Back in 2015, my daughter Ursala decided to try something new and different. With a group of friends — mothers of young children — she began the process of creating a publicly-funded charter school, for Archuleta County, and for her own young children.
The process of writing the charter — essentially, the guidelines for an innovative public school aiming to try out different approaches to education — was financially supported by several grants, and was finally presented to the Archuleta School District’s Board of Education in 2016, garnering their approval in 2017.
Ursala served as the school’s volunteer Board President for the first six years.
Disclosure: I’ve been a volunteer Board member since 2015, and continue to serve on the Board of Directors.
Since opening its doors in September 2017 as a K-4 school, Pagosa Peak Open School has grown into an intimate K-8 school, operating in a large former office building in Aspen Village, near the Walmart store. Last year, the school received a $700,000 grant to build a new playground that will be open to the public during non-school hours. PPOS is also remodeling one of its larger classrooms in hopes of opening a Preschool within the next year.
The school has gone through some growing pains, as is typical of charter schools.
One day, my granddaughter, Amelie, came up with a motto appropriate for PPOS.
“Small school, big family.”
It’s no small task, to fund a small school. Nor to oversee a big family.
Charter schools in Colorado struggle with the same issues as all other public schools in the state — attendance, academic growth, testing, challenging behaviors from certain students, teacher retention, and the rising cost of nearly everything. But charter schools typically have an additional burden. Traditional public school buildings are funded through voter-approved bond issues, but charter schools typically have to pay rent on their building, or — if they are ambitious enough — buy their own building. This means a charter school, like PPOS, has less money in their budget to pay for staff and instructional materials, even though it’s a public school that cannot charge tuition.
This is indeed the case for PPOS. About 16% of the PPOS budget goes towards the mortgage on our building — a financial burden that a traditional public school doesn’t have to bear.
It helps that the school functions somewhat like a big family.
A few months ago, I began talking to some of my musician friends about doing a fundraising concert, to benefit PPOS. The outcome of those conversations will be “A Tribute to the Beatles” this coming Saturday, April 27, at the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts.
I’ve produced a number of fundraising concerts during my career as a community volunteer… and in fact, the very first benefit concert I ever produced, in 1975, was “A Tribute to the Beatles”.
The Beatles were still in high school when they began playing gigs in Liverpool, England, and they then spent considerable time in Hamburg, Germany, refining their vocal harmonies, guitar licks, and songwriting chops. Shortly after their second single, Please Please Me, hit number one on the British music charts in 1963, the Fab Four — John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — rose to the top of the popular music heap in the UK, and then in the US and around the world, and pretty much stayed there until the group disbanded in 1970.
The album Please Please Me was the first of eleven consecutive Beatles albums released in the United Kingdom to reach number one. The band’s third single, From Me to You, came out in April 1963, and began an almost unbroken string of seventeen British number-one singles, including all but one of the eighteen they released over the next six years.
I first saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, and spent the next couple of years dreaming of owning — and playing — an electric guitar. And of growing my hair long — something my parents would not allow. I bought my first guitar in eighth grade, but didn’t perform in front of an audience until my senior year in high school… at a school talent show.
The song I performed that evening? Paul McCartney’s Blackbird, from the Beatles’ White Album.
In a sense, the youth culture of the 1960s — the culture in which we Baby Boomers found ourselves — was defined by the Beatles and numerous other music groups of that era. We woke up to clock radios playing the latest Beatles release, or maybe a song by one of the dozens of popular bands who were trying to imitate, or at least emulate, the Beatles.
I understand the journalists and commentators working in the American media were generally unimpressed by the Fab Four when they first arrived in the US… and the common belief, among music critics, was that the Beatles were a flash in the pan, and wouldn’t last.
So it’s somewhat remarkable that my granddaughters, both born in the second decade of the 21st century, know the words to a number of Beatles songs.
And… they are both attending Pagosa Peak Open School, a school their mother and grandfather helped create.
“A Tribute to the Beatles” will be performed one-night-only, this Saturday, April 27, at the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts (PSCA), home of Thingamajig Theatre Company. Doors open at 6:30pm; music starts at 7pm.
Nineteen Pagosa musicians are donating their considerable talents to the event, which will include a surprise photo booth, a cash bar, and one of the largest dance floors in Pagosa Springs. Guests are invited to dress up according to their imaginations. What does one wear to a Beatles Tribute? (For myself, I will be wearing the white bell bottoms my parents never allowed me to wear.)
Tickets are $40, or $75 for a couple, and can be purchased online on the PSCA website (with a service fee added)… or at the door (cash or checks only).
Hope to see you there!
Parents’ Night Out
In support of the Beatles Tribute, PPOS is hosting a “Parents’ Night Out” children’s event from 6pm – 10pm on April 27. Parents can drop off kids age 5-12 years for dinner, crafts, science, and movies at Pagosa Peak Open School. Cost is $25 for the first child; $20 for each additional child. Contact PPOS at hello@ppos.co or call (970) 317-2151 for information about ‘Parents Night Out’.
NOTE: Parents can enjoy a $5 discount per child if you buy a ticket to the ‘Tribute to the Beatles’…