The Basic Premise of a “Charter Promises” Document
When a charter was granted to your school, your organization presented a plan for how to achieve certain results, articulated to your authorizer in your charter application, and subsequent charter contract and accountability plan.
These results are the promises your organization’s board has made to uphold and deliver, as stewards of the public trust.
- An effective board focuses on these results.
- The management team is responsible for developing the best means to achieve these desired results.
- Charter applications are extremely dense, complicated documents, ranging from 100 to 400 pages.
- A great part of the charter application is really implementation strategies, which belong to the management team. Good implementation strategies should be constantly evolving based on real-life success.
- The “promises” or results belong to the board and should not change unless there is healthy discussion with between the board and the CEO.
- A Charter Promises document takes the very long, unwieldy charter application and distills it down to a chart form that clarifies the key promises and implementation strategies.
- At least annually, the full board and the CEO should discuss this document and monitor how well the organization is doing in reaching its promises.
- We recommend that the CEO and the management team create this document and receive input from the full board and relevant committees.
- Items in italics represent promises. All others are implementation strategies.
- In the DOE column: Items marked “Major” are considered a major change to our charter and require the Board of Education’s approval for an amendment.
- In the DOE column: Items marked “Minor” are considered a minor change to our charter and require the Commissioner of Education’s approval for an amendment.
- # = the page number in our charter application.
# |
Promise |
DOE |
|
School Characteristics |
|
|
BOT will be a small school with a strong school community and an extended day designed to meet students academic, social and emotional needs.
|
|
5 |
The school will be small: approximately 40 students per grade, with a total enrollment of about 300 students in the middle and high schools combined. |
Major |
9 |
Our school day will run from 8:00 am until 4:30 pm except Wednesdays, when students will be released at 4:00 pm to allow faculty to meet |
Minor |
9b |
School will open at 8:00 am for breakfast, and the school day will begin at 8:30 am |
|
9c |
Each day, there will be a 30 minute school-wide meeting, 30 minutes of sustained silent reading, 30 minutes for lunch, and a 30 minute Finale period |
|
10 |
We will have a school year of approximately 200 days |
Minor |
14 |
All students will participate in a school-wide daily silent reading period. |
|
126 |
The school will be known as the BOT Academy Charter School (“BOT,” for short). |
Minor |
127 |
BOT serves 9 communities of Suffolk, Driscoll, Clarksburg, Lunenburg, Hancock, North Essex, Milton, Hamilton, and New City. |
Major |
128 |
BOT serves grades 6–12. |
Major |
|
BOT’s schedule will allow for significant collaboration among the faculty. |
|
8
|
Teachers will have one month in the summer and two hours every school day for collaborative planning and professional development. |
|
66 |
Students will be released early every Wednesday to allow teachers to meet as subject-discipline teams or work with elective teachers. |
|
|
Curriculum |
|
|
General |
|
|
BOT will integrate arts and technology throughout a college preparatory curriculum aligned with the State Curriculum Frameworks.
|
|
1 |
The curriculum will be college preparatory. |
Major |
1a |
The curriculum will prepare students for the STATE exams. |
Major |
2 |
Students will study humanities, mathematics, and science, and will also learn about and use art and technology in every class, not just in discrete elective classes. |
Major |
|
Instruction will be performance-based and assessments will be based on achievement of well-defined standards. |
|
7 |
The school will emphasize inquiry-based and performance-based learning. |
Major |
17 |
We will integrate the acquisition of basic skills and knowledge with the development of critical thinking skills. |
|
26 |
Each grade will grapple with an essential question that serves to focus learning for the year. |
|
28 |
We will utilize in all classes participatory activities that allow students to incorporate personal experiences and apply extant knowledge. |
Major |
29 |
Regular exhibitions of student work will be a major feature of the school. |
|
30 |
We will provide access to experts and practitioners who can give students substantive feedback and model professional standards of quality. |
|
|
Teachers will collaborate to create an interdisciplinary curriculum and to address individual student needs. |
|
6 |
The school will incorporate team teaching in every grade. |
|
6a |
Teachers will be able to focus on small groups of students and work collaboratively to address their students’ individual needs. |
|
72 |
When the teachers come together each August for four weeks of planning prior to the arrival of students, they will adapt and arrange the benchmarks into scope and sequences that reflect the resources in the community in the coming year (e.g., exhibitions, performances). |
|
|
Students will become self-directed, independent learners |
|
18 |
Students will have personal education plans (PEPs). |
|
19 |
Each PEP will include both academic goals, such as research skills or content mastery, and non-academic goals, such as being on time, cooperation or fitness. |
|
31 |
Students may be grouped in multiple ways, for example, homogeneous groups for learning basic skills and heterogeneous groups for exploring complex ideas. |
|
32 |
We will recognize students’ developmental stages by starting with concrete ideas and addressing more abstract concepts as students mature cognitively. |
|
33 |
We will provide a variety of learning opportunities for students with diverse learning styles and academic strengths. |
|
34 |
We will provide educational software and the Internet to permit students to work at their own pace and pursue their individual interests. |
|
27 |
Lessons will reference large concepts and themes, pose complex problems with multiple solutions, and use multidisciplinary approaches that require students to expand their frameworks of understanding. |
|
64 |
We will explore the possibility of expanding our curricular offerings via online courses through providers such as Apex Learning or Virtual High School. |
|
|
Arts Curriculum |
|
|
Students will study the arts (all disciplines) both in their own right and integrated in their college preparatory curriculum.
