POLICY STATEMENT
LAKE WALES CHARTER SCHOOLS, INC.

I.  NO EXCUSES

The Lake Wales community has decided to take responsibility for its public education. A not-for-profit corporation known as Lake Wales Charter Schools, Inc. has been formed and was granted five charters from the Polk County School Board.

The charters set forth a basic exchange.  Plain and simple, the exchange is: autonomy for accountability.  On the autonomy side of the exchange we have received the authority for three years to control decisions concerning educational programs and the funding for education.  On the accountability side, we have agreed to operate the schools and be responsible for their financial stability and the performance of our students.

In the past, others controlled education in Lake Wales.  Education was considered inadequate.  Beginning July 1, 2004, Lake Wales Charter Schools, Inc. will be in control.  If educational offerings continue to be inadequate, there’s no one else to blame.  In short, we’ll have no excuses.

II.  PEOPLE BUSINESS

Public education, perhaps more than any endeavor, is a people business. The best schools are such because they have the best people, not because they have the best rules or procedures. The literature contains reports of the few schools that have excelled in spite of difficult environments.  It’s always – always – because of outstanding leadership.

A Board of Trustees will govern the Lakes Wales Charter Schools.  The Board’s most important responsibility will be to select an outstanding Superintendent. The Superintendent’s most important responsibility will be to see to it that outstanding principals lead the schools. The principals’ most important responsibility will be to see to it that students receive the benefits that come from being taught by outstanding teachers.  All the rules, programs, methods and procedures in the world are incapable of bailing out a school system inflicted with poor or mediocre teaching.

III.  EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

The best dollars are spent for leadership.  The Superintendent’s leadership is the most important, because it impacts the entire System and all schools.  A principal’s leadership is every bit as important to an individual school.

A. Superintendent

The Superintendent will be the Chief Executive Officer for the System and serve at the pleasure of the Board of Trustees.  The Superintendent will hire and replace principals with the approval of the Board.  The Superintendent must be a person who has the innate ability to inspire, motivate, help and assist the principals to be the best they can be.   A primary responsibility will be to obtain resources and establish means for assisting principals in their efforts to attract and retain outstanding teachers.

The Superintendent will be ultimately responsible for all operations at the System level.  These operations include: finance, budgets, arranging for board meetings, innovative educational thinking, vision, strategic planning, grant writing and fundraising, reports, compliance with law and policy, records, facilities, inventories, data base, school calendar, transportation, food service, insurance, health benefits, staff development, and duties as assigned by the Board of Trustees.  The Superintendent will represent and be the spokesperson for the System to governments and to the public at large.

B. Principals

The principals will be the Chief Executive Officers for the schools.  The principals will recruit, hire and replace teachers and school staff.  A principal’s primary responsibility will be to attract and retain outstanding teachers, and to inspire and motivate those teachers to be the best they can be for the benefit of students.  A principal will ultimately be responsible for all operations at the school level, and will be called upon to exercise as much responsibility and discretion as can be placed at the school level by the System.

C. Teachers

The whole purpose of the System is to put the most inspirational, motivational, and effective teacher in the classroom.  Teachers are in the position to make a huge difference in a young person’s life.  Not all teachers will thrive in a charter school environment. Charter schools seek those who look forward to the challenge of greater responsibility and discretion and don’t mind being held accountable for results.  We encourage teachers to confer with their principals as well as teachers from other charter schools to decide whether they want the challenges that come with charter schools.  Lake Wales Charter Schools will expend every effort to attract and retain the teachers who will thrive and enjoy the teaching environment created by the System’s different approach.

IV.  UNIVERSITY STANDARD

Our standard for performance will be the university standard – not the public school standard.  This is not an unfair standard to impose upon our employees, since most hold at least one degree from a four-year institution.  Virtually everyone in the System knows firsthand how universities do business.

The university standard is not a foreign concept.  K-12 programs at universities are in effect every school day.  The Colleges of Education at the University of Florida, Florida State University, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, and Florida Atlantic University operate K-12 schools on their campuses using the university standard for their success.

