NN4DA in the News

Florida Launches Authorizer Mentor Program

 

FACSA members are deeply engaged and generous
with their time when it comes to helping peers.

The Florida Association of Charter School Authorizers (FACSA) has launched a Mentor-Mentee Program to support new charter school authorizers. After a careful planning and recruitment period, the program is kicking off this month with 22 mentees connected to nine experienced mentors spread across Florida.

The program encourages collaboration, facilitates knowledge sharing, and enhances authorizer capacity. Their approach includes support from FACSA, while emphasizing peer-to-peer support from their broad network of experienced professionals.

Participants will join three virtual meetings hosted by FACSA that will provide background information on timely issues in the authorizing calendar. During those meetings, all mentors and mentees will get material on the topic from FACSA in virtual meetings. After receiving shared information on best practices, mentors will work with their mentees during breakouts to dig into the month’s topic. These meetings will end with the larger group sharing and Q & A.

This supported approach helps to reduce the burden on mentors, while refreshing everyone’s information on key tasks and developments in the state.

The meetings are designed to foster a supportive community where experienced authorizers can guide and share insights with new authorizers. They will cover:

  1. Navigating the Charter Application Process
  2. Effective Site Visits and Monitoring Strategies
  3. Best Practices in Charter Contract Development

Mentors and Mentees will continue to work together throughout the year and meet in person or virtually depending on their needs and logistics. The mentor program leverages FACSA’s strength, its engaged network of experienced authorizers; to address one if its greatest challenges, authorizer turnover.

FACSA enjoys strong engagement by most of Florida’s authorizers. But too often authorizing can suffer due to turnover among authorizing staff. As district authorizing staff leave the profession, important knowledge can be lost.

For smaller authorizers, a single staff person can be the glue holding all their district’s work together. For larger authorizing districts, new people — who need to get up to speed quickly — are joining teams regularly.

The program also helps districts learn from one another about developments in the field and the dynamic and evolving work of authorizing in Florida. The mentor program is an effective way to use FACSA’s relatively limited central staff to connect with more districts, and to engage a lot of new authorizers more deeply than a single staff person ever could.

It gives experienced authorizers a way to build their own expertise and credibility in the profession and grows and deepens the network available to all authorizers, giving newer authorizers a broader pool of colleagues whom they can call on when new questions arise.

For the experienced authorizers, who volunteer their time to help their colleagues, the program allows them to expand their professional responsibilities, to play leadership roles, to refresh their own understanding of best practices, to build their own networks, and to improve the standing of the authorizing profession and its leaders.

The program has been designed and led by FACSA’s Executive Director, Marianne Blair and FACSA Project Support Specialist, Vanessa Glenn. Read about the program here.

A similar approach may be useful in other states. The Colorado Association of Charter School Authorizers (CACSA) is considering a similar approach, and we are eager to help other states explore this high-leverage strategy.

 

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