Overview

Congrats! You submitted your charter application and now you are in the final stretch to authorization. It’s tempting to relax right now, but the reality is there are a few key things that you should be doing to make sure you ace the founding board charter interview and to ensure that once you are chartered (think positively!) you will be well-equipped to sprint towards doors opening

The three major things to accomplish during this phase 

1.   Prepare Your Board for the Charter Interview

·      Ensure that the full board is well-versed in the big picture points of the entire charter application

·      Ensure that the full board is particularly well-versed in the sections they are mostly likely going to be asked to answer in the charter interview

·      Use the charter application review process to develop a shared understanding of the governance/management line during the charter school founding phase

2.   Run Effective Board Meetings

·      Now is a great time to get the full team harnessing the power of BoardOnTrack to streamline your meeting logistics and preparation.

·      In addition, you should run your meetings as if they needed to comply with open meeting law requirements, so when you are chartered you’ll be comfortable with the rules and procedures

            3.   Agree to a Board Expansion Plan Post-Chartering

·      It is quite likely that your founding board will be asked in the charter application phase to describe your board expansion plans.

·      Now is a great time to take stock of the strengths of your board and complete a founding board assessment.

·      Then, as a team, you should prioritize the skills and qualities you need and develop a comprehensive board expansion plan

Ideally, before you submitted your charter application you had the time to walk your entire founding board through the entire charter application and they already feel comfortable with its contents. But, for many founders, the charter application timeline is so tight that this step doesn’t happen until after the charter has been submitted. Not to worry, below you will find steps to guide you through getting the founding board comfortable with the charter application.

Steps to Conduct a Comprehensive Review of the Charter Application

1.   Think strategically about what needs to be shared

Most charter applications are very large documents. They can be hundreds of pages with many complicated attachments.  It’s important as the lead founder to step back and think strategically about what needs to shared with the founding board and in what level of detail. The BoardOnTrack rule of thumb is that the board focuses on results, and the management team focuses on the means to get to the results.  So place much more attention on what the results are that the board will need to hold the CEO accountable to deliver, and less time on nitpicky things about how you will get there. Also if there are sections in your charter application that are pro-forma—meaning state or federal law requires certain language, then make that clear to the board so they know it is something that has to be said and has to be said in a certain way.

Use the charter application evaluator rubric to help you think about which sections should have the most amount of airtime in the review. 

Also think about the sections that the board may be asked to answer questions about directly in the application interview – these tend to be governance, how the board will evaluate the CEO, and big picture questions about the school’s budget.

2.   Map out meetings/timeline

You should be able to review the entire charter with your board in 4-6 hours. Some founding boards like to block out a very long meeting on a Saturday to do this. Others like to chunk it out in several shorter meetings. Either option is fine. Look at the calendar and try to map out your meetings through now and the interview process and think about which sections you will cover and how much time you will allot to each section. 

3.   Develop Charter Application Section Summary Sheet

The next step is to develop a set of “cliff notes” for the board on each of the sections of the charter application. See attached template and example. The idea is that these cliff notes will be short, targeted, and to the point and can contain the essential things every trustee should know, understand and buy into about the school. 

4.   Develop other supporting materials

In addition to the cliff notes you may want to provide the board additional, more detailed information such as a helpful article etc.

See the outstanding power point developed by Peter Boyle of Western Tech summarizing the academic section of their charter application. 

5.   Create carefully planned meeting agendas

Use BoardOnTrack to carefully build out your meeting agendas. Think about how much time you want to spend on each agenda item. To review the charter application sections you should insist that board members come having read the relevant charter sections and the summary sheets and additional supporting material. You should be able to quickly cut to the chase and talk through the big bullets and spend most of the time dialoguing, answering questions and building a team understanding.  If you are new to board meetings remember creating an effective agenda is very similar to creating a lesson plan for a class. You need to know what you want to achieve by the time the bell rings and structure things carefully so you will get there.

See example from Western Tech.

