By Tanner Kent
HENDERSON — The real news, as Doug Thomas made evident, was not the $1.2 million grant.
As a director of EdVisions Schools, Thomas and his organization lend oversight to more than 40 small charter schools across the country, including 10 in Minnesota. With a warmly decorated office in a main street building in Henderson, Thomas works only a few blocks from the handful of downtown storefronts where he and a few other enterprising teachers started the Minnesota New Country School in 1994.
Now, Thomas has moved on to EdVisions, and New Country is its flagship school. With more than 60 schools across the nation founded on the New Country principles of “student-driven and teacher-led” curriculum, Thomas said the real news is that the latest grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will help foster the New Country model at a time when school reform is a fast-growing dialogue.
“This will be bridge funding to help us become self-sustaining,” Thomas said.
To date, EdVisions has received almost $10 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That money has been used to create new charter schools — such as music-recording academies in Los Angeles, Minneapolis and New York — and provide consulting services to existing charters.
The latest grant will likely be EdVisions’ last from the Gates Foundation, so Thomas wants to use the money to fill gaps in the budget until fee-based services — such as consulting and curriculum development — can make up for revenue previously generated through grants.
“Not all nonprofits can make (that) transition,” Thomas said. “We’re going to try it.”
At the federal level, charter schools have become a talking point for an Obama administration that is touting school reform.
But at the state level, legislation is moving in both houses to provide more stringent oversight for charter schools.
Both the House and Senate proposals call for closer supervision from charter school sponsors as well as additional requirements for compliance reporting and school board training. The Senate proposal also includes a provision that would institute a 36-month waiting period for charters that want to open within one mile of a closed school or consolidated district (but that provision also includes an appeals process).
State Rep. Kory Kath, DFL-Owatonna and vice-chair of the K-12 Education Policy, said the House legislation will bring charter schools more in line with the transparancy required of public schools. Kath said President Barack Obama is “supportive” of charter school initiatives and that legislation is needed to ensure state policies can support federal school reforms.
“Tough economic times are when major policy changes can be the most important,” Kath said. “So, this is a good time to have conversations about charter schools.”
Thomas said more oversight wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but he did say that hampering the growth efforts of charter schools would be a mistake.
“Without an open sector of education,” Thomas said, “schools will look more and more like dinosaurs.”
Thomas said New Country welcomes about 500 visitors per year from the state, nation and abroad. The school is running at full capacity and he said the school is sponsoring its first sports team — a two-student track and field team — this spring.
