Vision is an image of the future

As part of the process of educating the new Palouse Prairie Board, we have been working on key documents and organizational structures. One of the pieces we found was missing was a Vision Statement. Our November 26 meeting was devoted to talking about our vision for the school and finding words to describe it (appended below). Between then and tonight we drafted various ideas, and Ashley found the following guiding ideas.

Vision Statement
(adopted Dec 3, 2007)

Palouse Prairie School of Expeditionary Learning offers an inclusive, respectful and supportive learning environment that nurtures the individual as a thoughtful participant in our local and global community.

The essential role of vision
Vision is an image of the future.

Having a vision for education is central to school leadership, because vision is a source of motivation and energy. It powerfully shapes practice within a school community. Thus vision needs to be understood, articulated and owned by the whole school community. It provides both a source of inspiration and a frame of reference for developing professional values.

http://www.becal.org.uk/lc/vision/vision.html Becal I think refers to “British Education Council on Assessment and Learning”

"Vision Statements exist to help to achieve clarification and ownership of the school's overall purpose".

Key Ideas
A vision statement is usually the first part of a three-part statement of purpose. The next part is the mission, which is a concrete and localized statement of intent, and the third part is the values that are implicit in the vision and the mission of the school.

Vision: the ideal destination. It is where the school wants to be. It should be challenging, innovative and forward-looking.

Mission: the route to the destination. A particular expression of the vision that is specific to *this* school given its history, context and circumstances. It is a more practical focus on what the school does and will do than the vision statement.

Values: underpin the vision and the mission. No school is value free and it is important to be explicit about those values that are essential to the school achieving its vision. If values are not made explicit, then the values of the most dominant individuals are likely to be those which actually operate in practice.

Total Quality Toolkit by J. Marsh taken from the BeCal website above.

Words we chose to describe our ideas about PPSEL
(Vision meeting Nov 26, 207)

• Active and reflective learning
• Community (for everyone)
• High yet achievable goals, challenging, rigorous, successful
• constructive assessment
• Collaborative, collaboration, interactive way
• Supportive
• explorative learning, curious, active participant,
• safe (physical, cognitive, psychological) learning environment, respectful, respectful participant in our local and global communities
• responsible, personal responsibility
• Inclusive
• ownership
• supported in their efforts to learn
• Innovative
• lifelong learner, passion for learning, self-sustaining adult, life skills
• Excited, joyful
• Environmental, relationship with the environment (outdoor), environmental responsibility
• fun, friendly, warm
• efficient, ordered, professional
• nurturing
• civic engagement

Refining the web strategy

After a Board meeting tonight I'm figuring out more of how to organize the web tools.

This blog now emails to a Google Group (Palouse Prairie), where you can subscribe. The purpose of the blog is to chronicle Board events in detail. There is also a Board Calendar who's RSS appears on this Blog.

For the less addicted, there is another Google Group (Why Palouse Prairie) which can serve as a newsletter for prospective parents. RSS from that also appears on this page.

Google Docs offers a mechanism for posting and editing documents, but the hosting for PDF files is not yet resolved.

Developing a new web strategy

Ashley and I (Nils) were discussing strategies for managing the web presence of Palouse Prairie. Its a public organization, so why do we not make documents public? Why not post most all our business straight to the web?

So, here is where I'm going with that thinking. Blogger (this blog) permits multiple authors posting, so authorize all the Board. Allow comments from people with Blogger accounts.

We already have a Google Calendar. Use it for Agendas and link to Minutes. The Calendar has an RSS feed.

Google Docs allows collaborative writing, and publishing of documents. I can't recall how well it does RSS, but documents could be mentioned in the blog and published from Docs. Docs does not do a great job of formatting, so when a document gets finalized, it should be run through MSWord, then printed to PDF. Its not clear where to store the resulting file.

The website itself is hosted in Google Pages, but last time I was there, it only allowed one person to edit. This is a real problem, which makes that tool unappealing. Perhpas we can dump Google Pages all together. Blogger and Calendar and Docs might do it.