The university standard means that our written and spoken word must be of high quality.  Our communications must be accurate and understandable, free of any grammatical or spelling errors, properly organized and spaced and, in general, convey an educated and professional impression.  Our public appearances, communications, organizational meetings, and public events will be evaluated by others in formulating their judgments as to our competence.  Many will use that judgment and assessment as an indicator for determining the quality of education that we provide inside our schools.  The quality of our product is the best opportunity we have for enhancing our credibility and reputation with the public.

V.  BOARD OF TRUSTEES

The Bylaws give Board members the title of Trustees, not directors.  The choice was deliberate.  Trustees have a legally enforceable fiduciary duty to their beneficiaries.  In the Lake Wales Charter Schools, the beneficiaries are students. Everything the Board does should be designed to enhance the student experience.

The responsibilities of Board members are quite different from the responsibilities of the System’s educators.  Educators are responsible for curriculum and education.  The Trustees are responsible for setting policy, providing direction, and handling the business side of the enterprise.  The Trustees hold the Superintendent accountable for seeing to it that the System is properly operated and that the best possible educational leadership and teaching is in place for the benefit of students.  The Trustees are not in the business of telling educators how to educate students.

A. Handling the Money

The largest danger point on the business side concerns the handling of the System’s money.  Nothing can more effectively destroy the credibility and mission of the System than dishonesty with System funds.  Close behind dishonesty is incompetence, waste, and inefficiency resulting in misspent funds and dollars lost to the classroom.  Every effort must be made to hire a most able and competent Chief Financial Officer whose work ethic and integrity is unquestioned.  Even after the best Chief Financial Officer available is part of the enterprise, the Trustees must satisfy themselves that System funds are being utilized in the most effective manner possible.  The internal and external auditors will report directly to the Trustees, not to the Superintendent or Chief Financial Officer.  This is because ultimately, the buck does not stop with the Superintendent or the Chief Financial Officer. The buck stops with the Board of Trustees.

B. Fundraising

System funds are basically of two kinds: public funds and private funds.  Public funds from federal, state and local governments come from a complicated formula for generating Full Time Equivalent (FTE), the per student funding that serves to educate most public school students.  The reality is that Florida is a low tax state.  As long as the state’s present demographics remain, it will continue as a low tax state.  Current public funding is incapable of providing, by almost any standard, excellence in public education.

The margin of excellence is found in the extent to which private funds are made available to supplement public funds. The Trustees will have the responsibility for working with the Director of Development for obtaining grants and raising private funds in the community.  In most instances, the Trustees will be more effective as fundraisers in the community than will be the educators. The Trustees are in a position to approach community members as committed volunteers – receiving no compensation for their work on behalf of the schools.  Trustees can effectively call on their peers in the community to support and contribute to the System when they themselves have supported the System in a manner consistent with their means.

VI.  CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION

The System’s central staff will be small and efficient.  This will accomplish two purposes: 1) prompt and effective decision-making, and 2) more funding for the classroom.

Prompt and Effective Decision-Making.  One of the unfortunate tendencies of large school bureaucracies is the promotion of talented teachers out of the classroom to higher paying positions in central administration.  The more of these promotions, the greater the number of administrators.  The greater the number of administrators, the higher the degree of specialization.  Specialization increases the number of administrators who must interact with each other in order to make system-wide decisions.  Decisions are more difficult because specialization brings with it territorial fragmentation. These difficulties bring about more complexities and delays, requiring more meetings and interactions.  While the participants may think all these meetings are terribly important, the abundance of meetings serves to entangle higher paid administrators for greater periods of time.

By keeping the central administration small, each administrator can perform as an integrated thinker with better knowledge of the big picture.  Fully informed decisions can be made more efficiently among fewer administrators.  Administrators will be expected to act as generalists and should have the talent and skills to be able to communicate with the public about the overall mission and performance of the System.

More Funding for Classroom.  Large bureaucracies with many administrators absorb funds that could otherwise go to the classroom.  An efficient administration works to the direct benefit of students because less time and money is required for fewer administrators to make well-informed decisions.  This efficiency amounts to a transfer of funds from administration to instruction, and is every bit as good as an increase in overall spending.

