Town Hall: Public Microschools

In this Town Hall recap, we dive into the transformative world of public microschools and the new Public Microschool Playbook. Join host Victoria Andrews as she explores how these innovative educational spaces serve as research and design hubs, allowing educators to pilot competency-based learning and foster immersive community engagement. Featuring insights from leaders like Jesse Ross of Learner Centered Collaborative and Deborah Gist of Transcend, this episode uncovers the potential of microschools to reimagine education and create personalized learning ecosystems. Tune in to discover how microschools can catalyze change, empower teachers, and close learning gaps through agile, student-centered approaches. Whether you’re an educator, administrator, or parent, this conversation offers valuable perspectives on the future of learning.

• Deborah Gist, Transcend’s Superintendent-In-Residence
• Jesse Ross, Director, Strategic Partnerships at Learner-Centered Collaborative
• Bryanna Norton, Principal, Escondido Union School District

Outline

• (00:00) Introduction to Public Micro Schools
• (03:45) Transcend’s Mission and Vision
• (10:24) Launching Micro Schools in Eastern Hancock
• (13:21) Hidden Valley Middle School’s Transformation
• (21:14) Addressing Equity in Micro Schools
• (32:19) Micro Schools and Learning Gaps
• (41:55) Conclusion and Next Steps

Introduction to Public Micro Schools

Victoria Andrews: Today, the focus of our conversation is going to be on that right side where we talk about the public micro schools and how they can serve for research and design in some spaces. An opportunity to kind of take over a model or a system. So if you are piloting competency-based learning, or if you’re piloting, what will it look like for students to really have immersive community-based experiences? You might want to do that in a micro school before you take over a whole traditional school system. So this is what we’re going to dig into today. We love that.

Opportunities in Micro Schooling

Victoria Andrews: The public micro schools also provide opportunities for partnerships to really bring in the community and for different models to be highlighted. We’re going to now shift to some of the people that are also doing this work, and Jesse, with Learner Center Collaborative, is going to share what they’re doing in the micro schooling space.

Jesse Ross: Great. Thanks so much, Victoria.

Learner Centered Collaborative’s Vision

Jesse Ross: Good to be here, everybody. So, at Learner Centered Collaborative, we envision learning ecosystems where all learners know who they are, thrive in community, and actively engage in the world as their best selves. We think that micro schools offer a unique entry point into that work. This past year, I had the fortune of being able to work with five micro schools across California, supporting them in a variety of efforts. I just want to throw a couple of examples out here.

Examples of Micro Schools in Action

Jesse Ross: As you look at the slide, one would be Hidden Valley Middle School, and we’ve got a principal from that school here today, Bryanna. But I wanted to highlight that their micro school approach is to take half of the seventh grade and use that as an innovation hub where they can be nimble, they can engage in practices that they do want to scale school-wide, but they can start with those early adopters there. A different example of a public micro school that I’ve supported this past year is at Lincoln High School, and at Lincoln High School in San Diego, they created a micro school just with a group of about 20 11th and 12th graders that were close to dropping out and at risk of not continuing on in their school. Their micro school allowed them to re-enroll as independent study students and then engage with a local CTE program where they’re looking for professional certifications, and then they could have a specific advisor just for the micro school students there and really help keep them engaged and feeling relevant in the work that they’re doing. I’ve seen a lot of other examples that we can talk about, but those are just a couple of highlights I’m ready to jump into when we continue our conversation. Mason, if you can switch ahead to the next slide. Thanks so much.

Designing Learning Ecosystems

Jesse Ross: So, as I mentioned here, within learner-centered collaboratives’ view of this learning ecosystem, we really see that starting with those whole learner outcomes is essential and then creating in-class and in-community activities that are going to bring those to life where school design comes in. That’s the micro school component for us where we think about Roger’s adoption curve. This is a space where, you know, a whole system might have really big goals for where they want to be in a few years. But being able to provide that nimble starting point for micro school teachers and school leaders who say, “I’m ready to go now. I want to try something that is going to show others what’s possible.” It’s just a really, really great tool for this. And so I’ll just, you know, kick it off in a moment here by saying that when we talk to Bryanna at Hidden Valley Middle School, I think she can speak really clearly about the way that she had a small team that was ready to dive in and how they’ve opened the eyes of the whole rest of the school towards what’s possible. And we will jump into that in just a moment. But first, let’s hear from Deborah Gist.

