School's In

School's In

Competing against the $33.5 billion Florida public schools system is a Herculean task. One national charter school company is doing some heavy lifting on the Gulf Coast.

EDUCATION by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

Justin Matthews faced the biggest business challenge of his life when he moved from Fort Lauderdale to southern Sarasota County early this year.

The 31-year-old was charged with opening a new charter elementary school in North Port, the onetime outpost of a town off Interstate 75 that has grown into the most populated city in the county.

Matthews' tasks, working for Arlington Va.-based Imagine Schools, included meeting with hundreds of parents, hiring a staff of more than 30 teachers and administrative personnel and making sure the shell of a building would be school-ready by the Aug. 18 opening.

He had seven months to do it.

What made Matthews' job infinitely tougher, however, wasn't checking up on construction crews, meeting with parents morning and night or interviewing scores of potential teachers. Instead, it was the competition: Florida's public schools.

It was a clear David vs. Goliath moment for Matthews, mostly because he had to earn nothing less than an 'A' in the startup phase to prove the school, Imagine Charter School at North Port, belonged in the education system. A failing charter school, Matthews was told by his bosses, simply closes its doors as opposed to a public school that can underperform for years and linger in its mediocrity.

"The unique part is that if we aren't any good, we fold," says Fred Damianos, Imagine's regional vice president for the Gulf Coast region and a 30-year veteran of Florida's public school systems. "If students don't show up because our product is bad, we crash and burn."

Matthews is a onetime elementary school teacher in Gainesville whose boyish looks and caffeinated disposition belie the stereotype of a bureaucratic pencil-pushing principal. So he pressed on. And the numbers bare out his efforts: The school set a record for the largest opening of a charter school ever in Sarasota County, with 511 students enrolled in K-6 classes from the first day. Parents have been raving about the school, too, just one month into its freshman year.

So much for Goliath. "[Districts] build schools so they can fill seats," says Matthews. "We look at this as an opportunity for the community to build its own school."

Parental choice

Matthews and Imagine weren't completely fighting the Sarasota County School District. The Sarasota County School Board eventually signed off on Imagines' charter school application in North Port, but in public comments some board members made before and after the application process, it became clear the approval was based more on a state law that mandated it than an overwhelming desire it held in having a charter school. The school board even denied Imagines' first application in North Port.

And Sarasota is considered by some charter school officials and executives as one of the more accessible counties in the state. A charter school, designed to give parents more options than the county-mandated public schools, is essentially a privately run school that receives the same taxes a public school does.

The Florida Legislature approved a charter school law in 1996 and since then, according the Florida Department of Education, the state's charter school base has grown from five to about 360 schools, making the state a national leader in charter school student enrollment with more than 100,000 students.

"Sarasota is about as friendly as you could be with regards to charter schools," says Karl Huber, a development director for Imagine's Gulf Coast and West Florida division. "But they are still very paternalistic."

Companies that run charter schools in Florida can be nonprofit or for-profit entities, with the biggest caveat being that the company must have a local board of directors that can be available to school district and board officials. Once a charter school opens, the principals are allowed to alter county education policies and procedures to fit the specific school.

Beating the competition

But what school districts across Florida have over Matthews and companies such as Imagine is a long history of doing things one way - its own, for better or worse. It's a stark difference, and one Imagine hopes to exploit to its advantage over the next few years, with Florida, and the Gulf Coast specifically, as one of its largest proving grounds. Imagine opened a Gulf Coast division in 2006.

Imagine, a nonprofit entity which reported $131 million in revenues last year, opened four new schools on the Gulf Coast in 2008 to go with the 80 it currently operates in 13 states and Washington D.C. The new Gulf Coast schools, in addition to the one in North Port, include one in Lakewood Ranch, Land O'Lakes and downtown St. Petersburg. And several more are planned for the Gulf Coast in 2009, including the Palmer Ranch area of Sarasota County and one for the Riverview neighborhood of Hillsborough.

Imagine's plan is to attack the status quo mentality of the public school system, in Florida and nationwide, using an education model built around a triangulated system of focusing on three points: Reading, writing and math. Using a program developed by a Florida State professor called Project CHILD, Imagine Schools work other subjects and disciplines, such as social studies, science, physical education and character development, into the daily curriculum.