VII.  THE RULE OF GOOD JUDGMENT

Most of the rules, reports and paperwork will be imposed from elsewhere by federal, state and local governments. There’s not much we can do about that reality.  All indications are that those requirements will increase in the future.  When required to do so, we will comply with the rules and generate the required paperwork in an accurate and timely fashion.  This means there are plenty of rules to deal with without adding more of our own.

Large bureaucracies spend a lot of time imposing uniformity upon employees, so the central decision makers will have the benefit of objective, apples-to-apples analysis.  Elaborate rules and regulations become a way of playing defense, rather than encouraging initiative.  Rules become recipes for performance that save the organization from the mistakes of those that would be incapable of doing the job on their own.  Some employees come to like the security of it:  “If you tell me in great detail how to do my job, and I do what you tell me, and I fail – then it’s your fault, not mine.”  In this way, mediocre employees are given a safety net.  The safety net promotes longevity, which perpetuates the mediocrity.  We will strive to operate differently.

We will operate based on one overriding rule: The Rule of Good Judgment.  We will avoid rigid and complex rules designed to cover every circumstance and will provide instead a series of Guidelines designed to help define and carry out the Rule of Good Judgment.  If we have the right educational leaders, they will be successful in their prime responsibility of hiring and retaining outstanding people.  We then will be blessed with those who a) understand and believe in the mission, b) want and are capable of accepting greater responsibility, c) can excel in an environment where the Rule of Good Judgment is basically the only rule around, and d) don’t mind being held accountable for results.

We have promised teachers that they will be responsible for less paperwork and reporting in our System, and that they will have more time to teach. We are going to keep that promise. While we will be pushing responsibility and discretion for education down the organization chart, we’ll be pushing reporting and paperwork requirements up the organization chart.  We will seek to create a technologically advanced central database that will enable the administrators to produce as much of the responses to federal, state and local governments as possible.  When there’s just no getting around it and responses must come from the classroom, we’ll attempt to obtain them from paraprofessionals.

VIII.  OVERCOMING THE FLORIDA EDUCATION DEFICIT

The Problem

Unlike other states, Florida does not have a tradition or culture that places a high value on public education.  Florida’s $5,691 per student expenditure ranks 40th among the 50 states. The average expenditure per student in all 50 states – whether warm weather, cold weather, big, small, rural, urban, populous – is $6,835.

Florida educators have only 83% of the average national expenditure to work with for the benefit of their students.  This means that the Florida Education Deficit is $1,144 per year per student, or 17% of the annual per student expenditure.  During a thirteen-year public school career, the total deficit comes to $13,728 for every student in Florida.  That is a significant sum.  The availability of that funding would make a huge difference in what could be done for each student.

If Lake Wales students are to have the same advantages as students in other states, if they are to successfully compete in the nation’s marketplace, they should have the same resources dedicated to their educations as are dedicated to the educations of their competition.  Hopefully the resources would be greater than average, but at the very least, they should be at the national average.

Educators are often satisfied to shift blame by railing at public officials for the Florida Education Deficit.  That’s a waste of time.  Our electorate’s value system is such that education does not enjoy the priority here that it does elsewhere.  We have a representative form of government.  The demographics of Florida’s electorate show no signs of changing.  If a courageous legislator called for Florida’s education funding to be brought up to national average, that legislator would, in all likelihood, soon be out of a job.  The trick is to adopt a policy that enables public schools to prevail in spite of the deficit.

A Policy for Solving the Problem

Lake Wales Charter Schools, Inc. has adopted a policy employing a three-step strategy designed to make up for the Florida Education Deficit: 1) A small and efficient administration resulting in the transfer of administrative dollars to instructional dollars, 2) Assurance that the charter schools are receiving all of the public funds to which they are entitled, and 3) Supplementation of public funding with private funding.  The first point is detailed in Section VII of this Policy Statement and will not be repeated here.  Each of the two remaining points contains specific steps.  They are as follows:

The Strategy

A. All Public Funding to Which Entitled

At 83%, the public funding is the larger part of the quest for funding equivalent to the national average.  The Trustees for the charter schools have a fiduciary obligation to students to make sure that all funds generated by them are in fact being received.  Florida law provides for charter school students to be funded “the same as students enrolled in other public schools in the District.”  This public funding comes from student-generated funds that are a function of 1) a proportionate allocation of 95% of the student-generated funds, and 2) services received in exchange for the remaining 5% of student-generated funds.

