New father Tyler Horning wanted a good education for his firstborn child, but where to send him to school was the question.
“None of the existing options resonated with my wife and me,” Horning said. “There seemed to be no right answer for our family, so we decided to create one.”
Realizing that homeschooling isn’t for everyone and that private school tuition was unaffordable for most, the Hornings, along with a dedicated group of like-minded friends, chose to start a public charter school in their hometown of Plymouth, Michigan, a suburb west of Detroit.
“We figured somebody had to do it, and it might as well be us,” Horning told The Epoch Times.
A public charter school is a taxpayer-supported, tuition-free school open to everyone. There are no residency requirements, admission tests, or conditions for enrollment.
Charter schools are governed by a founding board of directors who, by state law, enjoy great autonomy and flexibility in choosing their own educational model—something that was very important to Horning’s group.
Charter schools were created in the 1990s by state legislatures hoping to encourage innovation and improvement in public education in their states. They passed laws enabling creative charter school founders to try varying approaches to instruction.
Some of the models implemented by public charter schools around the country include back-to-basics, environmental science, college preparatory, Montessori, and classical.
Ivywood’s founding board members—Troy Morris, Myranda Fabian, Jim Musgrave, and Horning—chose classical education based on a free K–12 curriculum developed by Hillsdale College.
To date, Hillsdale College has helped start 73 public charter schools serving 15,000 students across 27 states.
After several years of hard work by Horning and his team, Ivywood Classical Academy of Plymouth, Michigan, opened its doors in 2019.
Why a Classical Education?
“A classical education teaches the mind and the heart,“ Horning said. ”It produces curious scholars desirous of the truth. Such training helps them differentiate between what is right and what is wrong.“Even in a nonreligious setting like a public charter school, students need to be guided and educated to pursue the right path.
“A classical academy like Ivywood is not about religion. It can’t be. It’s a public school. What we do is teach civic virtue, without which Americans will lose our ability to self-govern.”
Ivywood principal Stephanie Kooiker (pronounced Quaker) is tasked with making the founders’ vision a reality.
She told The Epoch Times that in order for her students to become masters of the English language, third to fifth graders learn the fundamentals of Greek and Latin. Starting in sixth grade, all students study full Latin.
Every class at Ivywood is a grade level ahead in arithmetic.
Kooiker attributes the good performance of her students to the school’s choice to not teach the Common Core math curriculum.
“We teach cursive writing, which is in danger of becoming a lost art. Students use Chromebooks to learn typing. Instruction here comes from a teacher, not a video,” she said.
“Every child has an art or a music class every day. From the early grades, our students memorize classic poetry and recite it in front of their class.”
Kindergarten through fourth-grade students at Ivywood wear navy blue shirts and khaki pants, and from fifth grade through eighth grade they wear blue blazers with white shirts and ties.
“I tell our boys and girls, ‘Learning is your job. Dress for your job. Dress for success,’” Kooiker said.
“We have found that our dress code results in better student performance and behavior.”
Art teacher Marcy Brose said, “We teach our students to think analytically. There is Socratic discussion in every classroom.
“In our system of instruction, every subject is interrelated. It’s like a wagon wheel, with the student as the hub and the various subjects are the spokes. Everything is connected.
“Classical education looks at the child as a whole person. I want them to be beautiful people.”
Kindergartners at Ivywood take one semester of U.S. history and one semester of world history, subjects taught from original sources and texts in an age-appropriate manner.
Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn said in a recent town hall discussion that older students read the classics in literature and “glory in the greatest things ever written and said.”
Arnn said classical education tells the story of humanity and of the natural world and that it teaches a student to live a fully human life—make a living, raise a family, and be a participating contributor to the community.
“A classical education is not about training a child for a career,” Arnn said. “It trains a student for life—to be a person of character and substance. To be serious, courageous, moderate, just, and wise.
Following Ivywood’s Example
Across town from Plymouth, in the affluent Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe, the Sales family has poured body and soul into creating a classical public charter school in their city.During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Sales family became dismayed when they learned from friends what was going on in public schools and how little parents could do about it.
Murray Sales told The Epoch Times, “Seeing our community schools losing focus on education and being more and more concerned about social issues was what fueled our desire to start a public charter school in order to give parents an alternative.”
Although their three children are grown and out of school, Sales and his wife believe that all parents should have the right to choose the education that’s best for their children through a public option.
“Even in Grosse Pointe, $35,000 in tuition for a year in a private high school is unaffordable for many. You should not have to be rich to have a choice in the kind of education your children will receive,” Sales said.
Through conversations with friends and neighbors, Sales discovered that others were having similar thoughts.
One such person is long-time Grosse Pointe resident Robert Lee, whose four children graduated from Grosse Pointe schools.
Lee told The Epoch Times, “A tuition-free charter school offering a classical curriculum focusing on virtue and values is just the option our community needs for parents who are unhappy with what the public school system offers, or for those who cannot afford the exorbitant cost of the area’s private schools.”
Soon, a group of like-minded Grosse Pointe residents joined together to pursue the creation of Hill Pointe School.
“We formed a board of six committed and courageous people to lead the effort. Nobody can undertake this kind of project alone,” Sales said. “The board members are folks who were willing to take a beating publicly, lose friends and acquaintances, and do a lot of research.
“To succeed, any startup needs to build a good board—members with staying power. People that can withstand criticism and take arrows.”
Each of the board members brought a different skill set to the project.
Sales’s background is in marketing and sales; another member is a CPA and attorney; another is a fundraising specialist. There are a couple of educators, and one member has good contacts with young families in the community.
