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Breakout
Sessions 2008
Bring
Home the Bacon – Fundraising and Grant writing strategies:
Jill Wells, Manager, Information Services, CSDC
~ Looking to attract private dollars to your school? This session will
provide tools and guidance to help schools develop and implement realistic
fundraising plans. Key topics will include building a fundraising team,
implementing successful individual donor campaigns, developing meaningful
corporate partnerships, effectively utilizing volunteers, implementing
parent and student-led programs, building and nurturing donor relationships.
Chalkboard Project Progress Report:
Sue Hildick, President of Chalkboard Project and Foundations for
a Better Oregon
Kristin Bryant, Project Director, Chalkboard Project
~ The Chalkboard Project, an independent group funded by six of Oregon’s
largest foundations, will update conference attendees on their work
around teacher quality, accountability and finance measures in the K-12
public school system. Chalkboard is also currently working in over 50
schools and districts with pilot projects. Come and hear about this
innovative organization and the priorities it has lifted into the public
domain from it’s massive public outreach effort.
Charter School Finance:
Eric Premack, Co-Director of CSDC
Reese Lord, Founder and Director, LEP High
~ Oregon’s charter schools face significant challenges in balancing
their budgets while providing sustainable and high-quality instruction.
This session identifies key charter school planning and operating strategies
and practices that can help to identify sustainable budgeting practices
along with reviewing key policy and practice issues that govern charter
schools’ funding. Specific issues that this session will address
include typical charter school revenues and expenses, the flow of funding
from districts to charter schools, “life after the federal grant,”
and fiscal reporting. A model comprehensive budget will be shared and
discussed, as will other strategies designed to position participants
for fiscal solvency.
Charter Renewal Process:
Randy Harnisch, Oregon School Boards Association Legal Services
~ This session will review the charter renewal process as it was amended
in 2005 and will include a review of the proposed administrative rules.
Charter School Governance:
Eric Premack, Co-Director, Charter Schools Development Center
~ Effective governance practices are one of the largest factors in a
charter school’s overall success. It is also one of the greatest
insurance policies against revocation and non-renewal. This session
provides valuable information to board members, directors/principals
and other charter leaders, specifically with regard to the primary roles
and responsibilities of the board and school director and top effective
board practices.
Classroom Strategies for Managing Behavioral Concerns, Teaching
& Socializing the Student with Autism and/or Asperser Syndrome:
Terre J. Glahn, Ph.D., Director, Behavior Resource Center
~ Students with Autism including Asperser Syndrome (ASD) can fit well
within the typically more flexible Charter School approach. However,
this requires simple, consistent and individualized modifications to
classroom curriculum and culture. Therefore, many parents of such children
with social skills needs, behavioral concerns, sensory input restrictions
and/or motivational challenges. This presentation will address each
one of these four areas of concern. Real, simple and specific instructional
strategies for individualizing and successfully tackling these concerns
will be presented. Curriculum, classroom arrangement, teacher style,
and administrative support will be separately addressed. Dr. Glahn will
distribute a booklet to all participants which delineates tried and
true techniques that have been used in Public, Private and Charter Schools
for over 20 years. Session participants will be able to use this information
in their classrooms on Monday. ASD need not be a mystery or a stumbling
block for facilitating successful learning within the Charter School
Classroom. Charter School Teachers can actually be the leaders in demonstrating
how to successfully include the student with ASD while not compromising
the classroom’s obligation to all students’ successful and
enhanced learning.
Community
of Kindness - Beyond Manners, Ensuring a School Community of Pervasive
Positive Regard:
Terre J. Glahn, Ph.D., Director, Behavior Resource Center
Holly Denman, Principal at Cascade Heights Public Charter School
Melanie Adams, Teacher at Cascade Heights Public Charter School
~ School as Community needs to be shaped and formed over time to become
places of increased positive impact for students, teachers, and classrooms
as a whole. This presentation will present the three separate but parallel
components unifying Community of Kindness. These components are: Conceptual
and background, Systems needed to be in place, and Classroom adoption
using experiential instructional approaches.
