This Week In Education: Millot: Legal But Questionable Stategies to Control Charter Boards

This Week In Education: Millot: Legal But Questionable Stategies to Control Charter Boards
Millot: Legal But Questionable Stategies to Control Charter Boards

Sometimes you can protect yourself from board members that you chose, by getting undated letters of resignation from the start that can be acted on by us at any time.... Probably the most important concept that needs to be grasped by potential and sitting board members for our new schools going forward is that Imagine owns the school, not just the building.

Denis Bakke, President, to Imagine Schools developers, directors and principals (Sep. 4, 2008)
The slippery slope towards a captive charter school board begins with two moves entirely within the law. The first is to recruit and develop boards rather than approach ones that arise independently from their communities. The second involves facility financing.

It should be obvious that a board recruited and developed by an MO employee is a very different negotiating partner than one sparked by a group of committed citizens or a local nonprofit service organization. It certainly reduces the MO's client acquisition costs. It may be noteworthy that Alternative Public Schools (APS), the predecessor of the "Beacon" in Chancellor Beacon Academies - the EMO Bakke bought in 2004 for CMO Imagine - pioneered the practice.