Educators Launching First Step Toward Creating Charter Schools Here

By Nicole Kauffman, Herald-Times, Bloomington, Ind.

Aug. 30–Several Monroe County and Indianapolis-area educators are hoping to start the school of their dreams in 2008.

A statement of intent has been submitted to Ball State University’s Office of Charter Schools to open public charter schools — both to be called The Project School — in Bloomington and Indianapolis in 2008.

The group will find out Tuesday if it will be invited to propose the schools formally.

“We hope that the Ball State University charter division will invite us to submit a proposal for our charter school,” said Daniel Baron, senior fellow of the National School Reform Faculty on special assignment to the Indiana University School of Education and proposed principal-teacher of the Bloomington Project School.

If the group is invited to advance to the next stage in the application process, a final decision about whether it can move ahead with plans will be announced in mid-December.

The school’s goals

The school will be a public charter school, supported by the State Department of Education.

Its statement of intent reads, “The vision of the Project School is to eliminate the predictive value of race, class, gender and special capacities on student success in our school and in our communities by working together with families and community to ensure each child’s success… The Project School is committed to teaching the whole child and developing socially conscious citizens who are able to both collaborate well and lead others while contributing to the greater good.”

Baron said the achievement gap is a historic dilemma that he predicts will become the Civil Rights Movement of the 21st Century; the school is being designed in response to that achievement gap “and to demonstrate the capacity of children who have historically been poorly served in traditional school programs to flourish academically and emotionally in a project-based environment,” he said.

Organizers want the school to be located where it can attract a diverse student body, and they are planning to put the Bloomington school in the Prospect Hill neighborhood.

“We haven’t finalized any arrangements yet, but we’re working very hard to have it be as close to our target population as possible,” Baron said.

In Indianapolis, the school will be part of the Martindale Brightwoodcommunity, a historically African-American community in which the school will be the hub of a new urban village under development there, he said.

The school will be multi-age, with teams of teachers and thematic, project-based experiences. There will be seven full-time teaching positions, including a full-time inclusion arts teacher. The school will open as a K-5 school, and the student-to-teacher ratio will be 20 to 1.

Four councils will advise the school: family, community, educational and business.

Baron, who is lead consultant for New Excellent Small Schools of Indianapolis at the University of Indianapolis, was lead teacher and curriculum coordinator at Harmony School from 1977 to 1994. He was invited by a group of Monroe County teachers to help support the facilitation of the team, he said.

He said if the group is not invited to submit its proposal, it will take feedback from Ball State and resubmit another version of the proposal next summer.

“We do recognize that many schools don’t make the cut on their first statement of intent,” he said.

If all goes as planned, though, community residents will soon be hearing a lot about the Project School, especially potential students.

“Marketing is the key to attracting a student base,” Baron said.

He said the group plans to hold community meetings in churches and community centers, and do some door-to-door canvassing to encourage students to apply.All applicants’ names then will go into a blind lottery.

Applicants can be from anywhere in Indiana, but Baron said he anticipates almost everyone at the Bloomington school will be from Bloomington.

Tarrence Banks, who served as principal of Rogers Elementary School for the 2005-06 school year, has been tapped as principal-teacher of the Indianapolis Project School. He has an elementary education degree from Butler University, a master’s degree in educational leadership, an elementary teacher’s license and a K-12 administrator’s license for Indiana. He works as a School Change Facilitator for the Center for Excellence in Leadership of Learning at the University of Indianapolis, and he also is a facilitator of Facilitative Leadership and Critical Friends Groups Seminars for the National School Reform Faculty.

Baron calls starting such a school “an enormous responsibility,” but so far, he said, multiple sources have demonstrated “extraordinary support” for the statement of intent. He’s looking forward to meeting with the Monroe County Community School Corp. board to discuss potential partnership and collaboration with the Project School.

“We hope that we’re viewed as the city’s public school and want to work very closely with any agency that serves children or their families,” he said.

If given the go-ahead, the school would start operating in January 2008, with students attending their first year from August 2008 to June 2009.

MCCSC Superintendent Jim Harvey did not return a call seeking comment, but board member Jeannine Butler said Harvey informed the school board of a conversation he had with Baron about the proposal.

“We don’t really know much about it … It certainly causes us to take a look at what that might mean in terms of numbers for our school system,” Butler said.

She said charter schools have proven themselves to be successful, and that they have a place in education, but if the Project School becomes a reality, the money the state gives it will mean that much less money for MCCSC students.

PROJECT SCHOOL IN BRIEF

The school is a K-12 teacher-designed model focused on developing positive habits of the heart, mind and voice through problem, place, project — based (the P3 Framework) curriculum. Through P3 Projects, students identify real issues in their communities and utilize community assets to address those issues.

The Project School utilizes multi-age teaming and discipline-based literacy and numeracy workshops to scaffold the skills students need to engage in highly authentic and integrated P3 Projects. Project School students engage in critical, creative and reflective thinking, thus developing their intellectual character.

The Project School is committed to teaching the whole child and developing socially conscious citizens who can not only work well with others, but lead others and contribute to the greater good.

Source: School Statement Of Intent, Filed With Ball State University Office Of Charter Schools

ADVISORY BOARD FOR PROPOSED PROJECT SCHOOL

— Tom Zoss

— Deron Kintner

— Kelly Harrison

— Mike Higby

— Sharon Wilkins

— Brandon Cosby

— Azure Smiley

— Charlotte Zietlow

— Beverly Calendar-Anderson

— Breshaun B. Joyner

WHO’S DANIEL BARON?

Daniel Baron is the proposed principal-teacher of the Bloomington Project School.

He is lead consultant for New Excellent Small Schools of Indianapolis at the University of Indianapolis.

He’s senior fellow of the National School Reform Faculty on special assignment to the Indiana University School of Education.

He was lead teacher and curriculum coordinator at Harmony School from 1977 to 1994.

He is a founder and board member of the Harmony Education Center.

He writes a column called “The Instructional Leader” for the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ journal, Principal Leadership, which goes out to 25,000 principals.

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