Renewal guidance for public charter schools

The decision to renew — or not — is complex work, requiring the balancing of diverse and often competing interests. The global pandemic brought even more complexity to authorizing: how to understand and evaluate how schools supported student and community wellness during these unprecedented times and how to make decisions with missing or incomplete statewide school performance data. 

The 2021 NACSA Supplemental Renewal Guidance, written in collaboration with Guerschmide Saint-Ange, can help authorizers and schools jointly think through how the lived experiences of students, families, and communities has been centered since March 2020, and how to include that information to make renewal decisions.

Among the recommendations

1. Engage with schools on how effectively they pivoted from in-person to remote learning to minimize loss of instructional time and what academic programming changes were made to maintain fidelity to their missions;

2. Understand how well schools maintained a positive learning culture, in part by tracking and monitoring attendance and engagement and adjusting outreach as needed; and

3.Learn how the school identified student and family needs and partnered with community organizations to address them across academic, social emotional learning, mental health, nutrition, and housing instability.

These resources also give school leaders the opportunity to share how they managed the continuity of their program in the absence of state assessments.

Authorizers must pursue renewal decisions with the belief that, even with the uncertainty of COVID-19, their mission is to create the environment where high-quality charter schools serve students. Renewal is key to that mission.

Resources

• NACSA’s 2021 Supplemental Renewal Guidance
• Blog Post: School leaders, Renewal is a Time to Tell our Story
• NACSA’s Renewal Application and Guidance
• Guidance for Charter School Authorizers to Ensure Accountability in a Time of Transition
• Guidance and Tools to Ensure Continuity of Learning in a Time of Transition