Mom asks about a recent CharterFolk post.
Is it true that California charter schools have added 50,000 students in the last three years, and district schools…
… she checks her notes …
… have lost 135,000?
That’s right, Mom.
Amazing.
I had stopped by my parents’ place between school visits. Just enough time for a coffee before the next stop.
Mom’s still pretty agile. Dad less so these days. Carrie helps him with the basics in life, including bringing him his second cup of coffee.
Where you headed next, Dad asks.
To a school called Global Village Academy.
Global Village, Carrie says. Oh, that is such an impressive place. They teach the kids different languages and cultures. Oh, I wish we’d gotten in the lottery.
Carrie described the place better than I could have.
I take the longer way, tracing the route our family drove countless times from our house further west to The Ranch, what my parents used to call the most affordable country club in Denver. A place a couple of educators could afford to join.
On the way, I pass several charter schools.
On 120th, just west of The Ranch, I pass a campus of The Academy of Charter Schools. I make a mental note. Have never visited that one. Need to do it next time.
I pass The Ranch and cross I-25. The first street on the other side is Grant. I take a left and head down to GVA’s parking lot.
If you had told me when we first joined The Ranch almost 50 years ago that the road we drove to it would one day be populated by something called charter schools, I would have had to ask:
What’s a charter school?
Their invention was still twenty years away.
But here I was.
Global Village Academies Collaborative Chief of Staff Nicole Wetzel …
… and Global Village Academy North Principal Chelsea Byrd …
… are waiting for me.
We head upstairs to an office where they tell me the GVA story.
Three campuses across the Denver metro area. Dual immersion schools offering multiple languages. This campus in Thornton teaches Russian, Chinese, and Spanish. Their two campuses down south swap out Russian for French.
We talk about the challenge of finding teachers these days. We talk about immersion models, the 90/10 model versus the 50/50 model. One of their schools uses one approach. The other two use another. Maintaining a common vision while still allowing schools room to make their own decisions.
We talk about authorizers, enrollment, and buildings. How much better it would be if GVA could work with a single authorizer who deeply understood them rather than multiple ones who only partly do. How much easier it would be if charter schools were fully funded for facilities.
For a decade they operated this Thornton campus out of a warehouse before moving into their current building. It is beautiful.
But already too small.
As we move in and out of classrooms offering instruction in different languages, Chelsea points out the creative use of space. Meeting rooms converted into pull-out spaces for special education. Small nooks at the bottom of stairwells now storing instructional materials.
We save advocacy for near the end. It’s something the whole organization clearly takes very seriously.
I thank Nicole for serving as Board Chair of the Colorado League …
… and for the role the organization has played in helping Colorado’s charter school movement grow to serve the second highest percentage of public school students in the country.
Then I share my parents’ story.
Thirty-three years in public education.
Noble work.
Mom was a teacher. Dad a maverick principal always getting himself into trouble. He did great work, but he was held back.
What might he have done if he had the opportunity to make his contribution within a charter school movement?
How many schools might there have been?
What would their pedagogy have been?
It is time to go.
Earlier in our conversation I had asked what might be my most insufferable question.
What would it take to create ten Global Village Academies in the next decade?
At the time, Chelsea had just said, “Oh heck no,” remembering all the heartache it took to get the current schools open.
But the conversation has shifted a bit.
Carrie’s story that her kids did not get a place in the lottery still echoes in the room.
She leans back in her chair and turns to Nicole.
You know, yesterday I was driving down such-and-such street. You know that empty building sitting there?
Would make an awesome GVA, wouldn’t it?
Sure would, Nicole says with a smile.
I thank them and we head for the front door, grabbing a picture as we go.
My next stop is with Lydia Hoffman …
… who has created an organization whose mission is to help grow as many great new charter schools in Colorado as possible.
Perfect.
On we go.