About Imagine Schools
| Imagine Schools is a national family of public charter schools that empowers educators, in partnership with parents, to prepare students for lives of leadership, accomplishment, and character. Imagine Schools operates 71 schools in 11 states and the District of Columbia, serving over 37,000 students, similar to the size of Minneapolis or Buffalo school districts. Imagine is gaining attention because we are a fast-growing organization that is bringing friendly competition to traditional public schools. We believe that friendly competition will lead to more innovation and better performance in all schools, which will benefit students and their parents. |
 Dennis and Eileen Bakke, founders
Visit www.imagineschools.com for more |
As charter schools, Imagine’s schools offer parents a choice in the education of their children. We work in communities to increase opportunities for learning and access to quality education for all students. Our schools create choice within the public school system, provide accountability for results, encourage innovative public-private partnerships, and encourage greater parental and community involvement.
Imagine’s mission is to serve families with high quality public charter schools. We believe that parents are the best judge of a school that meets their child’s educational needs. Average enrollment in our 71 campuses is over 90%, and many schools have waiting lists. According to the Imagine Schools 2010 Family Survey:
- 88% of parents agreed that the schools offer them opportunities to get involved in their children’s education.
- 87% of parents stated that the teachers and staff model and teach positive character attributes to students.
- 85% of parents were satisfied with the quality of education their children were receiving and would likely recommend the school to others.
Imagine uses five Measures of Excellence to evaluate the effectiveness of each school. The measures are parent choice, shared values, academic achievement, character development, and economic sustainability. Each school’s achievement on these measures is publicly reported annually. Our sixth measure, school development, is used to gauge the overall growth of Imagine Schools.
History
Imagine Schools was founded by Dennis and Eileen Bakke, a philanthropic couple who wanted to make a difference in public education. Dennis Bakke was previously a founder of AES, a global power company, and while there pioneered a unique decentralized management approach entitled "Joy At Work" (described in a book with the same title). The Bakkes are passionate about making a difference in education by applying this unique organizational and operational structure guided by shared values of integrity, justice, and fun, which puts teachers and school leaders squarely in charge of the decisions affecting the schools and students they serve.
Upon retiring from AES, he and his wife formed Imagine Schools in late 2003. In 2005, Imagine Schools began operating exclusively for educational purposes, consistent with the requirements for federal tax-exempt organizations. Our application for federal tax-exempt status is currently under review by the IRS, and we hope to have a determination soon. Imagine Schools does not operate for profit. 100% of the money Imagine receives is spent on students and schools it operates.
In 2007, Dennis Bakke was selected to receive the Purpose Prize, the nation’s only large-scale award for outstanding individuals 60 or older, who are working on critical social issues and producing significant and innovative positive social change. Mr. Bakke was honored for his work in improving public education nationwide through Imagine charter schools.
A Unique Organization
Each Imagine school’s curriculum and program is designed locally to fit the needs of its region. All teachers, principals, board members, and regional directors are local to each community. In addition, all recruiting and hiring is done at the community-level, with decisions about each school being made by the people who work at that school, in partnership with their local governing board.
Imagine’s schools offer a variety of curricula and approaches – freedom within a framework of strong programs and accountability. We operate schools which offer various programs ranging from career emphasis schools, environmental focus schools, Core Knowledge schools, International Baccalaureate schools, Project Child schools, Direct Instruction schools, along with numerous others.
Imagine Schools is one of the most diverse public school systems in the country. 39% of students attending are African-American, 33% are Caucasian, 22% are Hispanic, and 6% other. Fifty-one percent of students served at Imagine Schools come from low-income families. Programs offered at each Imagine school are designed to challenge and teach each individual student, whether they come to the school achieving above, on, or below grade level.
Academic programs at Imagine’s schools are tailored to local needs, but every Imagine school does pre- and post-testing to drive instruction and to track each student’s academic gains. Based on pre-testing, about two-thirds of students entering Imagine’s new schools are below grade level. Historically, most of these students enter Imagine more than a full grade behind, indicating that their previous learning gains averaged much less than a full grade per year in other schools.
In the 2008-2009 school year, 89% of Imagine’s schools that did fall and spring testing exceeded average nationwide public school math and reading learning gains. In the 2008-2009 school year, over two-thirds of Imagine students demonstrated average reading and math learning gains of one year or more.
We are just as interested in helping students become better brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, citizens, leaders, and friends, as we are in their academic accomplishments. We recognize that in order for our communities and nation to prosper, we must raise the next generation to be good, as well as smart.
Imagine Schools is an organization comprised of approximately 3,000 people, most of whom are classroom teachers. We provides support services to each of our schools, just as every public school district allocates funding to pay for leadership, support, and administrative expenses, and we have yet to find another similarly-sized public school district that spends the same or less on administrative costs. We have 80 regional and national staff members supporting the schools, and of those, only 22 people are in the Arlington, VA headquarters office.
Imagine’s indirect or administrative support services include (but are not limited to) accountability, budgeting, finance, legal, marketing, educational services, teacher and staff recruiting, grant applications, compliance, professional development and supervision, lease oversight, procurement assistance, insurance, instructional technology, and assessment scoring and reporting. These administrative services are tailored to the needs of each school.
Facilities
Unlike traditional public schools, most charter schools receive no monies for facilities, so we must use the per-student allocation received at each school to pay for everything: textbooks, teachers, administration, and buildings. As a result, our charter schools deliver a high quality education for less money than is being spent on traditional public schools.
We believe that a good school building is an important ingredient in fulfilling our mission to help parents educate their children, and work to equip our schools with buildings that provide safety, stability, a long-term presence, and a high-quality learning environment for children.
Imagine Schools, through its subsidiary Schoolhouse Finance, uses its credit to provide the financial backing for long-term leases and building purchases. The sole purpose of Schoolhouse Finance is to “bridge the gap” between the financial market’s credit requirements and the minimal credit worthiness of stand-alone charter schools.
Each school’s lease rate is based on the actual costs to purchase, construct, or renovate the school building and associated land. Schoolhouse Finance generally leases the buildings for at least 15-25 years in order to provide a long-term and stable location. The individual school then sub-leases the building from Schoolhouse Finance only for the period that its individual charter is valid (usually 3-5 years). Therefore, the school is not taking on a bigger or longer term obligation than it can handle, and the financial burden needed to secure a suitable, stable, and long-term building is shouldered by Schoolhouse Finance.
Achievements
- The Imagine Charter School at Weston (FL) has received accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Academically, Imagine Weston (a 59% minority school, largely Hispanic) was the highest ranked elementary charter school and ranked tenth of all Florida public schools in 2007-08. 95% of its students earned “high standards” in reading, 97% in math, and 100% in writing on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
- Imagine Schools at Rosefield was ranked as an “excelling school” for the 2007-08 school year by the Arizona Learns program (the State of Arizona’s school ranking system).
- Imagine Foundations Public Charter School in Upper Marlboro, MD achieved the strongest performance on the MD MSA proficiency test of any MD charter school, with 88.5% of tested students proficient in reading and 76.9% in math.
- Imagine Hope Community Charter School in Washington, DC had the highest student learning gains in reading of any Washington, DC charter school in 2007 (and the fifth highest in math) according to an analysis published by the DC Public Charter School Board. Over one-third of the public school students in the District are enrolled in over 60 charter schools with over 90 campuses.