Connecting Students with the Community:
Denise Velasco, Teacher at Network Charter School
Wendy McKenzie, Teacher at Network Charter School
Billy Hughes, Teacher at Network Charter School
~ Would you like to connect your students to expertise in your community?
This session features three charter school educators who teach standards-based,
credit bearing courses to mixed groups of student in grandees 7-12.
They will explain three ways they weave community expertise and community-based
applications of knowledge and skills into their standards-based high
school classes.
Control Risk, Control Price:
Robert Hoover, Risk Management Advisor Fornier Group
~ This session will help public charter schools understand how controlling
their risk will help them control their long term costs of insurance.
This requires knowing: What drives price? What is risk? How do we create
choices? This session will also address critical policies and practices
that charter schools can adopt to minimize and mitigate their risk.
District-Charter Relationships:
Elaine Drakulich, Superintendent of Sister’s School District
Tim King, Director of Clackamas Middle College and Clackamas Web Academy
~ Elaine and Tim will present ideas to strengthen charter and school
district relations. Evaluation, board meeting and contract renewal processes
are among the topics they will cover.
Facilities Financing:
Arianne Newton, Community Development Coordinator Trillium Charter
School
Tye Burgess, Vice President Public Finance, Wells Fargo
Kim Dempsey, Business Development Officer, NCB Capital Impact
~ Come learn how we purchased and refinanced our building using both
conventional and non-conventional financing. Learn the intricacies of
the tax exempt bond market and how to present your school to potential
investors. We will share our story and lessons learned as well as answer
your technical questions about how to navigate this complicated but
critical part of the charter school world.
Family Approach to Serving High Risk Youth:
Michael Warner, Co-Director of Phoenix, Oregon’s Armadillo
Technical Institute
~ This session will focus on Systematic approach for including the families
of high risk youth in the education of their children: Understanding
what makes a family High Risk, Intake and Information Strategies, Creating
an Inviting Atmosphere.
Federal Charter School Grants, what’s the Focus?:
Teresa Schneiderman & Margaret Bates, Oregon Dept. of Education,
Education Specialists
~ The Federal Grant has undergone some changes in the last five years.
This session will be about the changes, processes and different foci
of the grant programs.
“Highly Qualified” Staffing Requirements for Charter
School Staff:
Donna Foxley, Secretary of Education’s Regional Representative
for Region X
Bev Pratt, Education Specialist at the Oregon Dept. of Education
~ This session will provide an overview and details regarding federal
and Oregon requirements for charter school staff qualifications, including
licensed and registered teachers and paraprofessionals.
LEP High Off-Site Visit:
~ The Leadership and Entrepreneurship Public (LEP) Charter High School,
also known as Leap High, is in its second year as a school. LEP includes
150 9th and 10th grade students from nine area school districts and
eighteen high school neighborhoods. All students focus on advanced studies
in Leadership and Entrepreneurship, while engaging in project-based
learning, interdisciplinary studies, and college preparation. LEP High
School has a longer instructional day and year for students and is proud
of having a great staff and beautiful facility.
Life Cycle of a Charter School:
Reese Lord, Founder and Director at LEP
Anita Ott, Principal, South Columbia Family School
Stephanie Hinkle, Director, Trillium Charter School
~ In this session, we will talk about common experiences in the development
and implementation of charter schools. Understanding when the problem
is related to the age and development of a school and when it is not
is key to addressing problems and concerns. This session will try to
put these issues into perspective.
Maintaining and Restoring Harmony:
Mary Leighton, Executive Director of NCS
Sharla Gilliam, Student Services Coordinator of NCS
Darren Reiley, Director at Peace Village
~ Network Charter School is weaving together a system that provides
students with support, healing, and boundaries, while engaging staff
in creating a stronger collaborative professional community. Our goal
is to establish harmony, what the Navajo people call hozho, to help
students replace the internal chaos that arises from the challenges
of their lives, so they can walk in beauty. The system includes a flexible
and increasingly reliable set of organizational structures and agreements
that will be included in the presentation.
Making Your Mark: Branding and Marketing Your Charter School:
Jill Wells, Manager, Information Services, CSDC
~ How does your school communicate its unique identity and its successes
to the world? School image can help motivate students and parents, attract
high quality teachers, administrators and board members to the school,
increase funders’ interest, gain political support, and more.