Proportionate Allocation (95%).  Florida law states that charter schools are to receive “their proportionate share” of all local, state, and federal funds generated by charter school students for their education.  The method of allocation breeds tension and distrust.  Public school funds are first sent to the District, and the District makes the allocation.  The folks making the judgment calls with regard to the allocations have a conflict of interest.  Amounts not paid to the charter schools benefit their employer – the District.  Charter schools insist that they are not receiving their proportionate share.  The District insists that the allocation is being done fairly, and feels accused by questions from the charter schools.  Both parties have been placed into an unhealthy cauldron by the Florida law.

In-Kind Services (5%).  The remaining 5% of the student-generated funds are for the purpose of purchasing in-kind services from the District.  The Florida charter school law gives only a general description of these services, stating that they are to “include contract management services, full-time equivalent and data reporting services, exceptional student education administration services, test administration services, processing of teacher certificate data services, and information services.”

Lack of specificity has worked to create additional tension and distrust.  Charter schools insist they are not receiving their money’s worth in services and the District insists it is providing far more in services than it is receiving in fees.  Once again, the Florida law places both parties in an unhealthy cauldron.

Because of the Florida Education Deficit, money is in short supply.  Constant arguing over the 95% proportionate allocation and the 5% in-kind services is debilitating.  It results in damaging very important relationships that are essential to fulfilling the mission both parties have to provide quality education in Polk County public schools.

We need to stop arguing and start solving the problem.  The 95% proportionate allocation can be resolved with full disclosure as to what the formulas are for proration.  After full disclosure and agreement on the formulas, the process should be mechanical.  If this can be achieved, pulse rates will subside.

The 5% in-kind services issue may not be as easy to resolve.  Nonetheless, a process should be put in place to define the statutorily intended services with precision.  Once these are established, the District should account for the services provided for the 5%, just as the charter schools account to the District for the funds received from the 95% proportionate allocation.  Such an accounting would demonstrate to the charter schools that they are receiving their money’s worth and that they have no grounds for complaint.

Whether these issues are ultimately resolved or not, there is no need for further unproductive argument.  Disputes that cannot be agreed upon should be submitted to the dispute resolution process contained in the charters that both parties have agreed to follow.  The advocacy can be handled with respect to both sides, and disputes resolved by objective third parties.  The District and the charter schools then adhere to these rulings, put all this tension in the past, and concentrate on the future.

B. Private Funding Supplement

Once the Board of Trustees has discharged its fiduciary duty and obtained the public funds to which its students are entitled, the charter schools will be in a position to make up for the 17% Florida Education Deficit by generating public and private grants and organizing successful fundraising efforts.  The importance the charter schools attached to the private funding supplement is demonstrated by the funding for a full-time Director of Development for this small school system.  The Director of Development is responsible for two areas: Grants and Fundraising.

Grants.  The charter schools will pursue both public and private grants.  Grants sought will be only those that further the mission.  The charter schools will not bend themselves out of shape in order to receive funds that happen to be available from a particular grant.  Grants must be consistent with previously stated goals and programs.

Fundraising.  Even though Lake Wales is not a wealthy community, it has demonstrated its willingness to financially support important projects that are consistent with community consensus.  The effort to substantially enhance public education comes about as a result of a comprehensive survey demonstrating the community’s strong consensus for improvement in public education.

Fundraising will involve both a broad-based “friendraising” campaign encouraging financial participation from a large number of community members and school personnel, and also a targeted fundraising effort to individuals and corporations with the capacity to make major gifts.

Friendraising.  The friendraising effort is a broad-based community membership program enabling each individual to join for a minimum of $10, in exchange for either a bumper sticker or a decal for a public display of loyalty and support.  This will be an annual membership program with renewals every year.  Proceeds will go to fund educational fieldtrips for students and will also cover the cost of promotional materials such as bumper strips, decals, coffee cups, mouse pads, and other morale building items.

