Mason, CEO Public Charter School Alliance of South Carolina
- Caprice Young, Navigator Public Schools
- Wanda Garcia, Executive Director of the Puerto Rico Charter Schools Association
- Rhonda Dillingham, CEO North Carolina Association of Public Charter Schools
- Mollie Mitchell, CEO K12 Search Group (with Volume 2 of “CharterFolk on the Move”)
- Anna Hall, CEO of the Northeast Charter Schools Network
- David Akdemir, Harmony Education Solutions
- Candie Mitchell-Price, Chief Communications Officer New Schools for Alabama
- Jim Blew, Co-Founder Defense of Freedom Institute
- Lydia Hoffman, Partner Charter School Growth Fund
- Sebastian Cognetta – Allegiance STEAM Academy – Thrive
- Joe Nathan and Khalique Rogers, Good Riddance Consulting
- Kathleen Hermsmeyer, Springs Charter Schools
- Derrell Bradford, President 50CAN (on the occasion of us achieving our 10,000th subscriber here at CharterFolk, which should be happening right around the holidays)
We thank all our upcoming Contributor Columnists and encourage anyone else with an idea for an article to contact either Kerry or me. We’re excited to see how much interest there is in publishing here at CharterFolk, and nothing would make us happier than to get even more voices out in front of CharterFolk.
A Partner 501c4 Organization to CharterFolk Is Now In Development
Finally today, I wanted to report that we have been having several discussions of late about the need for CharterFolk to have a tandem 501c4 organization that would be able to chime in on partisan matters. Long-time readers may remember that I wrote a column early last year …
… wherein I highlighted how inconsistent I was being given that I implore other advocacy organizations to become 501c3/501c4 tandem organizations, but then wasn’t doing the same here at CharterFolk. And I vowed that before long we would do something about it.
Well, we’ve come to that day due in great part to generosity coming from John Lemmo at Young, Minney and Corr, who has agreed to take on the formation of a tandem for CharterFolk as a pro bono project. On behalf of all of us here at CharterFolk, I would like to thank John and the Folk at YMC for their continued support of our efforts.
It’s that spirit of CharterFolk pitching in from all walks of life that is propelling CharterFolk on to ever higher levels of impact.
To all of you who are helping, I extend my deepest thanks.
We’re getting there.
But keep in mind.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
😉