Resources
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Overview: School Planning and Startup
Category: School Planning and Startup
The U.S. has witnessed tremendous growth in charter schools, with over a million students being served in over 4,600 charter schools across the country. Charter schools serve a diverse array of students with education programs that highly vary in focus, delivery, and design. Yet despite the growth of charter schools, planning, opening, and operating a charter school remains a tremendous challenge. Successful charter school developers...
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Accountability and Renewal Overview
Category: Accountability and Renewal
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Authorizing and Oversight Overview
Category: Authorizing and Oversight
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Facilities Overview
Category: Facilities
One of the biggest ongoing obstacles for charter schools is acquiring an affordable facility. While there are a number of programs that can help on this front, charter schools typically need to pursue a variety of facilities strategies over the long-term in order to locate in a building that meets their needs. SB 740 One of the more successful charter school facilities programs was authorized by Senate...
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Proposition 39 Facilities Reminder
Category: Facilities
by Eric Premack, Charter Schools Development Center. Posted on 02/26/2010 Charter schools that are seeking facilities from school districts through the "Prop 39" facilities process need to respond to school districts' preliminary facilities proposals by March 1st. Background Education Code section 47614 (et. sec.), which was promulgated by Proposition 39 in 2000 ("Prop 39"), generally requires school districts to provide "rent free" facilities to charter schools. Extensive and controversial...
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No, You're Not Done Yet: Proposition 39 Next Steps
Category: Facilities
by Miles Denniston, Charter Schools Development Center. Originally published in the Fall 2008 edition of Charter Currents. Introduction Proposition 39 is a statewide proposition approved by voters in 2000 that generally requires school districts to provide charter schools with facilities. Due to new regulations that are now in effect, the process and timeline for requesting such facilities have substantially changed. For both operating charter schools and for...
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Finance Overview
Category: Finance
California's charter schools are funded much like other non-charter California public schools, but generally at lower rates. They receive funding from a mix of local property taxes, state education aid programs, the California Lottery, federal education aid programs, fundraising, and other sources. They are prohibited from charging tuition, but may charge fees for certain items to the same extent as non-charter public schools. California's original charter...
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No-Budget Charter School Fiscal Update
Category: Finance
by Eric Premack, Charter Schools Development Center Posted on 08/25/2010 Though charter school funding rates remain unclear as the state budget stalemate continues for its 54th day, this article provides updates on a few key charter finance matters, including the following items: State officials pull early trigger on cash deferral Federal Jobs Bill and State Stabilization funds forthcoming—but amounts remain unknown August 31st application deadline for Charter School Facilities Grant Program Conference...
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Education Jobs Bill Funding Coming Soon?
Category: Finance
by Eric Premack, Charter Schools Development Center. Posted on 08/12/2010 President Obama on Tuesday signed a new "Education Jobs Bill" into law that will provide modest amounts of funds to states in an attempt to reduce the loss of jobs in the state public education sector. Whether and how much California charter schools will receive is unknown, but may average around $200 per student, assuming California qualifies...
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Three-Way Arm Wrestling Between Governor, Senate, and Assembly over Key K-12 Funding Issue
Category: Finance
by Eric Premack, Charter Schools Development Center. Posted on 06/07/2010 The Governor and both houses of the legislature each propose substantially different approaches to funding K-12 schools in the upcoming fiscal year. The differing legislative proposals should come to a head later this week as the legislature’s Budget Conference Committee meets to iron-out differences between the two houses’ proposals. Each takes different approaches on various key items, including both...
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Governor, Legislature Set Stage for Summer Budget Battle
Category: Finance
by Eric Premack, Charter Schools Development Center. Posted on 05/28/2010 Democrats in the lower house of California's legislature countered the governor's May Revise budget with an eclectic mix of proposed borrowing, corporate tax loophole closures, and oil tax increases. Meanwhile, Democrats in the Senate have proposed $4.9 billion worth of tax increases or extensions that would partially close the estimated $19 billion state budget shortfall. Though many...
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Deadline Extended for Federally-Subsidized Qualified School Construction Bond (QSCB) Funds
Category: Finance
by Eric Premack, Charter Schools Development Center. Posted on 05/25/2010 The California School Finance Authority extended the application deadline for the second, 2009 round of federally-subsidized Qualified School Construction Bond (QSCB) funds from May 27 to June 7. Last year's federal economic stimulus legislation authorized the QSCB program to provide tax subsidies to school agencies that have "shovel ready" facilities construction, rehab, and repair projects. California has...
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Governor's May Revise Proposes Static K-12 Funding
Category: Finance
by Eric Premack, Charter Schools Development Center. Posted on 05/14/2010 SACRAMENTO -- Governor Schwarzenegger’s annual May Revision to his 2010-11 budget proposed cutting most state funding for child care, but few other changes for K-12 school funding. While there is no positive news in the governor’s proposals, the lack of additional proposed cuts provides a bit of relief in an otherwise hellish fiscal environment and stands in...
