Long Weekend Greetings, CharterFolk.
Trying to carve out a little time with family this weekend and next. So posts may be a bit shorter. I’m using the extra day to get this one out.
By now, most of you have seen that the San Francisco strike has ended.
CTA’s campaign to extract unaffordable compensation increases from financially teetering school districts continues to draw national attention.
As the photo attests, their professed aim is to “fully staff our schools.”
Other headlines tell a different story.
Sacramento, a few months ahead of San Francisco, is now moving on to the inevitable next step:
The de-staffing of our schools.
7% could be gone next year. And that’s just the classified portion of the layoffs. Certificated de-staffing is yet to come.
Next up for de-staffing is LAUSD.
This article says that LA’s enrollment has dropped by 3% in one year …
… but that’s a significant understatement.
That was the figure at the start of the school year.
Continued immigration enforcement has driven losses higher. By Thanksgiving, reports were 4%.
But word on the street is that the numbers have gone far south of that.
It’s a phenomenon playing out across the country.
Urban enrollment declines are beginning to rival – and in some places may surpass – pandemic-era losses.
Charter schools are canaries in the urban enrollment decline coal mines.
Reports of charter schools deciding to close at year’s end are becoming increasingly common. That’s because when charter schools are no longer economically viable, they close.
When district schools are no longer viable, status quo interests keep them open by siphoning money away from other schools, making education worse for all.
And they are doing this at the very moment employee groups are extracting plainly unsustainable agreements from districts on the brink of implosion.
The hollowing out of our schools may prove to be the biggest story of 2026.
Hollowed out of kids.
Of staff.
Of materials.
Of even marginally maintained buildings.
Of quality itself.
This happens on top of the disconnect that has been building for decades.
It sets up seismic change in public education in the United States, as profound as anything we have seen since Brown.
Since a Nation at Risk.
Or perhaps ever.
And that doesn’t even take into account what may be the most disruptive force we’ve ever seen.
AI.
This article is an interesting one. A Co-Founder of Anthropic, who could afford to send his kids anywhere, says what his kids can get through AI surpasses anything they can access at even the toniest private schools.
In a similar vein, this one says that, with AI making great instruction a commodity, country clubs are a threat to private schools.
Apparently many affluent parents believe AI-enabled learning supports their kids better than private schools costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And we think parents in urban settings whose kids attend woefully inadequate public schools are simply going to stay put when they can access what the elite have from the comfort of their own homes?
Of course, anyone claiming to know where this is all headed is not to be trusted.
But from a public policy perspective, one thing seems clear: we want regulatory landscapes that allow people offering better educational opportunity to shine.
That’s what makes the charter space a place of hope.
In Cobb County, Georgia, China Cardriche Clements is bringing AI-assisted instruction to the community where she grew up through Power Public Schools.
That is what shining looks like.
In the Bronx, Rebecca Goodsell at Strive Charter School plans to operate a school open 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
A stark contrast to hollowing out.
Schools kept full of kids and staff for 84 hours a week.
And this week at CharterFolk, we celebrated the contributions of Brian Diamante at the New Jersey Charter Public Schools Association.
I know the impact of Brian Diamante.
One person.
In 2019 the New Jersey association was on life support. I was asked to help.
I travelled the state talking to NJFolk. The one message I heard was: “whatever you do, don’t lose Brian Diamante. What he has done for me, what he has done for our school. If it weren’t for him, we might not be here.”
At the time, the association was down to one full time employee.
Him.
Brian Diamante.
And yet, nearly all of the state’s schools remained members, paying $12/student in membership dues.
It was the spine around which the association was able to build back.
Fortunately, they had the good sense to hire Harry Lee.
While maintaining the connective tissue that was Brian’s school support work, they made it their obsession to get great at state advocacy. They made extraordinary hires. They secured a major CSP grant. Members raised dues to $30 per student.
Today, the association is one of the strongest in the country.
Significant growth is underway.
They navigated a major re-regulation effort in the legislature successfully. Now, the charter community enjoys as constructive a relationship with the incoming Democratic governor as we could reasonably hope for.
It’s easy to forget the life-support moment.
But I don’t.
Nor do hundreds – maybe thousands – of CharterFolk across New Jersey.
Diamante, indeed.
I’ll end with one more.
Near the end of my time with Alan Bersin last week …
… he spoke about one of his favorite moments.
After it was announced he was leaving the superintendency, the school board still voted 5-0 to approve Gompers’ conversion to charter status.
Many deserve credit.
But no one more authored the creation of Gompers than another Brian.
Brian Bennett.
This is how I described him and his commitment to Gompers in that first CharterFolk post I wrote nearly six years ago:
Brian was as strong a warrior for kids and families and underserved communities as anyone I have ever known. He was also among the most passionately articulate people I had ever met, always able to use his amazing gift with words to advance the interests of kids and charter schools.
And so it was incredibly ironic and cruel that Brian contracted the form of ALS that goes after the voice first, and so for much of his final months he was unable to speak.
Our conversations near the end included him typing out the first letters of charter school names until I could recognize them and give him an update.
G-O-M …
Gompers? Brian, let me tell you the latest I know about Gompers.
What I could tell him then is the same thing I can report today.
CharterFolk, Gompers shines.
Just like so many in the charter school movement represent points of light amid a darkening landscape.
Our assertion here, of course, isn’t that CharterFolk are better people than PublicEducationFolk.
There are countless dedicated educators in district systems who cast their light across multitudes of youth.
No doubt.
What distinguishes us, though, is our context.
The conditions within which we have the chance to contribute and refine what we offer.
Pressure.
Heat.
Sustained over time.
And sustained heat does something remarkable.
It produces diamonds.
Folk who shine most brightly across the public education landscape.
Diamantes, indeed.