Deborah Gist: Thank you, Jesse. Hi everyone. I’m so excited to be here with you.

Transcend’s Mission and Vision

Deborah Gist: So Transcend is an R&D engine for innovation in school design. And our vision is for all young people to learn in ways that enable them to thrive in and to transform the world. And we do this through our mission. And our mission is to support communities, to help them to create and to spread extraordinary learning environments. And we believe that micro schools are a wonderful way to do these things for all the reasons that the playbook touches on and for all the ways in which we’ll talk about that today. So science tells us that students learn best when learning is engaging and motivating, and when it fosters a sense of belonging no matter who we are. And through conversations with industry leaders, with industry partners, and employers, our analysis of the future reveals that an extraordinary and equitable education is also one that prepares all children for the future. So students need both that strong academic foundation and the skills to navigate a rapidly changing world, to be active members of society, and to have the chance to solve real world and complex problems. And in turn, they can help us to make the world a better place. That said, I know from my experience as a system leader that that transition from those outdated models of learning to new research-based models and practices can be daunting and really difficult, and micro schooling gives system leaders another way to bring about that transformation. So as a school superintendent, I saw this opportunity in micro schooling and began on this journey about 10 years ago. And I’ve been so inspired by all the folks at Getting Smart and the Learner Center Collaborative, by my colleagues at Transcend, and importantly, by the teachers and students and school leaders and system leaders who have moved to new ways of teaching and learning, including those who have done so with micro schooling and many of you who are joining us today. So we want to dive in and we want to hear from them directly.

Why Redesign with Micro Schooling?

Deborah Gist: And we believe that we should always start with why. So we want to start with why, why would we redesign and why, why use micro schooling as a structure? I know I saw Julia Baba from Issaquah, Washington here with us. And Julia, I’ve enjoyed so much learning from and working with you and your superintendent, Heather Taek, and you all have really been leaders in this movement. So I’d love to know, like, why did you decide to take this on as an opportunity to transform learning? And how did you know that you and your community were ready? And then why did you use micro schooling as an approach specifically?

Julia Bamba: Alright, thanks Deb for the introduction and asking that question, allowing me to kick off with some of our reflection and perspective on our experience here.

Issaquah’s Innovative Approach

Julia Bamba: So I think some of our innovative work in the Issaquah School District started in 2016 when we opened Gibson Ek High School, which was not a micro school, but it’s a choice school in our district about 200 students. And that school was focused on personal learning, competency-based learning, real-world learning through internships, and a real strong community. And as the school started and evolved over several years, our school board and our district leadership saw that students in that community were really thriving and having an incredible experience. And in our district of just over 20,000 students, we have a very high graduation rate. And on the surface, people would say like, this is an amazing district to be in, teach, go to school and be a family. And, and I agree with all of that, but we also know that we’re not serving all of our students in the best way. And that although they may be going through and graduating high school, having amazing experiences, we should start to look at how we could shift the experiences for our students and offer new, offer new opportunities and choices for, for students. So last year we started with a pilot of a micro school because we need to find a way. Like I said, our district is not ready for a full transformation. And so what we needed to do was to get into our traditional systems and start to show that new opportunities and new ways of engaging students and learning can happen in our traditional systems. And so with the launch of the micro school, which is just wrapping up this year at one of our comprehensive high schools, we created a hybrid model where students were able to learn in a cohort of 22 students, 10th and 11th grade students. And our focus is on interdisciplinary learning. So students in there were earning science and English language arts credits. We wanted project-based, competency-based, and a connection to community learning. So we’re just wrapping up this year. And then what has happened with that pilot is now it’s inspired our middle schools to see. So we have two of our six middle schools who will be starting with staff that already are teaching in that model who often do project-based, but we’re giving them the chance to create a cohort of students, a community of learners, and to continue to test and be one. It’s an incubator for the innovation. What we also want to see happening in our middle schools to inspire this, to expand into our others is for other staff to see how learning can provide that foundational skills, content area, but also be highly engaging, highly motivating, help give students choice at agency, and then also just help connect them to outside the classroom walls. So that’s a little bit about our experience and then our hopes for moving into the future.

Victoria Andrews: Thanks Julia, and we’re huge fans of Julia and the work that she’s doing and just her vulnerability because I know that even that move from high school and like spreading it into middle school, that did not, that wasn’t a decision that came easy or overnight. It was just like, hey, this is a little challenging in this space. We might want to try it and move it into a smaller, not smaller, but like down to the middle school level. So I just appreciate you sharing that.

