Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation 7321 Parkway Drive South Hanover, MD 21076 Application for Appointment to the Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School Governing Board DEADLINE: A completed application (including this cover page) must be received by close of business on Friday, November 16, 2012. Applications may either be mailed to: Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation 7321 Parkway Drive South Hanover, MD 21076 or e-mailed in PDF format to info@clfmd.org. Name: Simon Spearman Lancaster Address: 1188 Bacon Ridge Road, Crownsville, MD 21032 Telephone: (Home) 410-923-3331 (Work) (Cell) E-Mail: spearlib@comcast.net Date of Birth: 1933 Are you a parent/guardian of CSP student? YES NO If yes, how long? What is the best way to reach you? E-mail Have you ever been convicted of a crime? (Please circle) YES NO Please attach a current résumé with this application. Attached Professional organizational memberships and positions held and length of service: (Please limit to past ten years) Maryland Taxpayers Association, Board member Community Involvement: (Please limit to the past ten years.) A member of the County executive s review committee that reviewed the county government s departments and make suggestions. A member of the committee for reviewing Anne Arundel County s General Development Plan.. A member of the Annapolis Chamber of Commerce and active on its Government Affairs committee. Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation, Board Chair Maryland Charter School Network, Board Member
Awards/Honors: What awards/honors have you been most proud to receive? (Please include the year of the award and the awarding institution or entity.) Please answer the following questions. Your responses for each question must be typed and may not exceed two pages and be written in 1.5 lines-spaced 12-point font on 8 1 / 2 x 11 sheets of paper. 1. Why are you interested in serving on the CSP Board? Please include an explanation of the primary strengths and resources you would bring to the Board and what you believe is the proper role of a Board member. I believe that a classic and though education is crucial for the future of our community and country. I have long witnessed appalling results in spite of huge increases in cost of the K-12 programs. We cannot continue to ignore the huge numbers of students who can t even read and comprehend a newspaper when they finish high school, if they can. I see astonishing numbers of students who enroll at the community college who have to spend a year or more taking remedial courses. This should not be happening. 2. What do you believe are the three most critical issues currently Maryland Public Schools are facing? What specific ideas do you have to address these issues? Too top down and bureaucratic. We need more autonomy at the school level and strict accountability. We need to use our imagination and creative skills to help every student to maximize their potential. We need discipline and structure in the classroom and programs to challenge every student. This calls for a student focused curriculum. 3. What do you believe are the three most critical issues Maryland Charter Schools especially in Anne Arundel County are currently facing? What specific ideas do you have to address these issues? Charters have some major problems in Maryland. The charter school law is rated at second worst or worst depending on who you ask. To start with there is virtually no autonomy for Maryland Charter schools. You are limited in all areas and you are held responsible for following all the rules and polices from the federal, state and local authorities. Many of the policies are changed from time to time with no input from the charter schools. They have no say or input as to whether or not this will allow the charters to perform their goals. Another major problem is that charters have virtually little say in selecting their staff. All teachers are approved by the School District HR departments and are employees of the school districts, Even the principal has to be approved and rated by the school district administrators. The Charter boards might love a particular person but the final choice is
made by the local school district administrators. There are no waivers in these areas. Bill Gates would not be allowed to teach a computer class at CSP. Facility cost and bussing are also major road blocks. The charters get no facility funding. This automatically means charter gets less funding equivalent to the school districts capital fund amount. In our case, CSP received 27 percent less funding then the other AACPS public schools in the past 7 years. The funding for transportation is less than 50 percent of the total cost. The difference has to be made up from the operations budget. Another benefit that a charter school does not have is the ability to defer facilities maintenance. We are also limited on what incentives we can offer to our teachers for outstanding effort and success. We are given very strict guidelines on most of our choices. We feel that if we had more autonomy we could offer more creative approaches to achieve our goal of helping every student maximize their potential. 