Major Gifts.  A major gift program involves working with corporate community partners, private foundations, and individuals who have the capacity to fund and make possible specific projects to serve designated academic needs at the schools.  The larger contributors at the friendraising level will help identify potential donors at the major gift level.  It is essential to provide appropriate recognition of donors, and to provide periodic communication demonstrating that donated funds are being well managed and serving the intended purpose.

Public Relations.  The development office will also be the repository for written information about the charter schools that can be used as a resource for grant writing and public relations.  Public relations includes the System’s image and the way charter schools are represented to the public.  This includes promotional materials, graphic design, website, press releases, and the like.

IX.  COMPENSATION

A. Superintendent

The best dollars spent are for leadership. The Superintendent has the highest potential for being the one person who can have the most dramatic impact on the System as a whole. If the Superintendent is indeed the inspirational, motivational leader we seek, that person should be compensated accordingly. We believe in a value for value exchange. Someone who brings high value to the System should be rewarded accordingly.

B. Principals

The same guideline holds true for principals. The leadership impact of principals is essentially limited to one school rather than the whole System.  The Superintendent’s salary recommendations for principals will be based on results with little consideration for seniority or the relative compensation of others. The same value for value exchange will apply.  Principals will be evaluated first on their ability to retain the best teachers and next on their ability to inspire and motivate these teachers in order to bring about a high performing school for the benefit of students.

C. Teachers

The whole purpose of the System is to put the most inspirational, motivational, and effective teacher in the classroom.  The System will be responsible for providing classroom resources.  The combination of an outstanding teacher along with the right resources is designed to provide a high quality education for each student.  We look for teachers to be an example to students about the personal and psychological benefits of lifelong learning.

The cost savings from a small administration will be applied to the classroom.  The salaries of the teachers in the charter schools will always be at or above the salaries for District teachers.  In addition, there will be a bonus pool that will be allocated at the discretion of the principals.  We recognize that compensation comes in all forms.  We are looking for the kind of teachers who also place a value on a positive teaching environment.  We seek to provide compensation that, all things considered – salary, benefits, bonus, other outstanding teachers as colleagues, teaching environment, educational leadership – will be viewed by the outstanding teachers as superior to other opportunities.  Lake Wales Charter Schools will strive mightily to be in a strong competitive position for recruiting outstanding teachers – who are in short supply.

D. The Right Person for the Right Job

Charter schools are not for everyone.  They carry with them a method of operation that places more responsibility and discretion with an individual, who is given more freedom and fewer rules for performing tasks, but is held accountable for performance and results.  If a teacher or school staff member does not function well in this environment, then the principal should advise a change.  The replacement should be accomplished without any discredit to the individual, who may be more comfortable and productive in a more structured environment with less risk and more direction and security.  When the Lake Wales schools convert to charter status, any District teacher retains the right to a job with the District.  Thus, the changes do not result in the loss of a job, only a reassignment.

E. Evaluations – It’s Performance That Counts

Annual evaluations will impact salaries.  The Board’s evaluation of the Superintendent, the Superintendent’s evaluation of the principals, and the principals’ evaluations of their teachers, will be more subjective than typically found in most school systems. The innate ability to inspire and motivate others involves subjective qualities.  We will attempt to recognize and reward those qualities.

Other school systems rely on automatic, objective, mechanical factors for salary adjustments.  Salaries are determined, not on results, but on degrees obtained, years of service, automatic salary step schedules, and across the board raises.  Mediocre teachers can be paid much more than outstanding teachers, based solely on degrees obtained and many years of mediocre teaching.  Evaluations don’t result in a salary adjustment based on a subjective judgment of performance.  Since evaluators really don’t make judgments, they are taken off the spot.  The only way for an outstanding teacher to advance beyond the mediocre teacher is to leave students behind and become a higher paid administrator.  This puts the incentives in the wrong place: the evaluator doesn’t have to make a judgment, mediocre teaching is perpetuated, and outstanding teachers are encouraged to leave the classroom.  Students are the losers.

