Boston's City on a Hill - City On A Hill Charter School in Boston, Massachusetts

Public Interest, Fall, 1996 by Sarah Kass

Certified but disillusioned, I moved to Massachusetts and began teaching in a public school in Chelsea. In 1993, the Massachusetts state legislature passed the Education Reform Act, calling for (among other things) the establishment of 25 charter schools across the state. The topic came up after yet one more Language Arts Curriculum Committee meeting where I had tried unsuccessfully to persuade my colleagues of the importance of having students read books. Ann Connolly Tolkoff, my one ally on the faculty, resorted to filibustering their alternatives with amusing stories. It wasn't that she had given up, she assured me; it was that they had. After all, did I really think they read books? And so, she and I began to talk about creating a different kind of school, where we might actually be free to teach young people to read.

How to start a school

The Executive Office of Education is on the fourteenth floor of a modern office building in downtown Boston. We were to meet with one of the undersecretary's policy analysts. With school out in Chelsea at 2:10 P.M., that we made our 2:30 P.M. appointment was no small miracle. But by 2:32 P.M., we were seated with the policy analyst, learning that, as two certified teachers, we were among the groups legally allowed to apply for a charter. By 2:36 P.M., another policy analyst joined us. "Who are you?" he asked. "I'm Sarah Kass and this is Ann Connolly Tolkoff," I replied. "No, who are you? Who do you represent?" "I'm Ann Connolly Tolkoff and this is Sarah Kass," Ann replied. He assumed we were confused; we feared our certification might not be enough.

Though we might have been nobodies, our proposal was accepted. On March 15, 1994, City On A Hill was granted a provisional charter, which became official on December 9 of that year. A charter permitted us the autonomy to operate a public school. It also extended the accountability of a five-year performance contract: We could stay open only if our students were succeeding academically. Thus it publicly endorsed our mission to "graduate responsible, resourceful, and respectful democratic citizens prepared to advance community, culture and commerce." And it supported our pledge to grant diplomas only to students who could write a well-organized and interesting essay, read great works of literature with understanding, give a 10- to 15-minute public speech, defend their views on historical and contemporary issues, analyze important American documents, apply basic laws of science and understand the scientific method, analyze various civic problems, use and apply algebra, converse in a second language, use technology for learning, and swim. A charter also meant that we could design a schedule, a code of discipline, and a set of school rituals conducive to our academic mission.

Practically speaking, a charter entitled us to recruit and enroll students and receive the average tuition the taxpayers would have spent on each of them had they attended the Boston Public Schools (approximately $7,500 per student for the 1995-1996 school year).(1) We had 147 applications for 65 places. A charter entitled us to recruit and to hire teachers without regard to certification, and to pay them on one-year performance contracts. We had over 350 applications for three positions.