Pub. 8 2018-2019 Issue 2

3 impeachment. (Apparently some things don’t change, even in 20 years.) During this 20th anni- versary of Utah’s charter schools, such nostalgic com- parisons are inevitable, and I’d argue they’re healthy. Gone are the days when charter schools occupied former bowl i ng a l leys or strip malls (with one notable exception – sorry Han i f i!). Gone are the days when we had to vie with openly hostile school dist ric ts. Gone are the days when charter schools were a curiosity, an exper- iment, a pilot program. Today I look forward to showing off our great charter schools as they host debates between can- didates for the State Board of Education. Attendees and candidates see first- hand how much love and hard work our teachers, board members, adminis- trators and parents put into helping our nearly 80,000 students succeed. Today we work closely with our school district and State Board of Education counterparts to increase public education funding generally, and to make sure the distribution formulas provide equitable funding for districts and charter schools. Today we experi- ment with new ideas – 90/10 dual language immersion, schools dedicated to refugee students, outsourced back end services, and much, much more – and share the results of our experiments. Sometimes those innova- tions work. Sometimes they need further refinement. Sometimes we have to reject the innovations. Sometimes we even have to close the whole school. Precisely because we have 20 years of experience, because we have matured and proven ourselves many times over, we can admit shortcomings. We dust ourselves off and try something else. Our work remains hard. A friend of mine describes the effort it takes to start a charter school like “swim- ming up a waterfall.” And that’s after 20 years of expe- rience. As other articles in this issue describe, the chal- lenges Utah’s charter school pioneers faced were expo- nentially harder. As I hear their stories, I’m amazed that even one charter school ever opened. And yet here we are, celebrating 20 years of successes, of blood, sweat and tears sacrificed to give every child the opportunity for a better education. Along the way we’ve occasionally squabbled. Decisions were made, and feelings were hurt. Those are the sad and inevitable rea l it ie s of a g rowi ng movement. Despite those disagreements and chal- lenges, we should all be proud of what Utah charter schools have accomplished. Our counterparts across the nation routinely ask us how we’ve done so much with so little. As with so many other things Utah, I think the answer lies in the sure foundation our charter school pioneers laid. Let’s keep extending and strengthening that founda- tion, so that 20, 50, 100 years from now, our charter school descendants will be grateful for the great foun- dation we laid for them.