“Imagine Schools, founded in 2004 by Dennis and Eileen Bakke, is now comprised of 73 independently operated school across the nation. Providing a community environment idealized for learning, each Imagine School is uniquely tailored and holds itself to the highest level of quality.
As a tightly knit organization of 73 independently operated schools working across the nation in 12 states and the District of Columbia, Imagine Schools provides a unique community environment idealized for learning. Each Imagine School is uniquely tailored to be a perfect fit for its community, and the school holds itself to a high level of quality, guided by their three shared values of justice, integrity and fun.
Social entrepreneurs Dennis and Eileen Bakke founded Imagine Schools in 2004 as a full-service charter school management organization. Their mission was never to dominate the educational portions of their students’ lives, but to serve as partners with local communities and parents in order to provide the best education possible.
‘We strive to instill our three shared values in our students by giving them as much control over their own means of education as is realistically possible, something that is rare if not absent from many schools around the country,’ said Principal of the Imagine School in Sierra Vista, Ariz., David Snyder. ‘We hold ourselves to the highest standards, and are determined to keep our level of education above national averages. This is accomplished through partnerships with our students, rather than by simply being a partner to our students, rather than simply being an educational provider. We find that the students will strive to succeed, no matter how affluent or deprived their background has been.’
Imagine Sierra Vista serves as a shining example of the ideal that Imagine Schools strives to achieve. Located adjacent to the large military intelligence installation of Fort Huachuca and just 20 miles north of the U.S./Mexico border, the student body is very diverse and transitional.
‘One of our biggest challenges in educating our students is that many are children of military or civilian contractor families,’ Snyder said. Nearly half of the population residing in Sierra Vista is somehow related to or employed by the local military installation. This means that the student may arrive halfway through the school year from a unique background, and will be gone in a matter of a few years or even months.
‘The students come to us from varying backgrounds, and they may be behind or ahead of state and national standards by varying degrees. We strive to ensure that, no matter what level they’ve come to us at, we provide them with a challenging environment that will maintain, or ideally, supersede the national standard. This requires a great degree of personalized learning for each student, especially because many of our students have also been with us from Kindergarten through the 8th grade.’
As a holder of Imagine School’s three shared values, the organization conducts itself through six measures of excellence: parent choice, shared values, academic excellence, character development, economic sustainability and new school development. These six measures go beyond mission statements, and are active components that have brought the schools and its students such an esteemed record of success.
As a charter school, parent choice is a necessary key.
‘We don’t belong to any jurisdiction,’ Snyder said. ‘In a public school district, you can find yourself sequestered off into one school or another based solely upon which street your family lives on. We draw students and teachers from all over the area, and we want parents to choose us because we can provide their children with the best education available.’
Justice, integrity, and fun are the shared values Imagine Schools stands by, which are best represented by the school’s ability to conduct itself as a partner in education, and not solely as an aloof provider. Parents have much more say in the personalized learning plans that their children are given. Additionally, the school puts its students in a position of action, allowing them to directly control their success.
‘All of our extracurricular programs exist as entirely self sustaining entities,’ Snyder said. ‘As part of the learning process, we integrate the concept of budgeting and money management where the students work with the faculty members or mentors who help the students out in running these programs. Lessons in basic life skills, like proper budgeting, are sadly lacking from many school curriculums, and learning these skills early on will serve as a great advantage for the students.’
The Imagine Sierra Vista has worked with their Gardening Club and their food service company, Sodexo for the past two years. The company has agreed to use vegetables produced from the gardens at school as a part of their lunch program. This enacts lessons on community and interpersonal cohesion for both the 30 plus members of the Gardening Club, as well as the 450 students, K-8.
As one might expect of a school 20 miles north of Mexico, language programs constitute a large part of the school curriculum. However, the focus of their language program is not entirely on the Spanish language. Many of the students that attend the Imagine School at Sierra Vista come from international families stationed at the nearby Fort Huachuca, and a great many do not speak English fluently as their first language. The school has a comprehensive ESL program, which caters to students whose native tongue may be French, Polish, Italian or one of many others.
Built as a network of 73 independently operated entities, Imagine Schools each collaborative to establish their own standard that exceeds the traditional national standards. Amongst the 14 schools located in Arizona, the leaders of these schools congregate every month to touch base, share success stories and develop improved systems for their students. Annually, the leaders from all 73 schools across the nation meet for a National Forum to accomplish these same goals on a larger scale.
‘As the effective head of the school, I endeavor to have every single employee take part in the school’s decision making process,’ Snyder said. ‘We know that for the most part, our bus driver is going to be closer to and more knowledgeable about an issue related to school transportation than our registrar might, and thus would be better equipped to make an informed decision.’
Collaboration, imaginative solutions, and independent, personalized learning systems have brought Imagine Schools across the country huge amounts of success. Many K-8 Imagine Schools, like Sierra Vista, are set to expand into high school programs working in tandem with local universities that would have graduating seniors ahead of the pack with their associate’s degrees in hand. This continual building of community leaves no end in sight for the rapidly expanding institution. ELT”
Article written by Joel Cornell. Published on Jan. 11, 2011 by Education Leaders Today.