Finally, I have created a PalousePrairie Google Group. This has the advantage that it can allow people to manage their own subscriptions to email. It can be set up are Announce-only. What I'm doing right now is exploring what happens when the blog is linked to send email to the Group. I suspect it will quarantine this post, but maybe (hope) I can teach Groups to just pass through posts.

Rising Again

In August we reported that Palouse Prairie was at a crossroads and asked for new energy and ideas.

Tonight I'm just back from a meeting with parents and educators interested in providing that energy and taking the reins as a new Board. We have several tasks ahead of us but the goal is still to assemble sound answers to the Idaho Charter School Commission's 3-part question put to us last April: Enrollment, Facility and Budget.

Among the pieces for developing that plan, the experience of this summer convinced me that we need a better communications plan, including more transparency and better ways of reaching and networking with interested supporters.

Look for more of that to unfold

Palouse Prairie at a Crossroads

Friends and supporters of Palouse Prairie School,

This is a long message, the key question I have for each of you is near the end.

I'm writing to share progress on the project, and because we have reached a crossroads.

As you recall, we got feedback from the Charter Commission on our Charter in April. There were some revisions to the Charter, but more importantly they asked us to address three issues: budget, facility, and enrollment. We now have in hand a contract to lease a facility to be built by Rob Davis next to the current Silos buildings.

The three issues are really different faces on one problem: the core business challenge of starting and running a school. For purposes of making a budget, the Commission has us use the estimated income of $4400/child enrolled. Bill Rivers and I have worked on the budget multiple times, and with the help of Mary Lang's Moscow Charter School experience. What we find is in agreement with advice we have been given -- to be sustainable a school needs an enrollment of 140 children. That number varies some depending on assumptions like wage levels, cost of facility, or EL consulting contract.

If 140 is a minimum self-sustaining enrollment, the school faces the challenge of how to get there. The Board does not believe that we could credibly expect to enroll 140 kids the first year. Bill and I have each tried opening year numbers ranging from 40 to 75. Most recently we have been focused at 50 in three classrooms on the Silos site.

These small enrollments can be sustained if you add in $150,000/yr Federal start-up grant. This use of "startup" funds to cover operating losses is problematic in that it does not account for how to pay actual startup costs, like buying furniture, etc. It is also problematic to build a budget around funds that have not been secured. We are not sure the Charter Commission will even accept this type of proposal.

The Federal grant runs for three years. Using it as strategy, however, highlights the enrollment side of the problem. If the school starts at 50 children, during the second year in the Silos we could grow to 75 (3 rooms of 25. Not ideal but all the site allows). This is only 1/2 of the numbers needed to be self-sustaining.

If the school continues its third year at the Silos with 75 children, then when the Federal grant ends after year 3, the school will need to close.

If, after two years the school is able to secure and move to a larger facility, enrollment could be larger in year 3. But how much larger? Assume we get 35 more children, making the enrollment 110. That would be a 5 classroom school. For year 4 we'd need to build two more classrooms and add 40 more children. Funding this new facility, and enlarging it is the challenge.

The business to this point will have been losing money, subsidized with Federal grants. If enrollment grows as suggested above, savings each to be used as down payment might be as high as: Year 1- $0; year 2 = $40,000; Year 3 - $80,000 For a total of $120,000. (Speculative, and dependent on good penny pinching).

Because the Board is not confident that this is a responsible strategy without identifying more resources we have decided to not submit a packet to the Charter Commission for the September hearing. Missing this deadline effectively puts the opening date to August 2009.

SUMMARY & CHALLENGE

Assets: A nearly completed charter requiring what we believe to be simple changes and an unsigned lease for a facility at the Silos.
Problem: Grow enrollment fast enough and find a larger facility to keep the school solvent. Find additional cash or donated resources to so the startup grant can be used to fund startup activities.

We need a new vision for how to proceed. It feels like we are close, but the Board is tired and I’m not seeing how to plunge ahead, where to base my faith.

What resource do you have? What insight can you offer?

One answer is you believe this can be done and you are willing to join the Board and figure out how make it happen. We probably need several such volunteers. Another answer is you know a financial "angel" who is willing to make this dream come true. There may be other answers as well.
If there are no significant new developments, the Board intends to disband the Corporation on Sept 30.
Thanks for all your efforts and commitment to this point

Nils for the Board