The Pagosa Charter School Initiative — a local, grassroots non-profit organization — is pleased to announce the receipt of an initial planning grant from the Colorado League of Charter Schools, in the amount of $2,500.
Charter schools are tuition-free, public charter schools open to all families. Colorado currently has over 200 charter schools operating in various communities, under the Colorado Charter Schools Act, passed by the state legislature in 1993 and amended in 1996. In 2014-15, there are over 101,000 students attending 214 charter school campuses in Colorado. This represents nearly 12% of total K-12 public school enrollment in the state.
On December 22, 2014, a group of Pagosans formed the Pagosa Charter School Initiative board of directors and chose our officers.
We’re a non-profit group dedicated to providing a public elementary school option to families in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Our vision is to form a school that will foster creative, self-sufficient children with inquisitive minds. We are working toward establishing an alternative learning environment that nurtures and engages our community’s children through outdoor education, hands-on projects, and community involvement, while continuing to align with state educational standards. We’ve had weekly meetings for the past two months and recently posted our board bios on our website.
Our First Grant
The Colorado League of Charter Schools works closely with new school startup groups to offer resources, grants, and support every step of the way. They also review startup groups’ charter applications and give any necessary feedback to ensure that the group’s application is solid. Applications reviewed by The League have had a 96% approval rate. Over the past several weeks we’ve been in contact with The League, working toward completing our first grant application, which was submitted earlier this month — and we received news yesterday that it had been awarded. The Stage 1 Grant will allow us to send two board members to the League’s Annual Charter Schools Conference in Denver, February 26-27, and will additionally fund several visits to successful charter schools in other communities.
We now have the funds to finance the first 1/6th of our 200-page Charter School application — the initial research that will help us discover or develop an innovative, effective, and exciting educational model for the children of Pagosa Springs, their parents, and their teachers.
School Visits
Our group is enthusiastic about finding an educational model that is the right fit for our community. (Perhaps our model doesn’t exist yet and we’ll end up creating a school that’s a hybrid of various teaching philosophies.) With the funds from the Stage 1 Grant, our group plans to send each of our board members to at least one successful Colorado charter school to get a good picture of what’s out there in terms of innovative public schools. On the roster for this round of school visits are: Crestone Charter School, Downtown Denver Expeditionary School, Vision Charter Academy in Delta, Ross Montessori in Carbondale, Carbondale Community School, Mountain Phoenix Community School in Denver, Jefferson County Open School, Two Rivers Community School, and Mesa Valley Community School. We will be inviting representatives from a few of these schools to come to Pagosa and present their teaching philosophies, and the aspects of charter school operation that have been the most challenging for them. Stay tuned for reports from these visits on our blog, and we’ll send out newsletters notifying you when our presentations are scheduled — you can sign up for our newsletter at this web page — or keep a look out on our Facebook page! (Please LIKE us.)
GoFundMe Page
We officially launched our GoFundMe campaign earlier this month. The grants we hope to receive during this endeavor will help pay for the costs associated with completing our charter application. In the meantime, there’s a lot of research that our team has to do in regards to finding out what our community’s needs and wants are. The mailing and collecting of surveys, holding community outreach events, and printing promotional materials all come with additional expenses. If you would like to support our efforts and can contribute any amount, even if it’s $1, your contribution will be hugely appreciated! All GoFundMe contributors will be thanked on our Facebook page and be listed on our website (unless you wish to remain anonymous).
Committees
Several individuals have expressed an interest in getting involved with this endeavor, but don’t have the time to commit to joining our founding team. If you are one of these people, please consider getting on board with one of our committees. At the moment, these are the committees we have going: Fundraising, Community Outreach, District Outreach, Bylaws, Finance, and Grant Writing. You can visit our Committees page on our website to get in contact with a committee leader.
Our next regular board meeting will be held on Sunday, March 8 at the Ruby Sisson Library at 2:30pm. All the board’s regular meetings are open to the public and you are encouraged to attend.
You can click here to download the Colorado Charter Schools Act.
Pagosa Springs artist and graphic designer Ursala Hudson raises her two daughters, takes photos, paints, weaves, and snowboards. She’s also president and one of the founders of Pagosa Peak Open School, the community’s new charter school.