Oh how I would love to have coffee and chat! This is all so complicated partly because charter laws are so different from state to state. Some are more charter friendly but regulated (CA) others are very hard to get a charter approved (I've heard WA and OR) and others it depends on who you know!
If I'm understanding what you're saying, part of the difficulty of exporting your program would be that it would require a substantial investment in new or dramatically renovated buildings in order to run in other schools. Is that accurate? Are you arts/production focused?
Our original buildings were all leftover portables from other district schools. As school district bonds have passed, we have rehabbed or built new buildings. We do have one very large and quite beautiful theatre that was only recently finished. It was funded by bonds, local arts groups donations (who now have a discounted rental rate) and a couple of corporate donations. Up until the theatre was finished, both high schools in our district had better facilities. We now have a comparable theatre to one and the other has all the good athletic facilities.
If I can ask another question: how do kids get to your school? Do parents have to do anything different in order to get kids there compared to what they would do to get their kids to the default school? In a lot of places I think that kids end up with uneven access due to issues like transportation, which is only within the capability of families where only one parent works, where the student is lucky enough to be in the neighborhood, or where the parent works in the neighborhood of the school; but it is out of reach for other families.
Our school (like all charters in CA) has a public lottery. The only thing parents have to do is fill out an application and turn it in. We have preference categories where of the 90, the top 30 get in based on their art audition. The other 60 go in preference order- siblings of existing students, transfers from other programs within our school then anyone who lives in our district, then anyone who lives out. The lottery is heartbreaking and usually we end up in tears. If I could teach them all, I would!
What you've said about transportation is completely true. It is hard for many students to get to our school. However, our district has NO student transportation at all. So it's hard for them to get to any school. The city bus goes about 1/2 mile from the school and many students bus in and walk together. But most everyone, like every school in our district :(, walks or gets a ride. Due to budget cuts, this is our second year with no school buses at all. 15,000 kids have to figure out how to get to school.
You mentioned donations at one point in your post. Would you say that donations either in start up expenses, or on a yearly basis, are significant to allowing your program to operate as it does?
Our school started 18 years ago and trust me, there were no donations as part of the start up expenses. It was a rickety old place with a crazy guy at the head (who is now our executive director!) Now, when charters start up they receive a statewide "Charter Block Grant" funding to get open. This is part of CA state law that allows startup funds for charters. This is very similar funding to when a district looks to open a new elementary in an area with an expanding population.
Donations now come in through three major fundraising campaigns. Each of the admin team is required to work these as part of their regular job and participate heavily. One is a major student field day where the students run booths and games for local families. Kids come from all over and play silly games or get their face painted and each student program makes money. The dancers teach quick little hip hop lessons, the music kids let the elementary kids "pet" their instruments in the petting zoo, etc.
You mentioned something about test scores and I wanted to speak to that for a second. Our test scores are not fantastic, they are very high average for the area. There are many far better high schools if you're searching for great test scores. We do not put heavy emphasis on test scores, test prep or student achievement data from the state's perspective. Students from 6th grade thru 12th grade spend almost no time in test prep before the high stakes spring test.
We spend a LOT more time teaching critical thinking and analysis. For example, in junior year, each student has to choose an American Artist to research and write an analytical paper (usually 8-10 pages) and present on the impact his/her artist made on American history. It can be any artist in the past 200 years and students choose a huge variety from painters and dancers to modern rappers. This is a huge cross curricular project that panels of 3 teachers work on with the kids.
We pay a lot more attention to SAT scores, college acceptance rates and how many of our students actually stay and finish college. It's a long range view beyond high school and we've taken a LOT of criticism for it because we don't heavily prep the kids for testing. But if you're looking out at a room of 40 students who are all artistically minded, usually daydreamy and thinking about the song they're writing or the painting left unfinished, bubbling pages after pages just doesn't work well.
