M E M O R A N D U M

Date:    June 13, 2006

To:       CSD School Board

            Dr. Lillian Lowery

From:   John Mackenzie

Re:       charter strategy for CSD

CSD is hardly the first public school district to encounter financial obstacles in its path to reform.  Despite our current budget issues, the main thing—maximizing learning gains for all our students—is still the main thing.  Our visions and beliefs, and our commitment to reform, are unchanged.  Given our current financial and political situation, I am proposing a new strategy, consistent with our theory of action, to continue the reform.

In our theory of action we pledged to hold ourselves accountable for student performance.  We have renounced the excuses of race and poverty that some of our past leaders used to “explain” low performance, and we must not use financial constraints as an excuse for failure now.  Some of us were working under an implicit assumption that if we delivered substantial gains in DSTP scores over three consecutive years (which we have done), voters would back the capital and operating referenda we need to continue our reforms.  We were wrong.  We did not cultivate enough community buy-in for our reforms, or broader accountability in the community for their success.  To outsiders, CSD still looks like an inefficient, unresponsive bureaucracy, and parents and others feel shut out.

We pledged to empower our schools by decentralizing decision-making.  If we are really serious about this, I believe we should restructure CSD as independently-governed charter schools—become a charter district.  CSD schools would be true neighborhood schools in every sense of the word.  The CSD board has the authority to approve charters, and I recommend that we launch a major effort to engage our communities in drafting charters for their local schools.  Each school would need a founding board to draft its charter, shepherd it through the approval process, and see it implemented.  I am confident our communities have the civic capacity to govern their own schools.

Consistent with state regulations and our theory of action, there would be a few non-negotiables for our charter schools.  We would require that the core curricula reflect state content standards, and are consistently sequenced and vertically aligned so that students make smooth transitions from elementary to middle to high schools.  We would require that schools use consistent tests to measure student progress and assess instructional effectiveness. 

A charter strategy is fully consistent with our current theory of action.  Each individual school and its governing board (parents, teachers and others) would be empowered to perform at its best.  With strong community support and parent involvement, our children will get great educations.  Schools would contract for specific services with the district or with other agencies, and the district would phase out services that it cannot provide at competitive bid levels.  The district’s primary functions would be to channel local operating funds to the schools, monitor their performances, coordinate local operating and capital referenda on their behalf, and approve charter renewals. 

The financial crisis has given us a golden opportunity to restructure CSD.  A charter strategy will open up a lot of new possibilities for us, and a lot of new challenges, but I am convinced it would be a big win for children.  I hope you are willing to explore these with me, and engage the whole CSD community in the conversation.