Letter: Time to repair relationship with community groups

• Feb 2, 2019
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To the editor:
The founding team of Equity Lab Charter School would like to address concerns about community partners’ support letters that we included in our commonwealth charter application.
We want to clearly and emphatically state that we believed the letters of support submitted in our charter application were authorized by our community partners. We did not falsify the letters in any way.
The process for the development and collection of these letters included the following steps:
1. Support letter template. We created a Google Doc template that reflected the requirements for the support letter, as outlined by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for charter application. We did this to ensure that the letter clearly defined the content and scope of the collaboration between Equity Lab and our partner organizations.
2. Community site visits. We made one to two community site visits with each partner organization, where we confirmed their permission for a support letter and discussed the content and scope of the collaboration. The results of the conversations were usually written into the body of the support letter template.
Once a community site agreed to a support letter, we advised them that we would draft the letter on their behalf to save them time and to ensure the appropriate formatting for charter submission.
3. Drafting of letters .The Equity leadership team developed drafts of the letter on Google Drive, using the template and notes from the site visits.
4. Revision/edits. The draft letters were then sent to community partners for their review through Google Drive, where they had the opportunity to comment, revise, or suggest any edits.
We submitted electronic records to the Department of Education to confirm that this process was utilized with each and every community organization.
We want to acknowledge that in the case of the Lawrence History Center, we had a misunderstanding concerning their consent to the letter. In response to their request, we promptly notified the department that the center had not authorized the letter.
In the cases of the YMCA and Groundwork Lawrence, we did not do enough work to explain the purpose of the support letters. In hindsight, we would have implemented much stricter protocols to avoid any misunderstanding concerning the purpose and authorization of the support letters.
Equity Lab’s mission is to “partner with families and communities to provide powerful learning experiences.” In order for the mission to be realized, partnerships are essential, and given the misunderstandings over the last week, we believe that we need to step back and work to repair our relationship with community organizations.
At this time, we have decided to withdraw our application for our proposed public charter school, recommit ourselves to building a broad base of support for our work, and assess how we can best serve the Lawrence community. In the coming weeks and months, we will be deepening our relationship with each member of the Lawrence community so everyone has full knowledge of our integrity and our intentions.
We are deeply sorry to disappoint the many families and supporters who were as excited as we were to offer this opportunity to students in the 2019-20 school year. We will never waiver from our vision that students should be given the opportunity to learn in an inspiring, innovative setting that unleashes students’ natural ability for creativity, innovation, collaboration and social responsibility.
We are rooted in the belief that through integrated and project-based curriculum anchored in authentic experiences of social entrepreneurship, students develop the academic and social emotional competencies to complete higher education, thrive in evolving economies, and seize opportunities to be change agents in their communities.
Equity Lab will continue to find ways to scale equity in schools and communities by serving as an incubator for educational and social innovation.
Frank DeVito
Founder and Executive Director
Equity Lab Charter School