Teachers chart course for holistic charter school
By Virginia Gerst
Special to the Tribune

August 4, 2004

A year before Mayor Richard Daley announced his Renaissance 2010 plan to improve Chicago's educational system, two young teachers, Allison Slade and Katie Graves, were hammering out details of their own program to boost academic achievement.

Slade, 28, and Graves, 30, are the founders of Namaste, a charter school that takes a holistic approach to education by focusing on physical exercise and diet along with the ABCs. It opens Aug. 30 at 3540 S. Hermitage Ave. in Chicago's McKinley Park neighborhood.

"It's been amazing to watch them," says Brian Hays, an associate attorney at Lord, Bissell and Brook and president of the Namaste board. "They've taken an idea they talked about sitting around in a coffee shop and turned it into professional organization."

In just three months, Slade and Graves formulated a detailed plan for their school, recruited a board of directors, nailed down a location, prepared a proposal, and made a presentation to the Chicago Board of Education's seven-member evaluation team.

They so impressed the group that Namaste (pronounced na-ma-STAY) was one of only two schools--out of 25 applicants--granted charters for 2004-2005. (The Chicago Mathematics and Science Academy Charter School was the other.)

Charter schools are independent public schools organized by outside organizations but monitored by the school district in which they are chartered. They must comply with the same state-mandated regulations as traditional public schools and their students take the same standardized tests, but charter schools have the flexibility to emphasize specific areas of learning and to offer alternative scheduling of the school day and year. Tuition is free.

"We were up against some very organized groups: large non-profit organizations, existing schools--people that had a real infrastructure and multimillion-dollar endowments," Slade said during breakfast recently at a Lincoln Park coffee shop.

Slade is a Northbrook native and graduate of Glenbrook North High School and Washington University in St. Louis. Graves grew up in Mt. Prospect and is an alumna of Prospect High School and Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.

They met in 1993 in Houston, where they were volunteers in Teach for America, an organization that recruits recent college graduates to work in disadvantaged school systems. They reconnected in Chicago after both finished their two-year stints.

"Katie recruited me for her volleyball team," recalled Slade, who was studying for a master's degree in education policy at the University of Chicago as a McCormick Tribune Fellow and working full time for the university's Center for School Improvement (now the Center for Urban School Improvement).

"We would have dinner together with other teacher friends and the topic of conversation most frequently would come back to what was missing from our schools," said Graves, a 1st-grade teacher at Fairview Elementary School in Mt. Prospect at the time. "Being young, excited, and committed to kids and education, we thought we could bring together some better ideas and programs to make a difference."

Slade, Graves and C. Allison Jack, another Teach for America veteran who has since joined the Namaste board, met at the end of June 2003 in the kitchen of Jack's North Side apartment to put their ideas in writing. They drafted a proposal outlining their mission in a single night.

Health, fitness and nutrition

Based on their classroom experience, and drawing on research that shows that healthy, active students perform better, they agreed that many of the problems in the Chicago Public Schools are rooted in sugar-loaded diets and a lack of physical exercise during the school day.

Their dream school integrated health, physical fitness, and nutrition into a rigorous academic curriculum and called for on-going teacher training and strong parental involvement. They called it Namaste, a Hindi greeting that translates into "my inner light salutes your inner light."

Slade, who described herself as "decisive, quick-thinking and determined to move ahead despite obstacles," would be Namaste's principal and director of instruction. Graves, ("a processor" who "takes time to look at a situation and evaluate it from different angles," said Slade), was named director of operations, in charge of scheduling, materials, and purchasing.

The proposal was easy. The charter school application was not. It contained a daunting 69 questions. "You have to articulate literally everything you have in place, and are going to have in place," Slade said. "It was overwhelming."

It also was due back at the Board of Education by Oct. 10.

Realizing they needed help, the women spent July and August recruiting a board of directors. They called friends. They called friends of friends. "Everyone you meet has a connection you can use," Slade said.

"We looked for different skill sets," she explained. "We had a core of educators, but we also needed people in the law, finance, real estate, public relations, and fundraising."

Few rejected their requests for help.

"The passion that they have for educating children comes across and garners confidence with both potential board members and funders," said board president Hays, another Teach for America veteran who first worked with Slade and Graves coordinating training seminars for Teach for America recruits in Chicago. "I knew their school would be great, and I wanted to be involved."

The group met Saturday mornings in members' homes to refine the curriculum, set policies, and discuss challenges such as finding a rental site for their school. "People who own buildings are skeptical of people with no [business] background," Slade said.

Slade, at home in Chicago, and Graves, in Massachusetts completing her master's degree in school leadership at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, spoke by telephone for two hours every Sunday night.

One minute under deadline

They decided that the coeducational school would open initially with two kindergarten and two 1st-grade classes, and add kindergartens each year until Namaste reaches its desired K through 8 configuration. Breakfast and lunch would be served, and the school day would last for 6 1/2 hours to provide time for physical activity. Because studies show that students tend to lose knowledge over the summer months, Namaste would run year-round, with one month off in every three. Cultural enrichment programs would be offered during vacations.

The document was due at 5 p.m. They turned in their 350-page proposal at 4:59 p.m.

Two months and two public hearings later, Namaste had its charter.

"They had clear plans and a depth of detail," says Kathleen Clarke, accountability coordinator for Chicago Public Schools Charter Schools Office and a member of the evaluation team that said yes to Namaste and no to groups from the YMCA, the Boys Choir of Harlem, and the Little Black Pearl Workshop, among others. "And they were just a great group, very engaged, very articulate and very inspiring as well."

With Graves in Cambridge until mid-June to complete her master's degree, Slade took on the task of recruiting students to fill the classrooms. She attended neighborhood meetings, posted notices on the library bulletin boards, and approached parents in playgrounds.

"She literally stood on street corners to recruit kids," said Cathy Calhoun, a member of the Namaste board of directors and president of Weber Shandwick Chicago, a public relations agency.

Slade's efforts paid off. By the end of June, all 90 places in the two kindergarten and two 1st-grade classes were filled.

Graves and Slade are now at work raising money. To supplement funds the school receives from the Chicago Public Schools system and the State of Illinois, Namaste must come up with $200,000 by April 1 to meet its $902,000 budget. They also are busy hiring a staff, which will include five classroom teachers and a full-time physical education instructor/social worker, and supervising architects to ensure that renovations to the former Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic School will be completed on time.

They have come a long way since that initial kitchen planning session in June 2003.

"Anything is possible," Slade said. "If you are completely dedicated to something, you can make it work and you will find amazing support.

"We still have a ton of roadblocks, but we have kids, we have teachers, we have a building, and we have families who are interested. We're going to have a school."