Charter School Partners

An article in yesterday’s MinnPost.com reports on  Minneapolis School District’s efforts to create two new charter-like, self-governed schools. In the coming weeks, the Minneapolis school board could give formal approval  to move forward with the 2011 openings. In addition to the district, this new initiative, which was pushed by Ted Kolderie’s Education Evolving in last year’s legislative session,  has been strongly supported by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers.  To have the district and the local teachers union working together on such innovation  is a promising development in the district’s effort to close the achievement gap.

One school, a K-12 science program is run by Concept Schools, a highly successful non-profit charter management organization (CMO) headquartered in Chicago, which runs over a dozen such schools in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. Congrats to the district’s Office of New Schools who have courted them to come to Minneapolis.  To bring such a quality group to Minneapolis is really a huge development in our collective efforts to close one of the nation’s largest achievement gaps.  The other school is The (K-6) Pierre Bottineau French Immersion School, which would be run by the teachers of the school.

To paraphrase a young Obi Wan Kenobi, “We have a good feeling about this”.

Kudos to The Office of New Schools at the Minneapolis School District who have presented to the Minneapolis school board and external panels options to approve five new self-governed schools, two of which would be teacher-led, self-governed schools but remain a part of the district and three new charter schools which the district will authorize, or sponsor. The school board will address the issue next month.

Here is today’s Star Tribune article on the issue.

After decades of trying a variety of strategies to close the achievement gap in Minneapolis,  we believe this initiative could finally be the beginning of a successful new focus in creating and sustaining  high-performing, high-achieving public schools.

Our confidence is based on several factors and we’ll expand on this in the future.  Suffice it to say, we will be following  this development very closely.