|
|
2a |
Our students will study drama, music, dance, visual arts, computers, and other digital technology, both as subjects in their own right and as themes integrated into the study of other subjects. |
|
2c |
Our approach to arts education is informed by Discipline-Based Arts Education, a conceptual framework developed by the Getty Education Institute for the Arts. |
|
3 |
We plan to work with local museums, art schools, performance companies, and colleges to provide students with access to facilities and professional artists and programs. |
|
2b |
Our students will become familiar with four major arts disciplines—drama, dance, visual arts, and music—and by the end of their high school careers will have developed a deep understanding in at least one area. |
|
35 |
Students will have elective classes such as art, computer science, wellness, or foreign language. |
|
36 |
Electives will range from one to two quarters in length. |
|
|
Technology Curriculum |
|
|
Technology will be integrated throughout the college-prep curriculum. Students will have regular access to technology and will learn how to use technology effectively. Budget permitting, all students will be assigned a laptop computer.
|
|
4 |
Every student will be provided a laptop computer to use in every class to prepare them for a world that relies on information and communication technology. |
|
60 |
Students will have regular access to computers, the Internet, and word-processing, spreadsheet, database, communication, publishing, and art applications. |
|
61 |
We will seek educational software for each discipline that fits with our curriculum and the State Frameworks. |
|
62 |
In the middle school, students will take electives that teach them basic computer operations and keyboarding fluency, and how to use technology as a productivity, communication, and research tool. |
|
63 |
At the high school level, students will have opportunities to study computer languages. |
|
|
Ela Curriculum |
|
|
The ELA standards that students will achieve will be aligned with the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks.
|
|
21 |
Students will participate in a regular literacy workshop within their humanities class to sharpen their language skills. |
|
37 |
Our approach to literature will be informed by the shared inquiry method of the Great Books Foundation where students learn to search together for answers to fundamental questions raised by a text. |
|
38 |
Literature selection for each grade will be coordinated with the social science curriculum. |
|
42 |
Students will write regularly; consistent writing procedures such as the Collins Writing Program will be taught and used throughout the school. |
|
|
Social Sciences Curriculum |
|
|
The Social Sciences standards that students will achieve will be aligned with the State Curriculum Frameworks.
|
|
43 |
History, geography, economics, and civics will be integrated into thematic lessons that align with the State Frameworks. |
|
44 |
Middle school students will focus on ancient world history and early United States history. |
|
45 |
High school students will focus on modern world history and 20th century United States history. |
|
46 |
Curriculum materials will be selected that promote both collaborative inquiry, such as the History Alive!, series and the use of primary sources such as Jackdaw Publications. |
|
47 |
Only textbooks that come with rich supplemental materials and activities will be considered (e.g., McDougal Littell history and literature series). |
|
48 |
Students will be expected to master social-science methods such as historiography and economic modeling. |
|
49 |
The social sciences curriculum will also take advantage of computers and the Internet for research and simulations, and emphasize art history and the role of technology in society. |
|
|
Science Curriculum |
|
|
The Science standards that students will achieve will be aligned with the State Curriculum Frameworks.
|
|
39/57 |
We will consult with science programs such as the Modeling for Understanding in Science Education (MUSE) Project at the University of Wisconsin to adapt their educational units and select appropriate additional materials. |
|
40/58 |
We will work with professors at nearby colleges to develop lessons and laboratory experiences. |
|
54 |
The science curriculum will employ spiraling to reinforce scientific themes and concepts |
|
55 |
Students in the middle school will cover earth and life science. |
|
56 |
High school students will cover biology, chemistry, and physics. |
|
59 |
We will connect many arts learning areas with science study, such as examination of art processes, chemical properties of materials, conservation, physics of movement and force, earth art, landscape architecture, use of scientific tools in art-making (e.g., perspective, camera obscura, motion-capture technologies), and properties of light and light-based media (e.g., video). |
|
|
Mathematics Curriculum |
|
|
The Mathematics standards that students will achieve will be aligned with the STATE Curriculum Frameworks.
|
|
50 |
We will seek mathematics curricula that supports spiraling, that addresses central concepts repeatedly but in increasing complexity. |
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