6.    Assign homework

Founding board members should be expected to do a fair amount of homework prior to the meetings. Your meetings will be more productive if everyone truly reads the assigned homework.

Ask trustees to read the charter application sections, the summary sheets, and additional material you think is relevant.

You may want to provide a template for them keep track of their notes and questions. 

  7.   Conduct the meetings & receive meeting feedback

Conduct the meetings as scheduled. If possible have Andrew Collins as an observer to provide you feedback after the meeting.

Some Common Questions:

What is my role at these meetings?

As the lead founder you are in the driver seat during this phase. It is your vision.  You wrote the charter. Your role during the phase is to make sure your founding board understands and supports your vision. You need to be patient while getting your board up to speed.  Ultimately you want the board to help do heavy lifting on the non-academic pieces: facilities, finances, fundraising etc. But, in order to effectively apply their talents, they need to first understand the “why” and see how all the school design pieces fit together. That is what you are trying to do in this phase.  In addition you need to be extremely organized. You want to use the board’s time well. 

What if the board disagrees or pushes back about key topics?

Use the charter application review process to build a team understanding of the governance-management line. Discuss what role if any the board should play in each key section. If the board disagrees about the results (ultimately the board’s purview) you should have a healthy discussion, if the board disagrees about the means to get to the results (management) then you should take it under advisement. 

At this stage, the charter has already been submitted, so you are not in a position to change your answers. You can discuss, debate, and then agree to revisit upon chartering.

Tools to Use

• Charter Application Blank Template
• Charter Application Evaluator Rubric
• NACSA Issue Brief & Diagnostic Tool
• Charter Application Section Summary Sheet Template
• Charter Application Section Summary Sheet Examples
• Western Tech Power Point Example 

Most charter school founders and founding trustees have a steep learning curve on learning to comply with the state’s open meeting law. 

Although you do not have to officially comply with your state’s open meeting law until you officially receive a charter, now is a good time to familiarize your team with the open meeting law requirements.

BoardOnTrack has a number of features that help you comply fairly seamlessly:

·      You can post your agendas and minutes on your website by enabling the public portal

·      Our minute taking feature conforms to open meeting law requirements.

Tips to get up to speed with open meeting law and good meeting practice and general:

·      Ask each trustee to read Board Meetings: A Guide for Charter Schools.

10 free copies were sent to you when you joined BoardOnTrack.

·      Download and share a copy of your state’s open meeting law with your trustees.

·      Print out a copy of the Open Meeting Law Pop Quiz that is located in BoardOnTrack. Ask your legal counsel or staff of your state charter association to provide an answer key for your board. Review this together at an upcoming board meeting.

·      Take the Board Meetings Assessment in BoardOnTrack to establish a baseline of your individual and collective knowledge. Familiarize yourself with the associated resources here and in the Board Meetings section of the resources tab.

·      Complete a series of board meeting observations. We highly recommend that you find an effective charter school board to observe. Ideally you would go to 2 or 3 consecutive meetings. It is helpful to see the same board in action several times.  In BoardOnTrack you will find a board meeting observation checklist to help you get the most out of attending these board meetings.

It is quite likely that your founding board will be asked in the charter application phase to describe your board expansion plans. Now is a great time to take stock of the strengths of your board and complete a founding board assessment.   Then, as a team, you should prioritize the skills and qualities you need and develop a comprehensive board expansion plan.

Recommended Process

·    Read the National Association of Charter School Authorizer’s Issue Brief Good to Govern, which discusses the key ingredients of a successful charter school founding board. Also look at the companion diagnostic tool. You can find both of these at BoardOnTrack's website under free resources www.thehighbar.com.

·    Take the Board Structure, Board Composition and Board Recruitment Assessments in BoardOnTrack to establish a baseline of your individual and collective knowledge. Familiarize yourself with the associated resources in the Board Structure, Board Composition and Board Recruitment sections of the BoardOnTrack resources tab.

·    Download the Board Composition Matrix in BoardOnTrack to help you identify your skill set gaps.

·    Watch the founding board recruitment and expansion training video in BoardOnTrack.