A common question I receive as ����ý’s co-founder is, “Why not start a public school instead?” Indeed, I am a supporter of public education and I would have much preferred to do that, if it were possible. In this post I’ll explain the thought process that led to ruling out this option and creating ����ý as an independent school.

I was first exposed to the notion of starting a school when I lived in the US, where you can find many innovative . At the time, I was inspired by charter networks (larger chains of affiliated charter schools) like and . For those unfamiliar, charter schools are privately operated but publicly funded schools. To receive public funding charter schools must adhere to certain local requirements, for example that admission is via lottery, but in general charter schools are given a good deal of autonomy. The existence of charter schools can be a contentious political issue, and their net effect is complex to assess, but without a doubt there are many ambitious, innovative, and fascinating charter schools out there. Currently, Alberta is the only Canadian province with charter schools. If BC had charter schools, ����ý would have been one.

In the current landscape, the only options are public and independent.† While the notion of trying to start a new public school is daunting, it comes with a huge advantage: the school is free to attend for everyone. ����ý is trying to mitigate the tuition barrier through our innovative tuition model, but as long as tuition is not free, barriers remain. So why, then, give up on the public system? Indeed, there are many aspects of ����ý that could potentially be implemented within the public system, such as project based learning, an accelerated curriculum, a STEM focus, an admissions process geared at collecting like-minded learners, our school culture, student governance, and maybe even our famous 10am start. In an optimistic scenario, one could imagine a so-called Mini School with most or all of the above features. There are also aspects of ����ý that ���dzܱ����’t be implemented in the public system, such as our higher per-student budget due to smaller class sizes and more teacher prep time (more on school budgets in an upcoming blog post), or our independence from the ebb and flow of political tides (which, in the public system, causes structural changes to be made and unmade endlessly with much disruption and little benefit). If these were the only concessions we needed to make, that would be acceptable. ����ý would be a different school than it is today, but it would still absolutely be worth creating.

But there is one concession that we could not make — the deal-breaker, so to speak — and that is teacher hiring. In public schools, teachers are hired by seniority. As the hypothetical Principal, I would not have full freedom to select teachers. This system forces teachers upon you who may not fit the school, while simultaneously keeping out those whose pedagogical training may be non-traditional and therefore not union-approved (like myself, in fact). More than anything else, ����ý needs a team of teachers who buy into the school’s vision, who can rely on each other, who complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and who choose to be in an environment where everyone is held to a high standard. In short, then, ����ý could not be a public school because we reject the notion that teachers are interchangeable workers essentially represented by one number: their seniority. Crucially, charter schools are typically not bound by these edicts. 

That is the story of how ����ý was born as an independent school, certified under the BC Ministry of Education and Child Care’s Independent School Act. By all accounts, we have used our freedoms well to attract a stellar team of educators. The price of these freedoms is the fear that an independent school will only serve a more privileged slice of our society. Thus far, we have managed to achieve remarkable diversity in our student body, and our recent designation from the CRA as a Registered Charity will enable us to ramp up fundraising efforts towards more financial aid. We like to aim high, so we’re aiming for the best of both worlds. 

†In BC at least, there is no difference between independent and private schools, though there is a difference in perception and values between schools that think of themselves as independent, like ����ý, and schools that think of themselves as private.


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