Launching Micro Schools in Eastern Hancock

Victoria Andrews: Speaking of the why, I know we’ve got George Philhower, who’s also on the call today too, and he is a superintendent out in Eastern Hancock and he is getting prepared to launch some micro schools within his district next school year. So I would love to hear from George about why, and how you are planning to leverage this as a, as a motive kind of innovation.

George Philhower: Hey Victoria, thank you. So, I’m superintendent of Eastern Hancock, just east of Indianapolis. We’re a small rural district, about 1200 kids and 40% of our kids come to us by choice. So in Indiana, we have open enrollment. Anybody can go to school anywhere they want. And as we’ve just learned from our community, there are, there are more and more families looking for something different. And they’re a lot of them are choosing homeschool. But as we’ve talked to them, we’ve learned that they’re choosing homeschool because that’s their only other option really. So we have launched as a separate 501(c)(3), a separate charter. It’s called the Indiana Micro School Collaborative. And we are going to be launching our initial sites this coming fall, one to two around our general area, and then expand from there all over the state of Indiana. And we just kind of envision a world where micro school founders can launch sites all over and that we can help provide the back office support for them to help support, you know, budget and finance and personnel and those kind of things. So super excited. Also super excited Victoria because you know, the support you and your crew have been able to provide us as we’ve launched has been tremendous.

Victoria Andrews: George was one of our participants in our community of practice that just wrapped up a couple of weeks ago. And the beauty of that was that we had superintendents of traditional districts that were in community with micro school founders like Tiffany Blassingame out of Atlanta, she’s on the call today. And being able to see how they were, there was so much learning, and you see it in, in 4K as the kids say, because they were able to have the conversations. George was able to ask questions like, all right, so let’s talk about, you know, FTE and let’s have a conversation about what does that look like? And Tiffany was able to provide insight, and not just Tiffany, but other micro school founders in that space. I want to hear a little bit more about what the redesign process looks like. So I know, Jesse, you worked with Bryanna, correct?

Jesse Ross: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let’s, let’s turn this over to you, Bryanna. And actually, I think it ties in really well with Josh’s question that just popped in there too about teaching teams, because I think that’s a real advantage of the approach that you’ve taken. ‘Cause you did have my understanding is that a group that was ready to run, and we can talk a little bit about like, this works best when, so you wanna give us a little bit of context on the conditions that led you to think that like, we’re ready to jump in and start this micro school.

Bryanna Norton: Yeah. So thank you so much Jesse. So a little background again.

Hidden Valley Middle School’s Transformation

Bryanna Norton: Hidden Valley Middle School, we are 100% free and reduced lunch. 40% of our students are multilingual learners, and approximately 18-19% of our students receive special education services. This is my third year at the school. And what I will tell you is when I came into Hidden Valley, we had, know, I, I would call it surviving to transforming is what you’ve seen at our school site happen. And our students were completely disconnected. Our staff, our teachers were exhausted at that point in time. But at the crux of everything, our teachers had the biggest heart. And they believed in our students day in and day out. And so, there was a lot of relationship building. A lot of us getting back to the root of who we are, but then really listening to our teachers of what the needs were. What they knew because our teachers are the experts in the classroom. So really listening and asking intentional questions around what works for students, what doesn’t work for students. We also listened to our students. We did a lot of surveys, we asked a lot of questions. We got feedback from them. And at that time we looked to see who were some of our teachers that really wanted to pilot along with LCC coming in with us and saying, hey, we think it’d be great if you tried a micro school. And I was like, we are ready. We would love to do this. Our teachers were hungry for change. It doesn’t mean we don’t have some of our teachers that it’s gonna take a little bit longer to get them on board. We all have those, but we really looked at our innovators and a lot of our innovators were found at our seventh grade. And if you know anything about middle school, seventh graders, we love them to death, but usually they have the toughest time in middle school. So we focused on even over 50% of our seventh graders, probably around 60%. And these teachers came together and we identified some different ways that they really wanted to get in there and do work with our students. They’ve focused on PBLs. They have taken an approach of student portfolios, student-led conferences. We also felt it was important to build the relationships and middle school relationships are everything. You all know Rita Pearson. Kids don’t learn from teachers they don’t like. Let’s just be honest. It’s the truth. And so relationship building was a huge component of this. Our schedule allows for an advisory period in the beginning of the day. We also utilized a wellness course at the end. So they were bookended with our math, science, history, English teachers. So four core teachers worked together with a group of students. Our class sizes are about 30 to 32. So they’re regular size classes, we didn’t have the ability to have very small. But I think that’s really important when you’re trying to do this work as well as looking at scaling. And our teachers really worked with our students. Like I said, they worked on PBLs. They also, our students had an opportunity to be empowered. They had voice and choice in the things that they were doing in the classroom. They actually took on some passion projects. And I would say while we were doing this innovative work for our micro school, our teachers were then able to go to the rest of our staff and talk about the things that were going well, that were working well and where some of the stumbling blocks were or the difficulties that we had. And that’s really helped catapult. Next year we’re looking at modeling that micro school with all of our eighth grade teachers and with our students. So it was a really great natural process for collaboration to occur between our teachers and our staff. So I think that might give a small glimpse. I hope that helps. There’s a lot there, but.

