Pub. 4 2014-2015 Issue 1

6 BOARD Message UTAH ASSOCIATION OF PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS BOARD OF DIRECTORS: BRAD NELSON (BOARD CHAIR) GERRY HASSELL (TREASURER) PEGGY DOWNS (SECRETARY) JESSIE KIDD SONIA WOODBURY STACEY HUTCHINGS CHRIS BLEAK STAFF CONTACT INFO: ROYCE VAN TASSELL Executive Director royce@utahcharters.org 801-836-7028 TINA SMITH Chief Operating Officer 801-558-7246 tina@utahcharters.org DEBBY LLEWELYN Director of Training 801-318-0911 debby@utahcharters.org TWITTER: @UTAHCHARTERS FACEBOOK: FACEBOOK.COM/UAPCS WWW.UTAHCHARTERS.ORG The last few months have been filled with change and opportunity for UAPCS. Chris Bleak, who led our organization for several years has left us to become a charter school director. He has already asked me many times why I didn’t warn him about the difficulties of being a charter school direc- tor. Out of the frying pan into the fire, Chris! Chris was a wonderful asset to our organization. His efforts have propelled UAPCS into a leading force within the education system of Utah. Chris has been serving as a member of our Board of Directors so his years of experience and wisdom will not be lost. It is with great pleasure that we welcome Royce Van Tassell as our new Executive Director! Royce comes to us with many years of educational lob- bying experience in the State of Utah. He is well known and respected up on the Hill and within USOE. He has hit the ground running and gotten involved in the crucial issues we now face in the charter movement. We, as the Board are very confident that Royce can keep the Association on the trajectory that it is currently on and accomplish great things on behalf of our member schools. I can’t talk about staffing without mentioning the great work being done by our C.O.O. Tina Smith and our Director of Training Debby Llewelyn. You will hear more about the major role UAPCS will now take in the train- ing and mentoring of prospective, newly approved and operating charter schools. We are excited about the opportunity to provide appropriate and much needed training and mentoring programs for charter schools and thank the USOE for this opportunity. There are many issues that UAPCS continues to be involved in on behalf of our members. ADM funding, transportation funding, special education funding, charter school standards and school grading to name a few. We also had a place at the table during the interview process in the search for the new State Superintendent of Schools. There are several seats on the State Board of Education that are up for election and many of the candi- dates are strong supporters of charter schools. This year will be a very exciting and interesting year with lots of change, but also full of great op- portunities for charter schools to become stronger and for UAPCS to be a strong advocate of positive change. As always, thank you to our member schools for your support! Please look for opportunities to get involved for the betterment of the charter school movement in UTAH. Brad Nelson – Spectrum Academy Board Chair, UAPCS UAPCS a Strong Advocate of Positive Change