We hope you all have time to be thankful, rest and break bread with family and friends this week – and are heading into the remainder of the year rested on a high note. Here at DCSC, we have been hard at work strategically supporting your work of demanding equity and integration. A few highlights from the Fall include:
and ready to end
- UnifiED school launch kickoff: DCSC welcomed this year’s UnifiED expander fellow, Anthony Grant, proposing to launch Liberate Academy in Las Vegas, Nevada. We are grateful for the strategic partnership between Anthony, our partners at Opportunity 180, and excellent school visit host sites, Compass Charter School and Prospect Schools, for their work on this project;
- Communities of Practice: Four Communities of Practice, bringing together 82 folks from member schools, are off and running and we can’t wait to see their work come to life;
- Annual Convening: DCSC and the member planning committee is hard at work, strategically planning a convening that meets members needs. We can’t wait to see you all at the Annual Convening, January 26-27, 2023, in Kansas City. Early Bird registration is now open!
- DCSC board members: We are pleased to introduce Natalie Hester, Co-President of External Affairs of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, and Amanda Fenton, Partner at Capitol Advocacy Partners, as DCSC’s newest board directors. We are honored and excited to have Natalie and Amanda bring their expertise in charter policy and implementation to our board.
We’d also like to thank Veronica Brooks-Uy, Vice President of Policy and Diversifying the Profession Initiatives, National Association of Charter School Authorizers, and Halley Potter, Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation, for their service on the DCSC Board of Directors. As founding board members of the coalition, their dedication and commitment to equity and intentional integration helped set our foundation.
In this newsletter, we highlight Two Rivers Public Charter School, DCSC member of the year. Two Rivers embodies the DCSC core value of strategy. During the covid years, Two Rivers embarked on a thoughtful, multi-year journey of becoming an exemplary anti-racist, multicultural organization. They created heterogenous race and equity crews that met regularly to develop the capacity for everyone in the organization to have brave conversations about race and the inequities within the school system. As a result of their strategy, on a most recent staff survey, 95% of staff were scoring “accomplished” or “advanced” in 4 of the 5 learning targets.