cypress-exec-summary

School Summary Enrollment Summary

2 page limit Enrollment Plan: Complete the following table for each school proposed to open in year one. Duplicate the table as needed. Remove any rows for grades the school will not serve.

Grade Level Pre-­‐K K 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Year 1 2014 0 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Year 2 2015 0 75 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Number of Students Year 3 Year 4 2016 2017 0 0 75 75 75 75 100 75 0 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Year 5 2018 0 75 75 75 75 100 0 0 0 0

Capacity 2022 0 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 100

Describe the rationale for the number of students and grade levels served in year one and the basis for the growth plan illustrated above.

TYPE YOUR RESPONSE IN THE BOX BELOW, IT WILL EXPAND AS NEEDED.

Cypress Academy’s mission is to provide a socioeconomically, racially, and culturally diverse community of learners with an educational environment that encourages critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, intellectual risk-taking, and social and emotional growth. In addition to welcoming students through an open enrollment process, a percentage of our enrollment is reserved for and unique programmatic attention is given to students with dyslexia and like learning disabilities as outlined more specifically in the admissions section below.

The model of growth reflects our belief that the early primary years set the stage for the rest of a child’s school experience, academically, socially, and behaviorally. Our unique subprogram employing evidenced-based methods of intervention for our students with dyslexia or like disabilities has strong prevention and early intervention programs. Beginning with just Kindergarten students allows us to immediately implement our program with all of our students, including those who choose Cypress Academy because they may show early signs of dyslexia.

We also expect that students with dyslexia (and typical students) will transfer into Cypress Academy as spaces open up due to student and family movement and through relationships that we will establish with other schools, psychologists and speech-language therapists. Our growth model allows us to effectively meet the needs of new students as we continue to provide an excellent education to the students who have grown with us since Kindergarten.

We have chosen to begin with 100 Kindergarten students in the first year. Each subsequent Kindergarten class will have 75 students. This growth model allows us to keep our grade level teacher teams together to maximize student achievement while also allowing for one teacher to move up a grade level with the students. This allows us to get the best of both worlds: (1) consistency within a grade level and (2) a teacher in the new grade level that knows the students, their strengths and their growth needs.

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Cypress Academy

Executive Summary 2 page limit The Executive Summary should provide a concise summary of the following: • The mission and vision for the school(s) • The key components of the educational model, including brief explanation of how it will drive success for the expected student population • The academic outcomes the school(s) will achieve • The values, approach, and accomplishments of your school leader or leadership team, demonstrating capacity to open and manage a high quality school • Key supporters or resources that will contribute to your school’s success TYPE YOUR RESPONSE IN THE BOX BELOW, IT WILL EXPAND AS NEEDED.

Cypress Academy will provide a socioeconomically, racially, and culturally diverse community of learners with an educational environment that encourages critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, intellectual risk-taking, and social and emotional growth. In addition to welcoming students through an open enrollment process, Cypress will incorporate a unique focus designed specifically to meet the needs of students with dyslexia or like disabilities. One of the most compelling findings from recent reading research is that children who get off to a poor start in reading rarely catch up.”1 The Wilson Language Program, well documented for its effectiveness, will be at the core of the Cypress educational program. The Wilson program will be used to teach literacy but all teachers will be trained in the Wilson methods to ensure methodology links across curricula areas. The Cypress approach intentionally and systematically differentiates teaching, providing research-backed support for children with dyslexia and like learning differences and creating an educational culture designed for individualized success. The educational format ensures that the learning needs of all students-- including those with dyslexia and like learning disabilities, those who are ELL, have other special needs, are at risk for school failure, and who are typical learners-- are acknowledged, celebrated, and addressed.

With three school values --Integrity, Exploration, and Perseverance--as the core of our school culture, Cypress Academy will provide a rigorous educational environment that fosters intellectual, social, emotional, and character development. We will help our students gain the ability to identify, evaluate and critique information from a variety of perspectives to guide decision-making. In so doing, they will develop important questions, gather relevant and accurate information, and come to evidence-based conclusions while relying on skills and knowledge learned in other settings. We will teach our students to become aware of, reflect on, and communicate with their teachers, parents and classmates about their own skills, knowledge, areas for growth and learning styles. They will also learn to collaborate within a group, relying on the individual strengths of each group member, to develop creative solutions to complex challenges by employing the sources at hand in different ways. They will learn to take on varied roles while considering divergent points of view and negotiating for mutual benefit. We will nurture each child’s unique creativity, curiosity, and interest in learning. We will encourage and support them as their passions and brains, regardless of their learning styles, propel them from idea to idea to idea.

Cypress Academy will use the Responsive Classroom® approach to teaching, helping to construct a culture of achievement, caring, and connectedness. The Responsive Classroom®

1

Torgeson, Joseph K. Catch Them Before They Fail. http://education.ucf.edu/mirc/Research/Catch%20Them%20Before%20They%20Fall.pdf

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approach puts emphasis on the social and emotional culture with an understanding that how you learn dictates much of what you learn. This social-emotional culture promotes a learning environment where academic achievement flourishes. The Responsive Classroom Efficacy Study (RCES), funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (IES), found that schools using the Responsive Classroom® approach had improved student achievement (specifically in reading and math) across socioeconomic groups (with a greater effect on low-achieving students) and improved teacher-student interactions among other positive outcomes.2 Our academic program with systematic learning support built into the curriculum, together with our core values, and the Responsive Classroom Approach will frame the educational environment at Cypress Academy. The whole of the school culture will focus on the individual, the school community, individual student academic achievement, student social skills, student emotional security and development, and communication skills. Our graduates, including those with dyslexia and like learning disabilities, will be prepared to be engaged, thoughtful, contributing members in high school, in a school of higher learning and in society.

We have chosen to employ Dr. Bob Berk as our Head of School. Dr. Berk is a seasoned school leader with the academic credentials to match his leadership experience. Dr. Berk received his PhD in (Educational) Leadership and Policy from Vanderbilt University in 2003.

While at Vanderbilt he worked on the design and implementation of the Principals’ Leadership Academy of Nashville where he focused on helping principals use their data to improve instruction. Having written his dissertation on how to reduce the achievement gap between black and white students in Title I schools, he is intimately familiar with the need to focus on the many diverse groups that comprise a school community. Dr. Berk has 10 years of elementary school leadership experience, including nine as a Head of School. He spent the last five years as Head of School of the Community Day School, a diverse, independent, elementary school. He taught for 4 years in alternative and/or high poverty schools prior to his school leadership experience and holds a M.Ed. in Secondary School Administration from Xavier University in Cincinnati. In addition to the aforementioned professional qualifications, Dr. Berk brings with him personal characteristics of warmth, caring, commitment, and humor, all characteristics we believe are vital for a Head of School.

We have spoken to many charter leaders, teachers, parents, and community leaders who report that even with great intention and effort on the part of many in our collective educational system, students with special needs, including dyslexia, continue to fall through the cracks.

Professors at the University of New Orleans have expressed an interest in using Cypress as a professional development school for their education students. The overwhelming, positive response to our vision demonstrates the dire need for an open enrollment school with a Cypress design—one specifically formatted to meet the unique learning needs of children with dyslexia and like learning disabilities while providing a well-rounded education to all of its students.

Although a primarily open enrollment charter school with a specific subprogram for children with dyslexia is a novel format for a charter school, our educational philosophy is not new. Schools like Community Roots Charter School (New York, NY), Capital City Charter School (Washington DC), and Larchmont Charter School (Los Angeles, CA) have demonstrated success through their test scores while offering an educational program philosophically similar to our own.

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2

https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/research

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Cypress Academy