Lisa DiGaudio - Founding Board Member, New Dawn Charter School, NYC

In my last blog entry on "Starting a Charter School," I talked about writing the letter of intent. The letter of intent for New Dawn Charter School (the school I am helping to found) was due January 19, 2011. Shortly thereafter (February 2) the full 20-page prospectus was due. As I mentioned last week, from over 80 founding groups, just 36 were asked to turn in full applications. We were lucky to be one of those 36, and then one of the 22 invited for an interview with the selection committee. This was a tremendous source of anxiety as each deadline came and went. For all of us, opening a school of our own was our chance to prove how much we know about effective teaching practices and how students learn.

The Prospectus is an abbreviated version of the full application (download a copy of New Dawn's Prospectus). It was required to be just 20 pages in length and outline the overall structure of the school. The first part, our mission statement, describes what it is we are looking to accomplish when students enter the building.  This is New Dawn’s mission:

 New Dawn Charter High School will provide over-aged and under-credited students 15 - 21 years of age living in Sunset Park, including those who are English Language Learners and those with special needs, the opportunity to return to school and obtain a high school diploma through a rigorous NYSED standards-based education program. Within the framework of the education program, three programs will be offered: 1) Interventions for those with fewer than 11 credits, and for those with more than 11 or more credits: 2) Internships in the community and 3) College enrollment.

The next sections describe each element of the school, from the instructional program to finances. It is important in this brief outline of the school that we share the team’s ability to run a school. In two separate places we wrote small blurbs about ourselves that demonstrated why we were a strong founding group as compared to other applicants. One of the most important things that we had going for us, besides the majority of our team being affiliated with JVL Wildcat Academy Charter School, was our training in the School Improvement Engine through the Partnership for Innovation and Compensation for Charter Schools (PICCS). This extensive, YEARS-long training has made the bulk of the founding team capable of guiding the development of Individual Learning Plans (ILP’s), staff development through Peer Review and Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) as well as using the TERC data analysis tools. These elements are all significant evidence of how as a team we are not only in tune to student needs, but also in tune to faculty needs.

Throughout the prospectus, we each took sections to write as a base for the lead applicant, Sara Asmussen. My strengths lie specifically in instructional programming, using advisories, the workshop model and differentiating instruction. I had been trained on how to implement Individual Learning Plans (ILP’s) in the classroom, and piloted their use with my sixth grade ELA class (and yielded a 98% passing rate on the ELA exam for 2009). Other team members took the sections on student recruitment, due to their familiarity with recruiting similar students for Wildcat Academy. Scheduling and increasing the number of students enrolled from year to year are also important elements of the prospectus. The reviewers need to see that we can amend a school schedule to address the needs of a continuously increasing student population.

A strong budget, which balances from year to year indicates to the reviewers that the founding group understands how the state budgets and federal funding formulas work. This means that the budget doesn’t rely solely on state released funds and grants and has the capacity to generate income to accommodate the needs of the building. This is a tricky piece often, and truly showcases the handicaps that charter school operate under. Public schools are given buildings. Charter schools, if they are lucky, can get approved in sharing space with a district school to avoid the rent payment, but often the shared space issue is acrimonious. Rents are a huge issue for many mom and pop schools. You’re looking at over a million dollars per year in market share rent (in New York City and other major metropolitan areas) plus all of the things that go with it--building maintenance, utilities, etc. Without funding from outside sources, getting a building right from the start independent of district space is next to impossible. Also, with the economy the way it is, loan agencies and banks are not willing to extend lines of credit to a school to get a building, furniture, etc, unless they have been operating in some cases as long as three years.

Writing the prospectus really forces you to take all of the big ideas that your team developed and show evidence that these ideas are going to work. Student and staff recruitment plans, strong budgeting over a five-year period (the life of the charter in the case of New Dawn's application) and a solid instructional plan for the students, complete with plans for differentiation, staff development and capacity building are all factors that evaluators review when moving on to the full application phase. Thankfully, after much nail biting, New Dawn was approved to move to the full application, followed by the capacity interview. Coming up in my next blog entry: Preparing for the big application, meeting the guidelines put out by the authorizer, and then defending your views to the review panel.

Download a copy of New Dawn's Prospectus now >>

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This blog post is part of the Charter Notebook, sponsored by the Network of Independent Charter Schools, a project of the Center for Educational Innovation - Public Education Association.

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.