CHARTER SCHOOL
TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE CENTER

In the 1990s, CEI-PEA recognized that one of the best ways to advance school autonomy in exchange for accountability was to establish a system of charter schools. Building on CEI-PEA’s success in creating new schools and restructuring existing schools, the organization’s leaders advocated for charter schools and helped secure passage of the 1998 charter school legislation in New York State. The Charter School Technical Assistance Center was immediately established to help the first charter applicants develop their plans, which cover such areas as curriculum design, governance, administration, budgeting, assessment and accountability. Once the schools were granted charters, the Center began providing support to help them fulfill the commitments made in their applications. When it became clear that the charter school movement needed its own forum, CEI-PEA organized a coalition that meets regularly to address concerns such as funding, staffing, charter legislation and regulations.

Since charter legislation was passed, CEI-PEA has helped launch more than 30 charter schools. These charter schools have innovative and wide-ranging missions that include modeling best practices in educating autistic children to integrating classical education in the K through 12 system. Several of the schools have become national models, including KIPP Academy, Harlem Day Charter School, Carl C. Icahn Charter School, and Beginning with Children Charter School.

In 2004, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein launched a major charter school initiative in New York City that aims to develop 50 new charter schools by 2008. It is the nation’s first system-sponsored charter school initiative, and CEI-PEA was engaged from the outset to help design it. CEI-PEA is a partner in the initiative, providing a continuum of support that includes concept and application development, identification of facilities, recruitment and development of staff, board development, fundraising, budgeting, assessment and preparation for the charter renewal process.

Charter School Creation & Development Support Services

Following is a description of CEI-PEA’s charter school creation and development support services:

PHASE	SERVICES
Identification of Potential Applicants	CEI-PEA identifies and recruits individuals and groups to create successful charter schools.
Concept Development	Creation of a successful school begins at the moment an individual or group conceives of the idea. Therefore, CEI-PEA provides technical assistance to groups through the concept development phase. These services include: Coaches to help the group refine their concept and embed it within the reality of school creation and operation (e.g. align their target student population with the lottery admissions process). Site visits to successful charter schools to see how schools have been moved from concept to reality, so that they can better shape their concept paper. Meetings with successful charter school leaders to discuss potential roadblocks in school development and strategies to overcome them—strategies that can be included in the concept paper.
Application Development	CEI-PEA provides intensive technical assistance to help organizations develop and submit successful charter applications. For most groups, we will already be working with them at this point, and we continue providing services initiated during the concept development phase. For groups that engage CEI-PEA after approval of their concept, we begin providing those services described above. For all groups, we also provide access to: Successful applications and business plans that they can use to model their own documents. Specialists in the areas of curriculum, instruction, special education, budgeting and other critical aspects of school planning. Templates to help them move past standard portions of the application so that they can focus on its most important parts.
Start-up	CEI-PEA supports successful applicants through the start-up phase by helping them address critical issues such as: Securing facilities Developing an effective board of directors Selecting strong leadership Staffing the school appropriately Recruiting students Building strong relationships with local social, political and educational entities.
Year One	CEI-PEA helps schools through the critical first year by: Providing professional developmentworkshops Helping them address staff and studentcompliance issues Helping them maintain congruence between their application plans andimplementation Helping them establish and meet benchmarks associated with theiraccountability plan Facilitating communication and understanding between the school, authorizer and SED.
Ongoing Implementation	CEI-PEA helps charter schools deal with emerging issues, including staff retention, fundraising and board development. We also help schools prepare for critical assessments such as annual monitoring visits by the DOE and SED.
Facilitation of the Charter School Coalition	CEI-PEA facilitates a coalition of more than 40 public charter schools. This coalition meets regularly to identify emerging challenges and opportunities for charter schools.

 

Resources & Technical Assistance

CEI-PEA has a team of field personnel who are equipped to help charter schools through the creation and development process. If you would like more information about the resources CEI-PEA offers, please contact CEI-PEA Senior Fellow Harvey Newman.