Utah’s charterland is absolutely amazing. Our schools, teachers, parents, board members and students bring a wide range of ideas to more than 140 schools and make our schools vibrant, growing and amazing. We are nimble, decisive and dedicated to meeting the needs of our students, no matter where they come from or what needs they have. And our best days are ahead of us — we have so many possibilities, so many opportunities to grow and serve.
As many of you have felt and seen, over the last several months, our largest authorizer, the State Charter School Board, has taken a decidedly different tack. For many years, a number of charter schools preferred to keep their heads down rather than raise a question or seek an amendment to their charter. Coming before the State Charter School Board was simply feared because we didn’t know what might happen.
I believe those days are now in our past. Working with the State Board of Education, they have simplified the process for existing schools to expand when those expansions don’t necessitate substantial changes to your building. Similar simplifications in the application and approval process are coming for large expansions, ones that do require changes to your building. These changes are some of the most overt signs that they want to be charter school advocates and partners and that they are releasing the pent-up demand for changes, whether that is an additional grade, additional classrooms or more. Utah charters can and should be looking for opportunities to grow.
I am not suggesting that this growth will be easy. It won’t. Unlike the past two decades, in the coming few years, the number of children attending Utah public schools will be effectively static. That means we are going to have to better understand what parents and students are looking for. They have a wealth of choices available to them — boundary district school, out-of-boundary district school, online options, private schools, home schools and, of course, us, Utah’s amazing charter schools.
The COVID pandemic was extraordinarily difficult, but it showed both us and parents horizons and opportunities that few of us ever imagined. Many families decided that all zoom, all day was not right for their children. But even in rural Utah, they also decided they wanted more choice options. This was a surprising finding in the most recent polling UAPCS did about choice and charter schools statewide. Until COVID, I have never seen rural Utahns openly looking for choice options. Now, it’s very clear that we should be casting our eyes there because families are looking for education choices that meet each child’s different needs.
Another underappreciated opportunity exists in providing schools that match the values parents teach at home. In this regard, charter schools have a distinct advantage over our friends and colleagues in school districts. When parents choose a charter school, they are choosing a set of values. Families with students at Utah Arts Academy (UAA) expect UAA to exemplify certain virtues. Although just a few minutes away, the families with students at St. George Academy (SGA) expect SGA to rely on a different set of values.
Neither is “right” or “wrong.” Parents can and do approach value questions differently. If the students at SGA and UAA were switched overnight, both schools would face the tensions over cultural differences that are plaguing school districts around the country. Why? Because there would be a mismatch between the values of the school and the values of the families.
It’s no wonder that tension around what is appropriate in district schools spills into the public dialogue. Our friends in the school districts are just as committed to the welfare of the students and families attending their schools as we are. But it is probably inevitable that a single district-wide decision about values-laden issues will create tension with different segments of the thousands of families who attend the district. The growth opportunity for us is to identify cohesive communities and build, expand and serve those communities in ways that reflect their homegrown values.
UAPCS is determined to help both existing and new charter schools thrive. Across these opportunities and many others, Utah charter schools will fill an additional 20,000 seats over the course of the 2020s. Utah’s charter school enrollment will be nearly 100,000 by the end of the decade.
That is a big goal but one UAPCS is committed to helping us all achieve. That means helping existing schools and new schools simultaneously. You will see us playing in the primordial soup, identifying good potential schools and helping them write strong charter applications. You will see us advertising charter schools when existing schools are doing their enrollment and lotteries. We will advise and help schools that want to open another campus or maybe more than one. We are going to help all of Utah charterland do and be more. And it means we are all going to get better. Utah’s many wonderful charter schools are going to be THE choice for Utah families.