4. What is your exposure to, or experience with, CSP or Charter Schools? I am involved with CSP from beginning as well as the charter movement in general in Maryland. When I look back 8 or so years ago and think of listening to two gentlemen (Al and Ali, the founders) what we have achieved is mind boggling. They knew what they wanted a charter school to look like and what they hoped to achieve. I sat in on many meetings, as a novice, and tried to learn what they really dreamed about. I can easily say that The Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation has covered a lot of ground in the past years and brought the best public education option to Anne Arundel County; and pioneered a lot of things for the Maryland Charter Schools as well. We brought a lot of firsts to this district via CSP. After many fits and starts we opened in 2005 in a small facility in an office complex. Reality soon over took us. We were not going to get capital funding. We had to hire all AACPS teachers. Even the principal was an employee of AACPS. Short of winning the lottery we had a major challenge. Staying alive was our first and foremost goal. It is not easy to put all the hurdles that we have been through in a couple pages, but we survived, and will survive. We were lucky to be able to recruit the right people including our teachers and principal to develop a quality program and improve it day by day. Our numbers speak for themselves and MSDE website can tell you more. On the other hand, we were able to pull everything together including moving to a new facility, renovate it and even add a state of the gymnasium on top of it with 27% less funding than the regular public schools. Our school is currently is not missing any technology or facilities if it does not have more. This is a big and pleasant surprise to a lot of people who keep telling us that it was impossible. We have been winning local and state contests on a regular basis. Our students were scoring at or above the other middle schools in Anne Arundel County. Our students
received many awards nationwide and international competitions as well. We started our science fairs in the first year of operation and we have been invited to hold our science fair at Maryland University. Also our newest school, CMIT in Prince George s County, which opened in August of 2011 had their science fair and they had the same outcome with full student participation. It was almost a dream that this school which had just opened, could pull this off. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised when I visited the fair and saw the displays and students. They came through like pros instead of rookies with less than a year s experience. You could feel the overwhelming pride of the students, parents and teachers. It was an amazing feat. It gave me a deep sense of pride and satisfaction to be associated with this team. As the winners were announced everyone, parents, students and teachers and guest were clapping. The culture of achievement that Al and Ali spoke of was very evident. You didn t need a degree or years of teaching experience to feel the enthusiasm. Actually you couldn t miss it. Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation was invited to open a school in Baltimore in 2010. This is a transformation school and we are in our third year of managing the Baltimore IT Academy. This school is in an area that has a troubled history. While we are never complacent with what we do we feel that we are making progress that good things are happening also.
Assurances I CERTIFY that this application (and any copy or facsimile of same) contains no willful misrepresentation and that the information is true and complete to the best of my knowledge. I further certify and understand that: Completion and submission of this application, gives the Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation (CLF) the authority to submit my name for a criminal records check including a search of the child abuse registry; Information on this application and any documents submitted to be included with this application will be deemed public records of the CLF and may be made available to the public upon request. Only information deemed confidential in accordance with applicable federal and state law will be withheld from public disclosure; Should any investigation at any time disclose otherwise, my application may be rejected, my name may be removed from consideration for appointment the CSP Governing Board of I am not presently employed by CLF and/or CSP; and By signing this application, I am consenting to any reasonable inquiry that may be necessary to verify the information I have provided on this form or that I may provide in conjunction with my application for the CSP Governing Board. Signature : Date : 11/11/2012
RESUME Spear Lancaster 1188 Bacon Ridge Rd Crownsville, MD 21032 spearlib@comcast.com 410-923-3331 Spear was born in 1933 right at the height of the depression. He was raised as the oldest of six children on a tobacco farm. His first five years of education was in a one room school house with five grades and one teacher. It was a classic one room school house, out houses, no electricity, or running water. Everyone drank out of the same bucket which was taken to a well a quarter of a mile away to be refilled. No one got to wash their hands. To this day he is immune to just about everything but money. On cold days everyone gathered around the wood stove with their coats on as it was less than fifty degrees in the room. Spear started a small company when he was nineteen and was hooked. For the next fifty years he owned and managed small businesses. For most of Spear s career he was the owner and manager of a manufactures rep company serving the commercial food service and maintenance markets in the mid-atlantic area. Eight years ago Spear met two young men at an educational event and asked them what they were up to. They said that the wanted to start a charter school. When asked where, they said here. Spear asked them what made them think they could start a charter school in Maryland. Then they started the first charter school in Anne Arundel County. Chesapeake Science Point opened as a middle school in 2005. In 2009, the school moved to a larger facility and started serving high school students in the fall of 2010. Spear is a member of the founding board and the current chair of the Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation Board. Chesapeake Science Point Charter School is Spear s main interest. The bad news is that the job will never be finished. The good news is that Spear will always have something to do to keep him out of trouble.