Jesse Ross: I love that. While you’re looking at the next question there, I just want to call out one, one of the key levers that I heard there was micro school as an enhancer for distributed leadership. Right? So, so you mentioned teachers with more, say, within this cohort, within this team, students with more say and the power that brings and so, a key, key driver there.

Victoria Andrews: I want to address some of the Thank you Bryanna, so much, and for, for former middle school educator and administrator. So, yes, hats off to the seventh grade crew because yeah, we used to just call ’em squirrels because that’s literally how they were functioning. Being able to really, like Bryanna mentioned, provide teachers with though that, that sense of autonomy. Oftentimes micro schools are a great environment to provide the autonomy that we provide. Young people, but also for the adults in that space too. And that is a section that is highlighted in the playbook is that micro schools are a lever in regards to teacher retention and even being creative with staffing. So you haven’t had a chance to hop into the playbook and you’re wondering about that and you’re a leader. There’s a whole section that’s dedicated to that. Julia, do you mind coming back with us and addressing some of the questions in regards to when students may leave a micro school and go to or come from a traditional school and go to a micro school? I know Tom mentioned how Liberty Edge out in the KC MO area, they utilize the MTC transcripts so that there is a more seamless approach in regards to making sure that we honor what the students are doing. But Julia, would you like to highlight that in any way?

Julia Bamba: So Gibson Ek High School, the other, the Choice High school I was talking about, they were they do use the mastery transcript. And so when we were designing the high school micro school we wanted to take the competencies that had been developed in. Over time and apply those to the micro school. And so, the learning in the micro school for those students is competency based. So all of the evidence in their learning, they’re being assessed on where they are, whether it’s exploring, emerging, engaged, or applying in their learning through the competencies. I will say since we’re a hybrid learning environment, where a lot of the classes that students are taking in our high school micro school are credit grade based points based and then this shift to having just this small block of classes together where students are having to demonstrate competency. That’s a huge change for students. And having to be able to help them understand that approach in the small environment when the rest of their classes are more traditional was quite a challenge. However, I think as we’ve gone through the years, students start to dis like be able to articulate their learning. They start to understand I’m not just turning in this assignment to get the 16 out of the 16, I am getting it to try to get that three, or I am trying to apply my learning in that way. So, the, just the isolate, the, just that one little, I would say has honestly been a pretty big challenge. And we are right now just in conversations with our middle school team as if we wanna add the competency-based assessment to theirs. And really in the first launch of our high, our middle school micro schools, it’s really, I want the teachers to be able to focus on building community. I want them to help students see that learning is different. I want them to see that they have this real world application and this connection rather than being worried about forcing competencies in a traditional system and having that be a point of stress for the teachers especially, and then also for our students or our families. So I believe that we are probably going to land, that we will do some assessment that has competency style language, but it won’t be a true competency-based grading system for our first year of launching in the middle schools. Feels too, too much, too complicated, and too much to ask of our teachers and our students.

Victoria Andrews: And I appreciate the level of intentionality, of just being aware of where teachers are. As much as you know, as a system leader, you may be ready for that thinking. Going back to what Jesse mentioned, just that, that level of adoption, you also don’t want to overwhelm and have decision fatigue. Like things can be too new. And if people are not prepared, that can be to the detriment of the system as well.

