Author: Matt Underwood

This Thursday evening we will hold ANCS’s annual new student enrollment lottery for next school year.  With more applicants than space available at our school, holding a lottery is a standard practice required by charter school law at ANCS and other public charter schools, and it is an activity that happens pretty much the same way…

A few weeks ago at the Atlanta Public Schools monthly board meeting, during a presentation of the annual report on the district’s charter schools, an APS board member asked the head of the district’s Office of Innovation that oversees charter schools about how APS is facilitating learning between “traditional neighborhood” schools and charter schools in…

About 14 years ago, our school’s elementary campus—then known as the Neighborhood Charter School—held its very first auction and raffle.  From what I’ve been told, it was a quaint affair, held at a local VFW hall with Stouffer’s lasagna and salad served and around $10,000 raised.  In what’s now become an annual tradition, this year’s…

For the past two years, a group of education-focused organizations and foundations has coordinated an international “Shadow a Student” challenge to help spur school leaders to spend a full school day with one of their students in order to see what school is like from a student’s perspective.  Though I try to spend a little…

February 1st marked the start of our new student enrollment period for the 2017-18 school year.  If you are a parent/caregiver interested in enrolling a new student at ANCS for next school year, hopefully by now you’ve seen this letter from me that includes information about the online application for enrollment, upcoming information sessions, and…

In 1998, I taught at a high school in the Chicago Public Schools, and as the summer of the home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa turned to fall, many of my students were giddy as their Cubs made the playoffs for the first time in a decade.  That giddiness soon faded when…

Last week the Georgia Department of Education released its annual school climate rating for all public schools in Georgia.  Since 2014 the GaDOE has published these ratings which use a complicated formula of factors ranging from student attendance and survey results to incidents of violence or drugs on campus to generate a single “climate star”…

Yesterday marked the start of the 2017 session for the Georgia legislature, and the 40 days of the session are likely to focus quite a bit on education issues.  Though maybe not exactly the education issues we thought might dominate the session a few months ago. The November victory of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential…

Last week all of our kindergarten through 5th grade students took the stage across one of three evenings for ANCS’s annual Winterfest concerts.  Their voices filled the school with holiday songs, and they continue to do so this week as encores are happening at morning meeting.  This singing and music and the joy it brings…

Last week I was in Providence, Rhode Island to attend the final Coalition of Essential Schools Fall Forum, the annual conference for the organization that’s been running for over 30 years.  It was the final forum because CES, as an organization, is formally dissolving at the end of this calendar year.  I’ll come back to…