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“They want you to do better. They drive you to do better.”
Here’s a nice profile of Cleveland’s Promise Academy dropout recovery school. Staff, students, and successful grads do a great job explaining how the school’s programs work and how the intangible supports—believing in kids, providing a calm and safe space, connecting with outside adult mentors—make a difference in the trajectory of Promise Academy students.
Charter law revamp in Idaho
Idaho governor Brad Little signed House Bill 422 into law this week. He said that the Accelerating Public Charter Schools Act gives more flexibility for high performing charters and more support to those that are struggling. Idaho Ed News has a detailed look at the bill’s provisions, including a new three-year charter term for new schools to pilot an innovative educational model and the ability for charter holders with multiple schools to become a single local education agency.
The view from Michigan
Michigan lawmakers are considering a bill that would repeal charters schools’ right of first refusal to buy or lease unused district facilities. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy discussed the bill in a blog post this week, along with some startling details on how district leaders have been working to undermine that right for years, including an elected board member who suggested—on the record—that demolishing an empty building in her district was necessary “because we simply cannot afford to have it become a competing school.”
A different view from Florida
Meanwhile, families in Newberry, Florida, are rallying to have the buildings in their district converted into charter schools, the first exercise of a new state law that allows such conversions. The first test will be a vote of each school community, with a specific number of families—and teachers—having to opt for conversion within the next 60 days. Definitely a story to watch.
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