Since the whole purpose of our System is to put the most motivational, inspirational and effective teacher in the classroom for the benefit of students, we’ll create the opportunity for things to be done differently.  Our System will be one where the outstanding teacher can be recognized and rewarded.

The Trustees will evaluate the Superintendent on both objective and subjective criteria.  We will be true to our word and not tell the Superintendent and principals how to do their jobs, but we will hold them accountable for recruiting and retaining outstanding teachers for the classrooms.  In their efforts to do so, the leadership will be given the latitude to make subjective judgments about their personnel.   It will be clear that credentials, degrees, years of service and other objective criteria are not the end, but only a means by which to assure motivation, inspiration and effective teaching for the benefit of students.

Subjective evaluations are always open to the criticism that they were based, not upon merit and performance, but upon “politics” and “favoritism.”   Such criticism is to be expected, particularly from the ranks of the mediocre.  That’s the price we’ll have to pay for measuring and rewarding our people based on the intangibles of performance.  These assessments will be particularly difficult in our small town setting, where pressure from family and friends is more likely to arise.  Our Superintendent and our principals will have to have the confidence, courage and thick skins to withstand the complaints of politics and favoritism.

Ultimately, the buck stops with the Trustees.  As part of the Trustees’ job of producing a high quality education for students, it will occasionally be the responsibility of the Board to stand between the complainers and the leadership and take the heat for the subjective judgments that were necessary to create a high performing System.  The fiduciary duty of the Trustees extends to the students, and is not about job advancement or job preservation for adults.  The whole purpose is to create a System that will attract the best teachers for the benefit of students.  A demonstration that the System’s outstanding teachers are indeed recognized and rewarded will be one of the most effective ways of attracting even more outstanding teachers to the System.

The evaluations will be conducted annually.  Annual evaluations are necessary for determining burnout, loss of interest or other personal factors that may change from year to year. The Superintendent and principals are free to utilize management tools such as new responsibilities, reassignments and change of duties in order to stimulate someone with a new challenge.

X.  ALL STUDENTS, ALL SCHOOLS

The Lake Wales Charter Schools are tailor-made for the Lake Wales community.  The Lake Wales Chamber of Commerce commissioned a comprehensive survey of the community.  The survey identified a community consensus that 1) education had become the community’s Achilles heel, 2) the community should accept responsibility for the quality of its schools, 3) the solution should benefit all students and all schools – no elitist schools, 4) all students should have the basics – reading, writing and math – especially reading, and 5) the curriculum should be more practical and provide real world educational choices that are relevant to local families and the local economy. The Lake Wales Charter Schools were created in response to the community consensus.

A. All Students

Unlike some other communities, Lake Wales fully desegregated its schools more than a generation ago. Our community is now seeing the benefit of that occurrence.  Our schools have little or no racial tension.  We’re at the point where the overwhelming community consensus wants a local school System to benefit all students – regardless of background.

A Polk County School District study commissioned by the Charter School Steering Committee identified the students residing in the Lake Wales attendance zones at the beginning of the 2003-04 school year and showed which District schools those students were attending that year.  The study also showed where Lake Wales students attended school the previous year. A comparison of the two years helped to establish school migration patterns.

The study showed that far more Lake Wales students than expected had opted out of Lake Wales schools to attend out of town District schools – 834 students, or 17% of the total.  This served to split the community, weaken local schools, discredit local educators and resulted in a loss of community confidence in public education in Lake Wales.  One of the purposes of the Lake Wales Charter Schools is to create quality education for the community so that all students and their families will be able to go to their hometown schools without feeling the need to go elsewhere to get a better education.

While the number of opt-outs from local District schools was disheartening, it also presented a great opportunity.  As it turns out, there was a much larger pool of potential returnees than anyone previously estimated.  These students could be educated much more conveniently at home should they and their families perceive that the Lake Wales Charter Schools could provide a better education than was available elsewhere.

B. All Schools

The community also wanted all schools to benefit.  Lake Wales had been burned by out of town magnet and specialty schools created by the District that served to pull some of the better students and leadership families out of local schools in search of better educational opportunity.  These schools had been allocated more funding to create better schools at the expense of others schools – such as the District schools located in Lake Wales.  There was a strong consensus in the community against elitist schools.

