Meeting with Paul Randall

Last Friday night Dionne, Laurie, and I met with Paul Randall. He is the former administrator at Ridgeline and has served on the board of the Coburg Charter. Here is what we learned.

• We don’t have to bus the kids.
• We might be able to provide guaranteed admittance to children of employees.
• Most schools don’t fill up in year 1, so we shouldn’t be worried about our children having to participate in a lottery.
• Start a new charter school instead of converting an existing public school. Conversion was used when their was seed money to start a charter.
• Ask for and review the proposal handbook from the district we want to sponsor us.
• It is ok to say “we follow our sponsoring districts policy” in our proposal.
• Directors of existing charter schools will be more than happy to talk to us about our proposal and give us advice.
• The Kings Valley Charter is a similar size to what we are thinking of. We should contact them.
• All that we need is a sound proposal. The district will have a tough time disapproving a solid proposal. If they do the state will sponsor it.
• The Coburg charter spends $50k on each teacher. That includes all costs associated with their employment.
• The ADM/w funding we receive can be used for leasing building space.
• He doesn’t think we will be able to afford to cap our class sizes at 15. 25 students per class is the norm for charter schools.
• The state funding funnels through the sponsoring school district. If the state sponsors us the money will funnel through our local school district.
• We will want to track all volunteer hours. The number of volunteers and their hours are required for most grants.
• The number one reason that charter schools fail is finances.
• We will want to sponsor community service activities for our school.
• We should meet with the ODE charter school contact and develop a relationship with her.
• We should give input into the superintendent hire.