By Shawn Stelow Griffin, The Finance Project

The Network of Independent Charter Schools is at its heart, a project about connections. Leaders and teachers in traditional school systems or local education agencies benefit from meetings of district peers as well as consultation with other experts in fiscal, regulatory, and curricular issues. Wholly independent charter schools need to develop comparable relationships among their peers—a task that is often near the bottom of the to-do list for a busy school leader. From its conception, the Network of Independent Charter Schools has sought to provide these services through its website. The Network also helps to connect charter school leaders to vetted research and best practice libraries.

 Blogs are posted regularly on The Charter Notebook. The Network of Independent Charter Schools has attracted a diverse group of regular bloggers including the founder of an independent charter school in New York City, researchers, consultants with state and federal policy backgrounds, and experts in financing non-profit and public education and social service programs. Readers are invited to add to The Charter Notebook on the blogs and are free to engage with or question the writer’s perspective and hypothesis.

 The project’s partners felt strongly that the website should provide access to a free and confidential Help Desk for independent charter schools. Consider the Online Hotline for Independent Charter Schools your personal research assistant. The Online Hotline staff has over 25 years of experience in charter school authorization, charter school operations, and school leadership, as well as sustaining and financing of school and community initiatives and translating charter school finance and governance research into practice. The Online Hotline staff can be your “Consultants On-Call.”

Losing sleep over a curriculum question?—email us. Looking for data or information to support a proposal to your school trustees?—ask us! Wondering how to accurately estimate facilities costs? Not wanting to reinvent the wheel when surely someone else has already been through a difficult contracting process? That's what we are here for--to help make decision making, instruction and leadership at independent charter schools.

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The views expressed in Charter Notebook blogs represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association or the U.S. Department of Education.