None of the board members have children in the Grosse Pointe school system.
“Starting a charter school is a crazy journey full of emotional peaks and valleys. Good news today, terrible news tomorrow,” Sales said. “It involves remarkable self-sacrifice from board members. These are busy people. The financial contributions, the hard work, and the opportunity cost of time spent on the project were significant.
“Each member could have had more time with their family, their career, and other civic pursuits. They have shown real dedication to the cause.
“It’s more than opening a school. It’s about providing educational choice for all. Our country depends on educated students.
“Speaking for myself, I will die trying to open a classical public charter school. I believe in it that much.”
According to Sales, Hill Pointe’s purpose is to deliver a classical, virtue- and morals-based education that will teach students to give back to their community.
“They will see that the blessing of freedom brings with it great responsibility,” Sales said.
Like Ivywood, Hill Pointe will use the classical curriculum developed by Hillsdale College.
“It’s a rigorous curriculum. It will take time for students and their parents to adjust to it and to the way it will be taught,” Sales said. “We are asking parents to commit to be models of civic virtue at home.
“Our school will have high expectations and strict disciplinary and behavioral policies.
“We will hire qualified teachers who share our vision and pay them salaries commensurate with those in the Grosse Pointe district.”
Hill Pointe is expected to open in the fall of 2023, with open enrollment beginning in February and March. Initially, it will serve 250 students in grades K–5, and it hopes to add a grade level in each succeeding year.
There are no district residency requirements and no enrollment restrictions.
Opposition to Charter Schools
Sales said he expected the teachers unions and local school administrators would be the leading critics of the effort to start a charter school.He said some parents can also be vocal opponents out of fear that the opening of a public charter school would diminish the resources of the existing public school.
“Because charter schools are incubators of innovation in education, you would think the charter school movement would be led by progressives. It’s not. They are mostly opposed to it,” he said. “They call us racists. I find that strange because inclusiveness, diversity, and equality are part and parcel of the civic virtues practiced by classical public charter schools.
How to Open a Public Charter School
Sales outlined some of the steps his group took to bring Hill Pointe to where it is today.“After you assemble a group of supporters that share the same worldview and select a founding board, you should partner immediately with a private sector educational services provider,” he said.
Hill Pointe and Ivywood have contracts with Choice Schools Associates of Grand Rapids, Michigan, to run their day-to-day operations.
Founded in 1998, Choice Schools is a for-profit family-owned company that provides startup assistance; administrative and managerial services such as human resources, regulatory compliance, finance, payroll, budgeting, and fundraising; and assistance in building acquisition, remodeling, and marketing.
The administration answers to the charter school’s board.
Food, security, and janitorial services will be outsourced.
Sales said the next step is to line up an authorizer.
In Michigan, an authorizer is usually a college or university that provides accountability and helps ensure a public charter school follows best practices.
Central Michigan University (CMU), a renowned teachers college, is the authorizer of Hill Pointe and 58 other public charter schools in Michigan serving 26,000 students.
“We went through a six-month application and interview process with CMU. It had to be completed 12 months before our proposed opening,” Sales said.
CMU spokesperson Janelle Brzezinski spoke with The Epoch Times:
“We believe that every child should have the opportunity to attend a school that is the best fit for them. Charter public schools empower families with choices. [They] are driving innovation and providing specialized opportunities to prepare their students for success in college, work, and life.”
Sales said the next step is to find a suitable building.
Charter public schools must pay for a lease or building purchase, as well as remodeling expenses, out of their own operating funds.
“A new public charter school needs to raise between $500,000 and $800,000. It will not receive one dollar of state aid until the official student count takes place in October. Federal startup grants are available. The waiting period is about seven months,” he said.
“Don’t sit back and wait for federal grant dollars. Get started and get after the money through fundraising of your own.”
Recruiting and hiring the right headmaster or principal is also a crucial step in the process, according to Sales.
Horning described his group’s startup experience.
“You don’t have to be an expert to get started. Nobody on our founding board was a principal or school administrator,” he said. “Our people serve with no self-interest. They are community-minded folks that really care about education. We took our anger and frustration with the state of public education today and did something positive with it.
“We were not afraid to fail. We tried a lot of things. It was hard, but we kept going because we believed the juice was worth the squeeze.
“Finding a building was our biggest challenge.”
Apart from an informal Facebook survey and a lot of talking to neighbors, neither Ivywood nor Hill Pointe conducted much market research. Leaders of both groups said they just knew that there was sufficient demand for the type of school they were starting.
“My gut said this kind of school will resonate with parents and it has,” Horning said.
He said opening a public charter school may not work in a rural setting, where population density isn’t sufficient to support it.
“But we have found by experience that parents will drive their kids a considerable distance to attend a good school,” Horning said.
Where the Money Comes From
Every year, state aid puts $9,150 of taxpayers’ money behind each public school student in Michigan.The state aid payment and private donations are the only sources of funding for public charter schools.
Parents and community businesses are Ivywood’s main nongovernmental sources of financial support.
Public charter schools aren’t eligible for funds raised through voter-approved supplemental property tax levies.
This puts them at a financial disadvantage in relation to affluent districts that often vote for thousands of additional dollars to support their local schools.
“Less tax revenue necessitates us having to run a very tight ship,” said Kayla Cruthers, Ivywood’s business manager.
Sales said there are great challenges and a “significant risk” facing every public charter school.
“We’re trying to provide choice and competition in education. It’s about performance and accountability,” he said.
“If we don’t perform, we will close.”