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State Board Denies Waivers for Cash-Strapped Charters
Category: Finance
by Eric Premack, Charter Schools Development Center. Posted on 05/07/2010 As anticipated, the State Board of Education voted unanimously today to deny requests by dozens of charter schools seeking to waive deferrals of state aid. Recent legislation implemented a complex set of permanent and temporary deferrals of state aid in an effort to shore-up the state's weak cash position and make the state's budget appear more balanced. ...
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Additional State Deferrals Could Mean Cash Flow Hell
Category: Finance
by Eric Premack, Charter Schools Development Center. Posted on 04/09/2010 The State Treasurer, Director of Finance, and Controller jointly announced on March 31 that they will implement three additional cash flow deferrals for K-12 schools in the 2010-11 fiscal year. The three new deferrals come on top of a confusing array of recently-enacted permanent delays to the baseline schedule for state apportionments, several additional "one-time" deferrals, and...
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Governor’s Proposed 2010-11 Budget: Hold Harmless Or De-Facto Cut For Schools
Category: Finance
by Eric Premack, Charter Schools Development Center. Originally sent to CSDC members on 01/11/2010. Though Governor Schwarzenegger says his proposed budget for FY 2010-11 would “protect education,” CSDC’s analysis shows that whether the budget protects or cuts K-12 schools depends on what one assumes as the starting point. Relative to current law, CSDC’s analysis of the governor’s proposal shows that the governor uses creative accounting to substantially...
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Governance Overview
Category: Governance
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Grants & Fundraising Overview
Category: Grants and Fundraising
Fundraising, including grants, can provide critical funds to enable schools to offer additional programs, purchase needed equipment, and support general operations. Hundreds of California’s charter schools have successfully implemented a variety of fundraising activities, ranging from small bake sales to large-scale capital campaign efforts. Fundraising projects can be time consuming and labor-intensive. To ensure successful implementation, it is important to have a clear fundraising plan...
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Charter School Fundraising Essentials: Implementing a Successful Capital Campaigns
Category: Grants and Fundraising
by Stephanie Schwuchow, Charter Schools Development Center. Originally published in the Fall 2008 edition of Charter Currents. Interested in raising $100,000 or more for your school? Dozens of charter schools across the country have successfully implemented capital campaigns to raise millions of dollars for their schools’ facilities, equipment and other large financial needs. Unlike other fundraising campaigns, capital campaigns are specifically designed to address a significant,...
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State Charter School Facilities Incentive Grants Program – Application Deadline: April 20th
Category: Grants and Fundraising
by Eric Premack, Charter Schools Development Center. Posted on 03/29/2010 Overview The State Charter School Facilities Incentive Grants Program is a federally-funded, state-administered facility funding program. Funds can be applied toward a charter school's cost of rent, lease, mortgage or debt service payments for existing or new facilities. Funds can also be applied toward the purchase, design and construction costs of acquiring land and constructing or renovating a...
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Strategies for Effective Individual Donor Campaigns
Category: Grants and Fundraising
by Stephanie Schwuchow, Charter Schools Development Center. Originally published in the Winter 2006 edition of Charter Currents. Many California charter schools seek outside funding to supplement ‘guaranteed’ general purpose and categorical block grant funds. Among the most common additional source of funds are foundation and government grant funding, but these sources often requiring long-term relationship building and burdensome amounts of paperwork. There are several alternate fundraising methods,...
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Eight Steps to Planning a Successful Fundraising Event
Category: Grants and Fundraising
by Stephanie Schwuchow, Charter Schools Development Center. Originally published in the Fall 2006 edition of Charter Currents. Overview In past issues of Charter Currents, we detailed various guidelines to successfully implement an individual donor campaign and a direct mail campaign. This article will focus on special events, such as fundraising dinners, auctions, or student performances, and will outline specific planning and implementation guidelines to ensure a successful event. Step...
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Implementing an Effective Direct Mail Campaign
Category: Grants and Fundraising
by Stephanie Schwuchow, Charter Schools Development Center. Originally published in the Spring 2006 edition of Charter Currents. In our last issue of Charter Currents, we reviewed the value of individual donors and various guidelines to successfully implement an individual donor campaign. As part of a series of fundraising topics, this article will focus on direct mail, the most common method used to solicit individual donors, and will...
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Instruction and Assessment Overview
Category: Instruction and Assessment
California opened its doors to charter schools to improve student achievement, drive innovation and provide expanded educational choices, among other purposes. To enable charter schools to implement distinctive educational visions, the law frees them from many constraints of traditional public school systems. In exchange for this greater autonomy, they are held accountable for student performance. Instruction in charter schools ranges from traditional to highly innovative. Operators...
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The Power of Using Data: What Reasearch Says
Category: Instruction and Assessment
by Susanne Coie, Charter Schools Development Center. Originally published in the Winter/Spring 2009 edition of Charter Currents. Research seeking to understand “what works” in schools suggests the benefit of using student performance data to inform instruction. Not all data use is equal, however. Some schools that use data to inform instruction do not, in fact, show higher achievement. Skill in using data appears to be important: some...
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