Addressing Equity in Micro Schools

Victoria Andrews: Julie, before you hop off there was a question in the chat, which this has been a conversation we’ve had internally about how do you prevent that? I believe the phrase was like that equity, that equity piece in regards to who knows about the school within a school. You don’t want to make sure that it’s just, you know, Victoria and her friends because her aunt was the administrator. So how do you make sure that that equity lens is applied, especially in regards to the student population?

Julia Bamba: You know, we’ve had a lot of learning around that this year because for our micro school within the high school we hired a teacher from an outside the district who was coming in to do a lot of curriculum design and teaching. And so, well that’s an amazing experience. It also can feel isolated or not part of the school. Like this is another program that students would go to or participate in. And so one huge learning that we’ve gained from this year and that we’re applying in the middle schools for next year is like find those teachers within the building who have incredible leadership and connection, who are already trying to test and push the boundaries and engage students in the learning environment. And how can we build from within our schools to really start to foster that energy and excitement. We also, you know, just in our middle school is like promoting to the entire school. Our principals in those schools have already started to hear staff saying, like, I’m thinking about this could be a micro school for next year. Like already just saying like, there’s, you don’t have to always be learning and teaching in the environment in the ways that we always have. Let’s try to think differently about this approach. We talk about like, how do you get staff up at staff meetings to just share like some of the learning, whether it’s challenging or not. Start those conversations within the building. And then I would also say like when you’re, if you’re starting the school within a school model or the hybrid model or you’re, part of that is really be intentional about the space where students, so if you’re in a shared space that there’s, you know, respect and there’s a, a plan for how you’ll be using that space. Also, even if there are teachers within the school who are not teaching directly with the micro school, you need a, you know, you need a team of people who are going to champion the work within the school and also see that just because something doesn’t go well, it’s, it’s not a failure or a champ challenge or our students are in front of the school and they’re building and designing. It’s not chaos. Like that’s real learning and to help provide a space for reflection as you go through. If you have a small team or our micro school teacher was a team of one in that space. So, you gotta really create these spaces for collaboration. ‘Cause the work when you try to shift is so challenging and so hard. You need to constantly be thinking and adapting and being agile and, you know, to the students.

Victoria Andrews: I appreciate that, George. I know that you guys aren’t launching your micro schools until the fall, but what are some of the thoughts that are in your head around making sure that it’s an equitable approach to the students that are gonna enroll in the different micro schools that you guys have?

George Philhower: So we are envisioning a world that we’re, so our initial sites are not gonna be at our school. So we’ve, our first site is gonna be actually at a campground that sits dormant during the school year and then runs summer camps all summer. And what the, our vision is that every kid gets to go to a school that feels like it was designed for them. And so what we are really interested in doing is working with families and with communities and figuring out how, what does that look like? And obviously when you talk to a family who’s never designed a school before they’re not gonna know. But really building their input. And we were, so, Scott Best and I from Indiana got to travel, thanks to you, to go see some micro schools in the Atlanta area. And we saw several. And they were all for different types of kids. And what we learned was that, that, that vision that I just said was really solidified during that, that journey. That, that we really feel like there’s a world that’s possible where every kid should get to go to a school that feels like it was designed for them. And, and that’s what we’re really trying to, trying to create by what we’re launching in Indiana.

Victoria Andrews: I appreciate that, George. And, and I know I put you on the spot with that one because you guys are going through that process as we speak in preparation to receive those families and those students. What’s unique about George too, and that Indiana school collective is that he actually reached out to the homeschooling families and allowed them to serve as a partner. And so that private and public partnership is also what helped bloom and helped catalyze what they’re doing. So instead of just saying, I know what I’m doing, or I can just go to Google and figure it out, he actually asked the people that were in that space, the community members. And I think that the level of intentionality is just to be applauded there.

Jesse Ross: Victor, I’d love to build on this a little bit this, this question about access is also related to this idea of what is the lifecycle of a micro school. And I think that there’s many different ones, and some of our panelists could speak to that. I know for example, in Hidden Valley where Bryanna is, we’ve talked about how it’s starting as an idea or innovation incubator for the half of the seventh grade, and the goal is to then scale up those innovations. But that once it does, some schools might decide then there’s no longer a need for a micro school. But I know that at Hidden Valley, Bryanna, I’ll, I’ll let you speak to this in just a second here, is that you’ve said, no, we always want to have a spot. That’s where, again, that sandbox that I see a couple comments in there right now that we’re gonna try things, we’re gonna have a bias towards action, and then we can scale from there and give everybody access to those innovations. Do you wanna speak to that?