This session will show you how to apply marketing and branding best
practices to your charter school, and will emphasize building credibility
and strengthening school culture.
Measuring Student Achievement Over Time:
Patrick Dugan, Partner Relations Representative, Northwest Evaluation
Association
~ Come and learn how NWEA’s computerized adaptive assessments
and resources help educators measure and easily understand individual
student achievement and growth in achievement. Measuring grade level
standards is important, but when teachers need to know about each child
in their classroom, whether they are performing at grade level or not,
a different way to measure is needed. These highly formative tests are
aligned to the content standards of Oregon, are connected to an instructional
component and give immediate results that include normative values.
Media Relations:
Betsy Hammond, Education Reporter for the Oregonian
Julia Silverman, Education Reporter for the Associated Press
~ This session will offer an insider’s view of how the media makes
decisions about what stories and what angles to cover. It will include
the do’s and don’ts for getting your school or program covered
in the local newspaper and getting your viewpoint fairly included in
news coverage.
Meeting Facilitation - Running a meeting without being run over:
Bill Maher, Director of Milwaukie Academy of the Arts
~ Running meetings for some is a necessary evil. Running meetings effectively
is, for some, a magic act. This session will help anyone plan, organize,
prepare for and handle meetings at various levels. Emphasis is on strategies
to structure effective meetings and how to keep meetings on track, even
when dealing with difficult topics or difficult people.
No Child Left Behind: Update:
Donna Foxley, Secretary of Education’s Regional Representative
for Region X
Dean Kern, Director of the Charter Schools Program (CSP) for the US
Dept. of Education
~ Leaders from the U.S. Department of Education will provide a status
update and field questions regarding the timing and details of the potential
reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.
Online Learning and Charter Schools:
Gary Tempel, Superintendent of Scio School District
~ Charter schools in Oregon use technology in a range of ways, from
students integrating technology into brick-and-mortar classrooms, and
students taking a class or two online, to students taking their entire
curriculum online. This session will include a number of presenters
who currently provide this entire range in Oregon charter schools.
Opal School Off-Site Visit:
~ Opal School is a preschool and K-5 public charter school of the Portland
Children’s Museum. The school opened in 2001 and currently serves
118 children in four mixed-age classrooms. The school practices an inquiry-based
approach to learning through the languages of the arts and sciences.
The mission of the school is to strengthen public education by provoking
fresh ideas concerning environments where imagination, creativity and
the wonder of learning thrive.
Policy 101 for Charter Schools:
Peggy Holstedt, Policy Specialist, Oregon School Boards Association
Joni Gilles, Director, Oregon Department of Education
~ This session will address: what is policy, the importance of policy,
the legal foundation for policy, a policy development process, common
policy errors, a policy manual structure, and OSBA policy services.
School Accreditation:
Ron Breyne, President-Elect, Oregon NAAS Accreditation Team
~ NAAS accreditation brings your charter school outside validation by
the national/international body that accredits America’s schools,
reciprocal credit acceptance by member schools and colleges, and provides
an effective framework for school improvement. This session answers
the question, “Why accreditation?,” describes the process
for achieving accreditation, and offers solutions for meeting standards.
Questions germane to your school and situation will also be answered.
Socratic Seminar:
Sean Gallagher, Language Arts Teacher at Clackamas Middle College
Ryan DeGregorio, Service Learning Instructor and Teacher at Clackamas
Middle College
~ Socratic questioning recognizes that questions, not answers, are the
driving force in thinking. Socratic seminars explore ideas, values,
and issues drawn from readings or art works chosen for their richness.
They provide a forum to expand participants’ cultural awareness.
Leaders of the Socratic Seminar help make sense of a text and of their
own thinking by asking questions about reasoning, evidence, connections,
examples, and other aspects of good thinking…. A good seminar
is devoted to making meaning rather than mastering information. In today’s
session, participants will receive a thorough background about the principles
of the Socratic technique, student testimony, and a focused instruction
that will help infuse this practice immediately into the classroom.
