Good day, CharterFolk.
The stories of tragedy in Los Angeles abound.
When we went to press with my post on Thursday, I had heard that Odyssey Charter School in Altadena had burned, but no news accounts confirmed it. So I held out hope. Then over the weekend this story appeared at the Post.
The fires have burned school buildings, too, including Odyssey Charter School in Altadena, which Miguel Ordeñana’s children attend.
“The community has been devastated by the fire,” said Ordeñana, senior manager of community science at the Natural History Museum. “It’s been a challenge to carefully share that news with my children and help them work through their emotions. A lot of their friends lost their homes. And we don’t know the impact to school staff, like their teachers, but a lot of them live in that area as well and have lost their homes.”
I had my own personal confirmation on Thursday afternoon. Lauren O’Neill, former Executive Director of Odyssey, sent me an email confirming that Odyssey and Aveson Charter School had suffered devastating losses.
She also reported that Pasadena Rosebud Academy had burned. Rosebud Executive Director Shawn Brown, who also lost her house, was interviewed on ABC News.
She talked about how help from others really matters.
Thank goodness I am very blessed because I have a lot of people who are supporting me. The California Charter Schools Association has been instrumental in helping me navigate this situation. My staff has been amazing as well. We’ve already been on Zoom calls. We are strategizing, and really trying to see how we can support our students and our families and our staff members. We have a lot of students who have been heavily affected by this, and our staff members as well. So we really want to see how we can support them during this time of devastation.
The California Charter Schools Association has set up a fund to help charter school communities affected by the fires.
CharterFolk has made a contribution of $1,000, and, as we did for the schools in North Carolina affected by the hurricane, we ask CharterFolk readers to contribute as well.
I met Lauren for the first time when I was on a hike with my family in a remote section of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in Alaska. Wrangell is one of the largest, least visited National Parks in the country. We saw only one other group of hikers the entire day. As I stepped out of the trail to let her pass, she recognized me. After introductions, we perched ourselves on a boulder to talk about the problems she was having with her authorizer.
CharterFolk crossing paths at the extremity of experience, prompting immediate discussion about what to do next in support our schools and communities. It happens again, only this time with stakes so much higher. Bonnie Brimecombe, Principal of Odyssey’s South Campus in Altadena, posted the following on youtube.
Please do what you can, CharterFolk.
Plant Your Feet, Son! The Charter School Movement’s New Moment
I received several comments from readers about Derrell’s Contributor Column last week.
Pushing CharterFolk to “say it louder” clearly resonates at a time when many recognize we have little to be apologetic about given the scope of unfairness and ineffectiveness riddling so much of public education today. Last month, Andy Rotherham and I revisited his perceptive comment that so much of charter school advocacy is about wanting to sit with the cool kids in the cafeteria, and how that isn’t a strategy likely to prove successful for the long term.
It prompted me to share a story about about watching a soccer match in the UK last spring where a huge fan seated beside me bellowed repeatedly at a defender who was struggling:
“Damn it! Plant your feet, son!”
I told Andy the charter school movement’s path to greater impact requires that we leave behind “our cool kids in the cafeteria” mentality and begin to more firmly plant our feet.
Andy thought it a message worth sharing with CharterFolk.
Now Derrell has kicked off the year on a similar theme.
The time has come, CharterFolk.
Our movement needs to be more firmly grounded.
It’s an essential part of speaking more loudly so that our voices can be heard.
And it requires that each foot does its part.
The Alliance Plants its Foot with Improved Advocacy and Political Infrastructure
As to the first foot, it’s essential that we accelerate development of the advocacy and political infrastructure we need to be taken more seriously. In my view, that means more deeply anchoring our advocacy efforts to a web of affiliated 501c3/501c4 membership organizations that have sufficient resources and are representative enough to “say it loud” on behalf of the movement.
For too long, many of us CharterFolk have wanted it both ways.
We have known that we need greater political influence if we are going to be able to secure the advocacy wins that charter schools will need to increase our impact, but at the same time, many of us haven’t wanted to take the risk associated with getting involved in politics. Yes, sometimes you don’t win. Sometimes a candidate you actively tried to defeat prevails and you have to deal with the fact that you’re no longer in with the cool kids. But if we allow ourselves to be guided by such cafeteria fears, we’ll never get to the level of influence that defenders of the status quo have secured for themselves through decades of extensive political involvement.
It’s why I have been so pleased in recent weeks to see a little noticed, but very important shift in the national landscape.
You find it on the front page of the National Alliance’s website.
Have you noticed it, CharterFolk?
Right below the organization’s mission statement you find …
… confirmation that the National Alliance is building the presence of a 501c4 organization.
It’s not an “oh by the way” reference. It’s not some buried link at the bottom of the site. But it’s right up top where it belongs.
Furthermore, click on “Meet the National Alliance” and what do you find but the fact that the Alliance intends to take on this work in tighter partnership with state associations.
Creating more coherence for our advocacy structures is not rocket science.
But it is something we haven’t done for decades, and here Starlee is in her early months at the Alliance making sure the organization finally finds it footing.
Meanwhile, Indiana Sets the Other Foot With an Improved Policy Agenda
Once the first foot is firmly planted in support of improved advocacy infrastructure, the role of the other foot is to ground ourselves more forcefully in support of a bold policy agenda that identifies the North Star we are all aspiring toward.
Last week, in Indiana, we saw our world begin to advance such boldness.
It’s planting a foot in response to the policy question: “what is supposed to happen to school districts as charter schools continue to grow?”
As I reported this fall …
… the national charter school movement may have as much to learn from Indianapolis as any place in the country. With 60% of students now being served by charter schools, it’s perfectly natural for people to wonder what is supposed to happen to Indianapolis Public Schools as charter schools continue to grow.
For years, our movement has essentially been attempting to dodge the topic.
Now, in contrast, we are finally beginning to plant our feet.
And, while I wouldn’t say I love how the article characterizes our vision as seeking “to dissolve” public schools (what we clearly want is for school districts to “evolve” into something charter-like, not disintegrate into nothingness), the important thing, as Scott Bess, the new CEO of the Indianapolis association reports “is that we have gotten the conversation going.”
Sparking discussion on truly substantive matters can be scary. People often get all mad at you.
But when we plant our feet, we force the powers that be to confront realities they are otherwise avoiding.
And we get our vision out into the landscape such that our voice becomes heard.
It doesn’t happen by authoring an op-ed, or issuing a report, or hosting a symposium.
It happens when we attempt to advance a bold policy proposal. And when the inevitable pushback and controversy comes, our having planted our foot gives us the chance to draw the public’s attention to the values that motivate the charter school movement. In so doing, for the first time in a very long time, our story begins to register in the public realm, if not in fact to dominate that realm.
Derrell calls it “saying it loud.”
I call it “driving a narrative.”
Something our movement has struggled to do going back to the very beginning.
An Encouraging Beginning to 2025
For decades now, the charter school movement has needed strengthened advocacy capacity advancing a more compelling policy agenda.
We’re just barely into the new year, CharterFolk.
But it’s starting to look like 2025 will be the year when we finally learn to plant our feet.