Bryanna Norton: Jesse. Absolutely. And it goes back again to, we wanna empower our students, but we wanna empower our teachers, they’re the experts. They work with the kids. And it’s, it’s absolutely what Jesse’s saying. We are scaling, but we will have that innovative approach to how we are supporting and empowering our learners after we do our scaling process. So whatever that looks like, our teachers are already our micro school teachers specifically, were already taking the next steps in a, in a lot of the college and career aspect of learning that our students gave us feedback on that they wanted to do. And so it’s just consistently listening to our students, to our teachers, and allowing the space for them to try new things. One of the biggest things as the leader when I was working with them is saying, it’s okay to try something new. If what we’ve been doing has not been working, I give you permission to try something new. Try it. Let’s see what happens. We haven’t gotten the results before. Let’s try it this way and then let’s talk about it. Let’s look at that data and see if it’s working. So it’s creating that culture on our campus of being innovative all the time and giving them the permission to do that. You’re empowering your teachers. We wanna empower our students. We should be modeling that at every level of the school system.

Deborah Gist: I love that Bryanna so much. And that’s such an important point. I think that I also want to point out, just kind of related to this conversation, that not all micro schools should be scaled. So some models are designed intentionally for that, and you might find out, absolutely we wanna scale this because it’s gonna work for a much larger group of students. There also might instead be like components of ways that you handled relationships or ways that that students and teachers communicated among one another. And you wanna scale that component to other schools or whatnot. But there are, you know, to this point about, I forget who made it, someone will remind me. That, that you want that school, it was George. I think that, that for the school to feel like it was specifically designed for them, which I love so much, well, that school’s not gonna be, there may be models that are like perfect for 20, 25, 50 kids, but not for that, not for more than that. And so that’s a model that then might stay in that sort of niche choice opportunity for students and families and for teachers. And Tom Arnette from Christensen Institute, who’s been an amazing advisor to us in the development of this playbook, really has helped to remind me about that. Because as a former system leader, I think a lot about the, you know, scaling. I want, I want wonderful work to be happening throughout my system, and you can do that, but it’s not always the case.

Victoria Andrews: Deb, I know that there is a section also in the playbook that’s dedicated to culture, and I know that you spoke with quite a few micro school leaders about just how do you create that culture. Julia hinted at it of just like making sure that that space is not seen as, like, this is kind of like a special space for these, this crew. But are there any pieces that resonated with you as you spoke with leaders about how to cultivate that culture when you’re looking at a school within a school model?

Deborah Gist: Well, I think, I mean, one of the beautiful things about a micro school is that culture is much more malleable. You know, you have a smaller group and so you’re able to build culture differently and, and, and so forth. I think that what your question makes me think about, which may not have been exactly what you were getting at, is getting back to this idea of, what happens when you have a school within a school or even a micro school within a larger system, even if the building is, is separate because you, it, it has an effect on the, on the larger culture of the organization. And so as a, as a superintendent, that’s something to be very, very intentional about. And to not make it feel like a, like, like privileged, you know, that, that by the nature of it being small, it’s not available to all in that moment. And so that’s a, a challenge that you wanna be really, really explicit about when you, when you’re launching into this. But I think it was Bryanna who was talking about that you wanna, you want as a leader to, to say to the, the, the, the community, your teachers, your parents and others that, that we’re gonna offer this kind of experience to others. Here’s how we’re starting. And but this idea that other members of our community can begin to create models of learning in a micro school structure that that’s available to others and, and to be explicit about when is it gonna be available, how will it be available? What are we learning? So that it doesn’t feel, or, and not only does it feel, but is not exclusionary.

Victoria Andrews: And that goes back to being intentional by design. You wanna make sure like so many of those safeguards are built in. Especially I know that when you are a public school within a school in a public district, there are some safeguards that are automatically there, but then there are some that you also just, you know, you might not be aware of it. It’s, it’s your blind spot. So making sure that you design from that lens is super important.

Micro Schools and Learning Gaps

Victoria Andrews: I wanna be able to address some other questions that we have before the town hall started, which was how can micros address learning gaps that might be present? So I would, I know highlighted in the book there’s literacy labs that are on the East coast, but I would love to hear from either Bryanna or George or Julia about how micro schools can address some of the different learning gaps that might be present in a, in a, in a system.