XI.  THE VERY BEST AT HOME

Our student population reflects the demographics of Polk County – and, for that matter, the demographics of the state and nation as a whole.  Our diverse student population covers the full spectrum, from the privileged to the deprived.  The challenge is to create a System of small town community schools that meets each student at his or her level and provides the finest educational opportunity available – right here at home.

A. Experimentation

Large school bureaucracies headed by elected officials are hesitant to take risks.  The media thrives on controversy and those in elected office have little tolerance for the embarrassment associated with something that goes publicly wrong.  Public schools stand to benefit from what is learned in places where experiments can occur without having a direct, adverse political impact on school boards.  Charter schools are such places.  The charter boards have asked for, been given, and have accepted responsibility for their particular charter schools.  They have the ability to experiment.  Even a failed experiment adds to beneficial knowledge.  It’s as important to learn what doesn’t work as it is to learn what does work.

The Lake Wales Charter Schools have developed a procedure for surveying their constituency, determining consensus and acting on that consensus to tailor-make an educational System designed to suit the needs of an individual community.  So far the procedural part has been successful.  Time will tell if the implementation of the design results in increased educational achievement for students.  At present, Lake Wales is serving as a laboratory for the Polk County School District.  If we are successful, much of what is learned will be transferable and beneficial to the District.  Even if not successful, the District’s educators will have a better fix on what doesn’t work.

We will all benefit from success.  In order to succeed, Lake Wales will need help and support from its many partners, including the District.  Success will be measured in student achievement and the acceptance of the schools as evidenced by the ability to reverse the flow of opt-outs and attract their students back home.  Student achievement will come from the benefits of outstanding teachers, who will be providing an interesting and challenging curriculum designed to respond to the needs of the community.  The strategy concerning teachers has been discussed earlier.  A description of the curriculum follows.

B. Early Childhood Learning

The curriculum will feature an early childhood learning program that recognizes parents as the first and most important teachers.  The program involves as much parent training as student education.  The purpose is to be sure that a child entering the first grade is prepared and ready to learn. At the conclusion of the pre-kindergarten and kindergarten training and learning programs, an assessment is made as to whether the student is ready to advance to first grade. The retention point is kindergarten, where there is no shame or embarrassment.  It is not in the third grade after a failed FCAT, out in front of friends, neighbors and families.  In this program, students do not advance to first grade until they are prepared to handle first grade work, and to build on that work to advance through third grade and be in a position to pass the FCAT test.  This approach will result in much greater success and substantially fewer retentions at the third grade level.

C. Innovation — Bridge to College

The curriculum will begin at pre-kindergarten with the early childhood learning program and move continuously through elementary, middle, high school, and merge with community college offerings.  Lake Wales High School is partnering with Polk Community College in a collaboration that will be a fundamental shift from current thinking.  High school and community college will no longer be treated as separate Systems.  Instead, the partnership will handle the transition by creating a flexible learning pathway from tenth grade to admission to college credit courses.  The community college will begin its advisement and guidance in the tenth grade so that students will move smoothly through high school and on to four-year universities or community colleges without the need for remediation.  College-ready students will be enrolled in advanced placement and dual high school-college courses while still in high school.  The result will be a student body that is better prepared for colleges and universities.

D. Choice – Career Paths

Throughout school we will preach the inevitability of adulthood — the fact that the biological clock is ticking and each student will have no choice but to become an adult, along with all of adulthood’s responsibilities for self-support.  The whole curriculum is designed for the student to find the life pursuit that is most beneficial for that particular student.  The process occurs at the elementary, middle and high school levels.

Awareness.  Elementary students will be made aware of the different choices available in the future.  The curriculum about careers will be supplemented with in-school visits from career representatives and educational field trips designed to expose students at an early age to the choices they need to be considering.

Experimentation.  The curriculum in middle school will enable students to learn, visit, and experience various career paths, so they will be prepared to make intelligent choices when reaching high school.