The system uses a cluster approach, where students rotate every 90 minutes between a reading, writing and math teacher. In addition, one pointed difference between the Project CHILD program and the public school system is that students stay with the clusters, and the teachers, for at least three years. A Primary Cluster, for instance covers students in kindergarten through second grade, while an Intermediate Cluster covers students in grades three through five.

Within the clusters, says Matthews, the students have a chance to learn through a combination of hands on activities, computers and old-school pencil and paper. "Students prefer to learn this way," says Matthews. "They need to be able to get feedback and to touch stuff."

The proof is in the smiles - and improved test scores - of the students, say Matthews and Vic Rebmann, a North Port resident with two students at the Imagine School at North Port. "The kids have never been happier," says Rebmann, whose children previously attended two public elementary schools in North Port.

While the North Port school has been an early success story, the Imagine School at St. Petersburg as been a struggle. Located in a converted bank in a gritty neighborhood just west of Tropicana Field, the school, with about 350 students, has fallen short of its opening day goal of 450 children.

Two specific problems hit the school over the summer. First, its principal died of a heart attack and after that, construction work on the building slowed. The building actually didn't get a certificate of occupancy until the day before it opened, Huber says, and even that one was a temporary certificate.

"Between facility and administration problems, that school just isn't doing that great," says Huber. "That has been our problem child."

Filling a need

The feisty, us-against-them attitude that permeates throughout Imagine Schools comes partially from its founder, Dennis Bakke, who rose to prominent positions with both the federal government and in private industry.

In government, Bakke served as Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Federal Energy Administration under President Ford, a position he was appointed to after working in leadership roles with the Office of Management and Budget and the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare.

After leaving government work in 1981, Bakke co-founded AES Corp., a power and energy company that he helped grow from a start up to one of the largest power companies in the world, with annual revenues surpassing $10 billion, assets worth more than $40 billion and a presence in 30 countries. Today, AES is a $13 billion publicly traded energy firm.

While working for both the government and in a large corporate environment, Bakke saw first-hand the problems when seemingly easy decisions were tied up in bureaucracy. His philosophy was always to push decisions down to people at the levels where control made sense, a theory he turned into a best-selling book called Joy at Work.

It was that book and philosophy that was genesis for Imagine Schools, which Bakke founded, along with his wife Eileen Bakke, in 2004. The couple bought another charter school company, re-named it Imagine Schools and turned it into a nonprofit in 2005. Eileen Bakke, a teacher at the National Cathedral School in Washington D.C. and onetime education writer for a PBS children's TV show, served as the school side to her husband's business-first approach.

The combination of both approaches has paid off. Most of Imagine's executives, principals and administrators maintain a bottom-line focused small business owner's attitude toward their work on a daily basis. "When you do a good job, there are revenues coming in," says Kathy Helean, a development director for Imagine's Gulf Coast and West Florida region. "When you don't, you struggle."

Most of Imagine's executive personnel, such as Damianos, came from public schools, where they saw the success and the problems that system has up close. Damianos, for example, worked his way up from an industrial arts teacher to become principal of a middle school and ultimately a high school in Miami-Dade County. Helean worked in secondary schools for the U.S. Department of Defense before joining Imagine.

All of Imagines' success and growth in Florida and on the Gulf Coast, however, has left one gaping hole: Middle schools and high schools. But that could change in the next few years, based on the company's model of following the community and parent-based need.

"By the time our students hit middle school," Damianos says, "our parents are usually asking for a high school."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Businesses. Imagine Schools

Industry. Education

Key. Company is looking to grow in Florida and the Gulf Coast by taking on the public schools system.

at a glance

Florida charter schools

Year Charter schools

2001-2002 201

2002-2003 223

2003-2004 257

2004-2005 301

2005-2006 334

2006-2007 356

2007-2008 358

Total enrollment, Florida Charter Schools, K-12

Year Students, K-12

2001-2002 40,465

2002-2003 53,016

2003-2004 67,512

2004-2005 82,531

2005-2006 92,214

2006-2007 98,755

2007-2008 104,319

Source: Florida Department of Education