Bryanna Norton: I’m happy to jump in. It’s, I love this question because when we started a lot of this conversation, it was very intentional of saying, look, there’s a lot of wonderful things we can do that will be hooks for our students. I call them the rainbow, the unicorn in the glitter side of things, right? And those are so important, and we work very hard at having those at our school site. But at the crux of it, what is the instruction that’s happening on our campus? And so we had a lot of dialogue around what is the learning that’s occurring? And in everything that we’re doing on top of empowering and voice and choice, we still need to have that conversation of what are the standards that our students should be reaching, and how do we ensure that that learning is going on throughout the school day? How do we utilize those? Standards in creating PBL questions that still relate to the state standards. It still gives our students voice and choice. And, and how do we make it engaging, but still going back to helping our kids read, write, do arithmetic, analyze and it, and it also goes back to like our learner profile of we want what we want our students to be able to do. So you have to have intention around that and your teachers have to be very aware of their own standards of learning and how do those all work together within our math, science, English, history, there’s a lot of overlap and work that can be done together. It was one of the big conversations we had, and I think our micro school teachers would say, is they don’t feel like they’re siloed anymore. We used to talk about that we’re all working really hard, but we’re not working hard together. And so the approach we took allowed our teachers to come together to have that dialogue around instruction. And it made their job easier because they didn’t feel like they were doing the lift alone. They were doing the lift with other people in service to our students. It’s not easy, it’s not perfect. But we make sure we keep that learning at the forefront of what we’re doing.

Julia Bamba: I would love to just, just go quick

Jesse Ross: A call back to, you know, de naming this at the beginning of our conversation, that the science as we all shows, that when learning is, you know, competency based, authentic, personalized, those gaps close. And so I’ve not experienced a, a micro school that was created nor to go into some, you know, a traditional, you know, industrial model. I’ve seen micro schools that are all about moving the needle forward on those types of personalized, authentic, real world engagement, collaborative work, and that’s gonna close those gaps.

Julia Bamba: I’d love to share that. I think a lot of our traditional schools and our traditional systems, when students are not thriving or they become credit deficient or they’re just getting by, we turn to some of the same ways that we’ve been trying to support with students with grades. A guided studies class, summer school maybe it’s a credit retrieval that used to be a packet, but now it’s a packet that maybe still lives on our, the LMS. So it’s disguised as a packet. And so we often put students in a traditional learning environment. We’re having to sit and take tests and don’t see the personalization. They don’t see the relevancy. And then when they fail, we scramble to try to find ways to help them gain. A micro school approach shows that let’s get engaged students in their learning early. Let’s help them build confidence. Let’s help them see that they have incredible strengths and entrance and talents that can contribute to this community of learners and help them start to thrive then rather than just trying to push them through the system to what’s next. And I see micro schools as an amazing way to be able to do that, to be able to address our learning gaps, to be able to get students to build and be part of a pilot, to be part of innovative learning, to then become leaders in this space rather than it being. You know, hidden away in other system, systemic ways to approach this learning. So think about micro schools as that way of just engaging students and learning, helping them find joy, helping them be excited and creating these leadership opportunities for students to lead the way. And what learning can look like, especially in our typical traditional environments for students.

George Philhower: Victoria? I think so the, a beautiful thing about the micro school movement is that it allows us a space to create something that’s brand new without having to think about the calcified structures of the way that we’ve been doing business for a long time. And I think that a long, long time ago when school was invented and the purpose that it was designed for was not high levels of learning for all kids necessarily. And we’ve, we all know that people that join calls like this one. Like, we know those kind of things. And this gives us an opportunity to start from scratch and, and, and literally design something that could be, could work for every single kid. And the, the micro part of it means that it’s, it’s small and agile and adaptive to meet those individual kids so that if, if we’re trying something and it’s not working, we can quickly pivot and try something that might be better.

Victoria Andrews: And George, I know that you saw this firsthand like you mentioned before out in Atlanta where you don’t have to be micros like the individual micro school doesn’t have to be everything to everybody. You can utilize the strengths of others. I would love for Tiffany, in our couple of minutes that we have left to just talk about where your school is situated and how do you utilize the power of partnerships of being in the same building. And then we can also make a connection of how that can happen on a, on a public scale.