Choice.  High school is where the choices are made. Each career path will contain a core curriculum that will enable a student to change career paths during the process.  Learning opportunities will include job shadowing, mentoring, skills training, internships, and part time work – all designed to give the student more exposure to particular careers and the ability to make the best possible choice. The Career Paths are:

• Health Services – Nursing, Medical, Dentistry, Veterinary, Pharmacy, Therapy, Rehabilitation, Medical Records, Wellness, Nutrition, Sports Medicine, Environmental Health, Biomedical Engineering, Research.

• Natural Resources and Agriscience – Agriculture, Agri-Business, Earth Science, Engineering, Fisheries, Forestry, Geophysics, Horticulture Management, Wildlife.

• Business, Management, Marketing and Technology — Business Ownership, Management, Accounting, Marketing, Sales, Tourism, Finance, Economics, Administrative Support, Information Systems.

• Human Services – Law Enforcement, Public Administration, Child and Family Services, Social Services, Religion, Economics, Political and Social Systems.

• Engineering/Manufacturing and Industrial Technology – Automotive Technology, Construction Trades, Drafting and Design, Electrical Occupations, Engineering, Machine Tool, Manufacturing Technology, Mechanics and Repairers, Plastics Mold Technology, Precision Production, Tool and Die Making, Welding.

• Arts and Communication – Film & Cinema Studies, Architecture, Advertising, Public Relations, Journalism, Creative Writing, Fine Arts, Foreign Languages, Graphic Design, Performing Arts.

E. Discipline

A behavior specialist will be added to each school’s faculty to counsel, assist with, or remove disruptive students from the classroom.  The classroom is a place for teachers who love to teach and students who want to learn.  In the past, parents were willing to be more accountable for the conduct of their students.  A local board will be able to reinstitute that concept for the benefit of the schools and all students.

F. Achievement

The charter school law is designed to improve student learning and academic achievement.  The charter law calls for accountability and creation of innovative measurement tools to document improvement of learning outcomes.  The schools will start with practical measurements that mean the most to the community’s families and their children’s futures.  These measurements include: increasing the attendance rate, improving performance on standardized tests, reducing the dropout rate, reducing suspensions, and increasing the high school graduation rate.  A main goal of the charter schools will be to increase the number of students who aspire to a college education, increase the number of prepared students who take advanced placement courses or earn college credits while in high school, and increase the percentage of students who complete high school prepared to begin standard college credit courses.  This will provide the community with a more capable workforce and will enhance the students’ income levels and their competitive positions in the labor market.

G. Strategy for Quality Education for Hometown Schools

Everybody benefits when the quality of the educational offering results in students being educated at their own schools.  Students strengthen friendships and family ties, spend less time in school buses, save the state and county transportation expense and enable those savings to go to the classroom for enhanced instruction. The strategy for hometown education includes the following:

• A commitment by the community of countless hours and substantial resources toward enhancing the quality of the educational offerings at the charter schools.

• A commitment by the charter schools to serve the needs of all students residing in each particular attendance zone.  The schools have taken advantage of §1002.33(10)(c) of the charter school law that allows a school to grant an enrollment preference to those students residing in the attendance zone for that particular school.  The schools will not market or recruit students from outside the zones.

• The schools ask that the District accurately and correctly represent to the public that each Lake Wales Charter School is the public school that has obligated itself to provide a public education for each student residing in the attendance zone for that particular school.  A significant step in this direction would be taken by continuing to show the attendance zone for each school on the District’s website in the “Zonefinder” section of the District’s website, along with an appropriate notation.

• The District and the charter schools should work together to provide incentives for Lake Wales students to attend the public charter schools for which those students have been zoned.  A successful collaboration in this area will save transportation dollars for the District while at the same time providing Lake Wales students with the benefits of a public education in their hometown.

XI.  CONCLUSION

Charter schools are not for the faint hearted.  The Lake Wales Charter Schools will only be successful if they have a full commitment in the form of talent and resources from the District, Board of Trustees, Superintendent, principals, educators, staff and the strong support of parents and the schools’ community partners.  So far the commitment has been exemplary.  Preparation and implementation are on schedule.  Time will tell, but thus far all signs point to success.

Rev. 9/20/04