Last night we honored the first board members of the Neighborhood Charter School (2002) and Atlanta Charter Middle School (2005), the two schools that merged in 2011 to form ANCS. As well, we acknowledged the service of one of those founding board members–Margaret Kaiser–for her decade of service in the Georgia General Assembly. Below are excerpts of remarks I made at the ceremony last night.
About the first NCS and ACMS boards
Under the guidance of our current board chair–Mitch White–and with the support of the full governing board, we just had our charter renewed for another five year term by APS and the state of Georgia, taking us through 2021, to the verge of our school’s third decade of existence. Since our school opened, we’ve experienced a great deal of success in serving students and carrying out our mission, as evidenced by the continued renewal of our charter and our recognition last year as Georgia Charter School of the Year. The success of our school is, appropriately, shared among all the people who have made it happen: students, parents, and, of course, our teachers and staff. Some of our teachers and staff have actually been with us since the very beginning of the school:
- Kelly Dennis
- Jill Hanson
- Heidi Lance
- Maria Larson
- Elizabeth Swern
In addition to our teachers, students, and parents, our school also owes a debt of gratitude to countless community supporters and advocates who have helped us through the years, several of whom are here tonight:
- Brenda Muhammad
- Carla Smith
- The Georgia Charter Schools Association
But none of our success as a school would be possible without the contributions of our governing board members, in large part because it has been the governing board–since the very beginning of the school–that has stepped up and shown leadership in times that are less celebratory, times that have been extraordinarily difficult. You might not realize this, but in the period since the elementary campus opened in 2002, there have been five Atlanta charter schools that have closed. And there have been numerous challenges–a devastating fire, changes in leadership, huge declines in funding, and more–that our school itself has confronted. In my 9 years at ANCS, I can tell you that it is absolutely the board of the school that has pulled us through those toughest of times to get us to the point where we can enjoy our successes.
As principal of the middle school and as executive director, I’ve been fortunate to have worked directly with some skilled board chairs–Cat Jaffin, Sally Radell, Gigi Conner, Michelle Blackmon, Leslie Rowe, Grace Burley, and Mitch–and many dedicated board members through the years. And the grit, determination, ability, and love of the school they all have shown can be traced back to the first boards at NCS and ACMS, the people who set the tone for our school. And we are here tonight to thank and honor them:
About founding board member (and state representative) Margaret Kaiser
Over the past 15 years, legislators on a state and national level have had an increasing influence on K-12 education policy. I’ve been a fairly outspoken critic of a good number of policy ideas that I think make the work of good teaching more difficult and that weight the focus of learning too heavily on one limited measure–standardized test scores. At the root of the problems I see with some of these policies is the fact that many elected officials formulating education policies haven’t spent much time in schools recently, don’t see the impact on kids, and use simplistic arguments about charter schools–either for or against–that demonstrate a lack of understanding about what charter schools actually are or can be.
Yet I know at least one legislator in the Georgia General Assembly who has been the exact opposite of all of that. For the past decade, Margaret Kaiser has been a champion for students and teachers in public schools while serving as the representative for district 59 in the Georgia House. As one of the founders of our school and the parent of ANCS alumni, Margaret knows what life is like in public schools and that has been such an asset for us in the legislature. Whether it had to do with TKES, testing, weighted lotteries for charter schools, or other issues, Margaret has always been willing to not only listen to me and other educators but also to take action and help usher through common-sense legislation that has benefited ANCS and many other schools. Now that Margaret’s leaving the General Assembly, I’ll certainly miss getting text messages from her in the waning days and hours of the legislative session with updates about how a bill we were following was going, but I know that she’ll continue to support our schools.