Tiffany Blasingame: So Tiffany is a micro school leader and she is based out of a place of worship, but in the hallway are four other micro schools. One micro school is targeted towards students that for communicate in a nonverbal manner. And then another micro school is targeted towards early elementary. And Tiffany’s is primarily elementary, and then they also have a high school and they’re all in the same hallway. So envision almost like a food court, if you will, of micro schools. And so this meets the needs, not just of those particular learners, but also their families. So if you are a family and your student does communicate in a nonverbal capacity, instead of having to drive across country or, you know, fight traffic or try to find those services that are really gonna let that student thrive, they’re all housed in that same building, that same hallway. And we sometimes, we tend to forget, even just the, how that kind of partnership can impact a family too. If I am a twin or if I have a sibling, instead of seeing them go to a different school, like we can now all be in the same space. And that power is, that is just as powerful. If they were at, you know, the same school and one of the siblings is having to be in a, a space that may not be servicing to the best of their ability. I’m gonna go to the chat as we, and try to answer a couple of more questions before we wrap it up. I know we’ve got Christian Talbot, who’s with MSA, who’s been doing some exceptional work with the accreditation process for micro schools. And, oh, go ahead Deborah.

Deborah Gist: Well, I was just gonna, since you raised accreditation there’s been a little bit of commenting in the chats about the tension as when, when you’re talking about micro schooling, which we know has been really growing in, in the private school and homeschooling space. And we touch on this in the playbook. That we believe that we want to have this kind of model more readily available in, in public education. So it’s reaching a greater number of students, but there is a tension between expectations and, and requirements. That may be, they may be federal, they may be state, they may be district or school board policy or, or charter or tribal policy, whatever the, the system is that the school is operating within. And so, fortunately, many, many systems are offering ways of, of innovating within that. So there are ways to either automatically be able to have more competency-based or whatnot. Things that are often structures of, of different micro schools. And, but then sometimes you have to, you have to. Push against those barriers. You have to seek waivers, you have to find ways of, of doing things differently. But it’s becoming more and more possible. And at the same time, there are reasons, as a former state commissioner of education, you know, there are reasons that we have standards of learning because we, while we don’t wanna overly prescribe, we also wanna make sure that students are getting the skills that they need so that they’re able to, to be successful when, when they leave our schools. But it’s attention and it’s attention that we acknowledge in the playbook and it’s, it’s one that any micro school leader is going to manage

Victoria Andrews: As we begin to wrap up. I’m so glad you brought that up, Deb. Just acknowledging there are several tensions and some of them were hit on in the chat. And by no means is this conversation you know, an end all to be all.

Conclusion and Next Steps

Victoria Andrews: We are hopeful that some light was shed on some areas that you may not have considered if you’re a school leader or even a, a leader of a nonprofit organization of how can you support a public micro school or how can you just go out and learn more information about it? As mentioned several times, our micro school public. Playbook is on our site, and we would love for you guys to reach out to either Jesse at LCC or Deb Gist with Transcend if you would like some support in launching your public micro school. Or if, even if you’re a private micro school founder and you’re considering partnership with a public institute, very similar to like George and the homeschool community out in Eastern Hancock, make sure that you reach out. We are huge advocates of the power of collaboration as is evidenced by the playbook and our presence in this space today. We also here at Getting Smart have a public micro school community of practice that’s getting ready to launch. It is a sprint but if you are considering opening a public micro school within the next six to 12 or 18 months. Please feel free to just reach out and we would love to give you more information. You’ll be in community with other leaders that are looking to do just that. Leaders like George, Phil Hower, leaders like Julia, leaders like Bryanna that are willing to take that risk do something that’s a little bit innovative and not just for themselves but on behalf of their community. We are super grateful for your presence. We do not take that for granted at all, and we are just looking forward to you continuing the conversation. Be on the lookout for the recap. It’ll address some of the questions and you’ll have access to all of the information that we discussed today.

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Links

• The Public Microschool Playbook
• Getting Smart: Hidden Valley Microschool
• Total Student Engagement Through the LENS of Rebecca Parks
• Getting Smart: Issaquah School Disctrict
• What School Could BeSpotlight on: Arizona
• How to Launch A Public Microschool in Your School System | The Public Microschool Playbook
• Cliff Island School
• What Is Self Directed Schooling?
• Teacher Powered
• Getting Smart: The Forest School
• Getting Smart: The Morgan Oliver School
• Olympia Regional Learning Academy
• Culture of Self-Directed Schooling
• The Progressive Schools of Philadelphia
•  Middle States Association
• Public Microschool Innovation COP — Interest Form