Standards Based Service Learning:
Melanie Marrone, Principal at Oregon Service Learning Academy
~ Melanie will be sharing how standards-based service learning works
at OCSLA and how students earn credit through service projects. Two
students will then present their “exhibitions” which is
a required component of the program. Exhibitions will highlight the
student projects, the standards they met, and how they met them.
Start Smart: Charter School Development:
Eric Premack, Co-Director, Charter Schools Development Center
Kaaren Heikes, Oregon CSDC Director
~ This session is ideal for people seeking an introduction to charter
schools, as well as for those that know they want to start a charter
school and are ready to design the details of the school or write their
charter proposal. Participants will receive an overview of practical
information and strategic insider tips on how to start an Oregon public
charter school, as well as the four stages of charter school development:
school design, charter proposal creation, charter negotiation, and school
start-up.
Student Internships:
Susan Roberts, School to Careers Coordinator and Counselor with
North Clackamas School District
Emily LeCompte, Teacher at Clackamas Middle College
~ The Senior Internship is one of the distinctive of Clackamas Middle
College and Clackamas Web Academy providing students with a capstone
experience that also helps them richly transition into “what comes
next.” This session will include an overview of the Internship
structure, reflecting the different designs created for the two schools.
Resources for finding internships along with a model for partnering
with local community colleges for college credit will also be shared.
Student Led Conferences:
Fara Tucker, School Counselor, LCSW
~ This presentation will include the LEP High model for Student Led
Conferences, a description of how students prepare for them through
Advisory, a reflection on the victories and challenges of this process
from students, faculty and parents and conference prep materials.
Taking the Mystery out of Public Meetings Law:
Greg McKenzie, Leadership Services Director, Oregon School Boards
Association
~ Explore the Oregon Public Meetings Law and its impact on your job
as a charter school board member. When is it appropriate to hold executive
session, who is allowed to attend and what can be discussed? Find out
about those pesky rules that give the public the right to observe your
meetings about school business.
Supporting Students’ Emotional and Mental Health:
Michael Ralls, Assistant Principal at New Urban High School
~ New Urban High School currently offers a wide array of mental and
emotional supports for its students, including support groups for smoking
intervention, domestic violence, girls’ empowerment, and stress
and anger management. This charter school also recently partnered with
Outside In to provide a mobile medical facility on school grounds once
a week as well as f full time Drug and Alcohol Counselor in our school,
and also have received a School Based Health Center Planning Grant from
the State of Oregon. This session will provide participants with the
school’s history with these projects, successes and failures,
current programs, suggestions for getting started, making connections,
grant opportunities, and next steps.
Teacher and Principal Evaluation Models and Tools:
Don Wildfang
~ This session will have models and tools to evaluate charter school
teachers and principals. We will discuss the clinical supervision model
as a systems approach for your school and share anecdotal lessons learned.
The Board role in evaluation process for directors will also be discussed.
Using the Power of Small to Improve Student Achievement:
Karen Phillips, Director Oregon Small Schools Initiative (OSSI)
Lorna Fast Buffalo Horse, Director Leadership and Entrepreneurship Public
Charter High School (LEP)
Gaylen Brannon, E3 Initiative
~ The three presenters will share finding from their work with intentionally
small schools on how school size can be used as an asset to positively
affect school culture, policies and practices, and ultimately, student
achievement.
Special Session: Counterpart Conversations
| District Sponsors | Facilitator: Mike Hyder, Oregon City School District |
| K-8 Charters | Facilitator: Stephanie Hinkle, Trillium Charter School |
| 9-12 Charters | Facilitator: Mike Warner, Armadillo Technical Institute |
| Developers | Facilitator: Tammy Kennedy, Ivy Montessori Charter School |
Special Session: Regional Meetings
| Southern Region | Facilitator: Ron Breyne, Phoenix School |
| Mid-Willamette Valley | Facilitator: Dan Johnson, Howard Street Charter School (tentative) |
| Central/Eastern Region | Facilitator: Donna Howard, International School of the Cascades |
| Portland Metro Area | Facilitator: Bill Lesh, Center for Advanced Learning |
