Different pupils learn differently and public school programs should be designed to fit the needs of individual pupils and that there are educators, citizens, and parents in Colorado who are willing and able to offer innovative programs, educational techniques, and environments but who lack a channel through which they can direct their innovative efforts.
— from the 1993 Colorado Charter Schools Act
Teri Kinkade, lead administrator at the Vision Charter Academy was giving us a tour of a large modular building that the Delta campus uses primarily as classroom space.
“We found a deal; we were kind of fortunate to get it. It was a used modular from Gunnison County, and we paid only $2,000 for it.” Then she laughed. “Then it cost us $40,000 to set it up, which is crazy.”
VCA was the first stop on our three day tour of charter schools in the Grand Junction area; we were hoping to visit a total of five schools, and meet key staff, to understand more about what, exactly, we were getting ourselves into. I was on the tour with my daughter Ursala Hudson — president of non-profit Pagosa Charter School Initiative (PCSI) — and Megan Riddle — chair of the PCSI Community Engagement committee — and their three young daughters, Liberty, Amelie and Simone. The administrators and staff whom we met were universally gracious… and open with us about the issues their schools face as Colorado charter schools. One of the common issues, we found, was the same key issue faced by conventional public schools: delivering a good education to all children, regardless of their background and natural strengths… on a limited budget.
In the case of Colorado’s 200 or so charter schools, that mission places them in competition with the conventional schools. And because Colorado funds schools based on student enrollment — and because economies of scale apply to the education industry in much the same way as in other industries — the main trick to making a school more financially viable is to increase enrollment. That is to say, conventional public schools and charter schools are competing for a limited number of local children and the government funding attached to each child’s education.
And both conventional public schools and charter schools are competing with another institution, for those young, impressionable minds and bodies: homeschooling families. I’m not sure the percentage of homeschooling families in the Delta; here in Archuleta County, the school district recently estimated that as many as 25 percent of our local children are not enrolled in the public schools. Presumably, most of those 300-400 kids are homeschooling?
So let’s hear a bit about Vision Charter and its 14-year pursuit of financial viability.
We’re listening to Teri Kinkade.
“Vision Charter Academy started as Vision Home and Community Program, based on parents who were teaching at home. And bringing together ‘community educators’ — as we called them — who taught all kinds of things in the community, from welding to blacksmithing to glassblowing to art, that kind of thing. And it started in Paonia, so there were a lot of artisans — and the history is really important, because we serve a lot of that same purpose now.
“So Vision Home and Community brought together groups of people that you probably wouldn’t normally see working together. We had large numbers of real right-wing Christian families, and left-wing ‘Unschooling’ and Waldorf-school type families. And they came together to create a school and access public funds to support what they wanted for their kids. But they believed, fiercely, in their right to educate their own children. And so, it really started a great movement.”
A quick bit of background on the small town where this unconventional education program began: Paonia, Colorado, population about 1,500, located about 40 miles east of Delta. Paonia’s traditional economy was built upon coal mining and agriculture, two industries that we commonly associate with right-wing Republican values. Then in the 1960s and ’70s, the free-thinking hippies escaping from Corporate America discovered Paonia as an ideal place to form communal living situations based on agriculture and art production. These two groups shared at least one thing in common: a general distrust of the government-run education industry.
Teri Kinkade continued:
“So after the first year in Paonia, they started this campus in Delta. And this campus has always been the largest because of the population in Delta; we also have families from Montrose County and Mesa County. So the program originally started to serve homeschooling families. So there was a long history of freedom and flexibility… and of the school district being upset at what public money was being used for.
“In 2011, we were still ‘contract schools’ with the district, and we were trying to get our waivers. The district had a new administration and they didn’t understand waivers. So there became this really difficult communication with the CDE [Colorado Department of Education].”
The relationship with the current district administration is much improved, she told us, although disagreements remain — including the issue of building expansion.
Charter schools have been authorized in Colorado since 1993, with the idea of promoting innovative education programs and generally increasing the choices available to families. The first two Colorado charter schools opened with little controversy. Very soon, however, the opposition began to take shape. Parent-led charter applications were denied by dismissive school boards in some communities. In some places teachers’ unions tried to stymie new schools by filing legal challenges. Contract schools were a tool used by Colorado school districts to create innovative school programs while avoiding the creation of a charter school. By law, a charter school operates semi-independently of the school district administration; contract schools, meanwhile, are totally controlled by the district. Vision Charter Academy was begun as one of those tricky hybrid programs: the ‘contract school.’
In 2011, the school district finally decided they wanted to shut down the program. The parents and staff hired an attorney and began to negotiate the right to form a semi-independent Charter School.
Ms. Kinkade now directs the three Vision campuses, where the education program continues to be based on a rather non-conventional model: the needs of the individual child. Each child and his or her parents sit down with the school staff to come up with an Individual Learning Plan, based on that particular child’s interests and needs. Then the school staff uses that child’s portion of the available public funding — the Per Pupil Revenue — to try and finance the classes and materials that will, hopefully, lead to the family’s desired educational outcome. The school offers a range of services to families, ranging from consultation and counseling for kids doing nearly all their learning at home, to a full school-year program of daily classes for kids who want a more conventional teacher-led program.
The “highly qualified” teachers come from the general community — they must have a BA degree and experience in their field of expertise, but they are not necessarily “certified”. They also are paid less than typical public school teachers — but benefit from a more flexible schedule, and from less bureaucratic control.
It was obvious that the 14-year history of Vision Charter Academy was something of a roller coaster ride. But one thing — so far — has remained constant. That being, the commitment to an Individual Learning Plan to fit each student.
As most of our readers know, this is pretty much to opposite approach from the one that currently drives conventional public education. The essential philosophy of the public education system, in 2015, is based upon the idea that every child needs to have the exact same “standards” drilled into his or her head, and thus, every child must pass the exact same “standardized” tests.
And additionally, that we must measure and judge our teachers on their ability to treat every child as if he or she needed those exact same skills and that exact same knowledge.
Somehow, that strikes me as insane. And apparently — based on the quote I included above, from the 1993 Colorado Charter Schools Act — the Colorado legislature also believed that “different pupils learn differently and public school programs should be designed to fit the needs of individual pupils…”
Maybe, dear reader, you feel the same way?