Too Many Submissions to Keep Up With – Our Contributor Jubilee Starts With a “Letter to the Jeditor” from Mark Medema.

Good day, CharterFolk.

Well, this is a first for us.

A couple years back, some of you may remember that we had so many submissions of Contributor Columns that I temporarily doubled up to send two per week. But we’ve never had as many columns come in as we have in recent weeks, and I know the smart thought leadership they offer will be of interest to CharterFolk nationwide. So I’m going to declare a “Contributor Jubilee,” crowding out my own mid-week writing and sending several Contributor posts each week until we can come back to our regular cadence.

We start with a fun and smart one from Mark Medema, a submission he called a “Letter to the Jeditor,” which was in response to a post I wrote a few weeks back about our need to evolve our facilities advocacy in an era of declining enrollment and under-used facilities. Mark is the Co-Founder of FRED, the Financing and Real Estate Development initiative for charter schools.

Mark has written here before. It’s great to get his latest thoughts. I provide a bio below.

Mark Medema started as an infrastructure engineer and urban planner in Chicago. He quickly realized that cities needed more than physical infrastructure, they needed to tap all of their intellectual infrastructure to thrive, especially in financially distressed neighborhoods. After watching a ‘60 Minutes’ episode about a charter school on a VHS tape, he joined the fledgling CMO and made the mistake of asking “Where will we put all our schools?”. Having been told, “We dunno – go figure it out”, he’s still trying to figure it out twenty-some years later. He has worked with schools to help them grow, he has worked with non-profit lenders to help increase their supply of low-cost capital, and he has worked with policy groups to help untap public funding and subsidies for school facilities.

Before we turn to Mark’s column, I remind you all to get your votes in for our Brian’s Voice Awards now that we’ve identified our finalists. The numbers keep stacking up. It would be fun to get more than a thousand voters for the first time. Join the crowd!

Moving From One-Off Wins to a Coordinated National Strategy for Charter Facilities

Dear Jed,

Your recent piece on ‘Prop39 For All’ has perfectly captured how the times are changing for charter school facilities. This resonates with earlier approaches for other “For All” strategies including the PSF For All (Texas’ Permanent School Fund) rallying cry from years ago. To truly seize this moment, we urgently need an evolution in our advocacy approaches.

Years ago, the Walton Family Foundation changed the game by introducing the Building Equity Initiative (BEI) to pioneer private facility financing solutions. That resulted in new private financing models that are saving schools millions of dollars. Today, we face a different hurdle. We don’t just need private financing workarounds; we need a “BEI 2.0” focused squarely on public facility and financing solutions.

John F. Kennedy was close with his famous 17-word address, but he missed just one word. It should have said: “Ask not only what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” (He still gets a 95% correct score). Right now, we need our country to do this for our kids by unlocking the public dollars they are legally entitled to. And then we can do right for our country by unlocking the intellectual horsepower of our students.

Building on Momentum: State Wins and Existing Infrastructure

We aren’t starting from scratch. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has been working incredibly hard with the remaining charter-reluctant states, securing critical momentum and wins in states like Wyoming and Iowa. Furthermore, we have an immense foundation of knowledge and leadership already in place:

  • Decades of Research: Jim Griffin at Momentum Strategy and Research has spent over a decade studying these exact issues, writing volumes of indispensable facility research and policy for the National Alliance.
  • The Evolution of the Facility Center: The Charter School Facility Center at the National Alliance has successfully morphed into FRED (Financing and Real Estate Development), which is carrying the torch by producing research, publishing opinion pieces, and hosting collaborative FRED Conferences, FRED Talks, and regional FREDx’s where practitioners share best practices.
  • Local Champions: State champions are picking up the mantle across the country. Bluum has a suite of strategies in Idaho, The Mind Trust has created a new framework for facility ownership in Indianapolis, Opportunity 180 brought new financing models to Nevada, Florida tapped into the local tax base for charter funding, and Oklahoma had a moral and financial victory by lowering borrowing costs for charter schools this month.

Moving Beyond “One-Off” Efforts

While state-level advocacy is vital, too many of our current efforts remain isolated, “one-off” initiatives with little central coordination. For example, the Maryland Alliance of Public Charter Schools provided critical testimony to pursue an equitable per-pupil facility funding formula without the insights from the recent funding formula wins in Massachusetts and Illinois. To scale these lessons, we must bridge the gap between individual state fights and a unified national advocacy strategy. We have to learn these lessons from each other.

Picking a Strategy: Firing Filing Cabinets, Not Teachers

As CharterFolk highlighted, one of the massive, untapped solutions is unlocking underutilized district facilities. We often complain that getting charters into district buildings rarely happens, but we don’t have great data on this. FRED recently started highlighting consistent successes of charter schools securing district buildings. There seems to be a story at least once a week about this trend.

The economic and demographic shifts and resulting financial and enrollment pressures will soon force school districts to change their tune. They won’t do it out of altruism; they will do it out of sheer financial necessity. We thought this might start in 2022, but the ESSER funds came to the District’s rescue. Now that reality is squarely in front of us, a district’s choice comes down to firing a teacher orrelinquishing empty administrative or underutilized building space. They can no longer justify keeping empty buildings open by claiming they are storing files in them. We can take the high road and say that firing a filing cabinet is better than firing a teacher.

Access to district buildings isn’t the only strategy, although it may be the preferred alternative in many states. Other states may pursue:

  1. Per-Pupil Funding Formulas: Ensuring equitable, ongoing public dollars follow the students.
  2. State Revolving Loan Funds: Backed and capitalized by public money.
  3. District Bond Offerings: Replicating the success we saw in Kansas City last year, where charters successfully participated in district bond allocations.
  4. Credit Enhancements on Bonds: Capitalizing on major milestones like Oklahoma’s bond credit enhancement success this month.

Reframing the Narrative:

The word “advocacy” often turns off many supporters. We can shift our language. For those who are allergic to advocacy, we can reframe the conversation about unleashing public financing, much the way the Building Equity Initiative did with private financing. We don’t have to say this is traditional political advocacy; this is unlocking public financing.

Philanthropy and private investors have already proven they are willing to unlock private financing, as seen by the rise of state revolving loan funds. Now, we must collaborate on large-scale initiatives to unlock public funds to create permanent public financing mechanisms,

The Time for Collaboration is Now

The conversation is rapidly accelerating across the country:

The pieces of the puzzle are all on the table. It is officially time for BEI 2.0 to bring all these incredible players, researchers, financial institutions, and advocates together under a coordinated, collaborative banner to unlock public financing once and for all.