New Beginnings Academy

Wayne wants to educate kids, who have many shortcomings, well, to let them fly in their education.

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Filed under: Defining New Markets | Education | New Beginnings Academy | Twelve Month Goals | Wayne Millette | Ypsilanti, MI

New Beginnings Academy is beyond its infancy and facing its first tests of adolescence (download 6 minute iPod compatible video, 29MB). Initially, New Beginnings had to overcome financial challenges inherent in any startup. Second, they discovered that the value proposition their customers perceived, a safe place for their children to go to school, was at a more fundamental level than New Beginnings' goal of creating a rich learning environment.

However, with time, New Beginnings has gotten to a point where it has overcome its initial challenges and can focus more on innovating in its curriculum. In particular, Wayne wants to educate kids, who have many shortcomings, well, to let them fly in their education. To achieve this goal, he will eventually have to extend New Beginnings Academy from purely an elementary school to also providing a middle school.

As a teenager, Wayne Millette moved from Grenada to Brooklyn, NY. He has been trying to transform the urban school experience ever since.

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Filed under: Education | Making Substitutes | New Beginnings Academy | Wayne Millette | Ypsilanti, MI

Wayne Millette, Director of New Beginnings Academy, is troubled by the nature of urban schools (download iPod compatible video, 45MB). Part of this sentiment comes from personal experience when as a teenager he made the transition from his bucolic home in Grenada to Brooklyn, NY. Part of this sentiment comes from his dissertation thesis where his research revealed that, on average, university faculty training school administrators had themselves not stepped inside a school in 13 years.

After completing his Ph.D at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Wayne did a brief sojourn at University of Michigan before taking a position at Olivet College to help start their Master of Arts in Teaching. It was during this period that he began to form the idea to start a charter school. He and a colleague spent their one hour commute to and from Olivet discussing what K12 education meant to communities and planning how they could make more of an impact.

Wayne describes the challenges he faced in launching New Beginnings Academy.

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Filed under: Education | Making Substitutes | New Beginnings Academy | Wayne Millette | Ypsilanti, MI

In this eight and a half segment (download iPod compatible, 44MB), Wayne Millette describes the steps he had to go through in launching New Beginnings Academy. There were three challenges. First, the school had to become authorized by an authorizing authority in order to undertake any operations as school such as hiring staff. After a period of working with nearby Eastern Michigan University, New Beginnings decided to seek a more expedited process with the market leader, Central Michigan University. New Beginnings was able to get its charter in August of the year it started, barely in time.

Second, New Beginnings faced an eight week period from the third week in August to the third week in October during which they would have to operate without revenue. To fill the gap, they obtained a state start-up grant of sixty-five thousand dollars.

Third, they needed a building. The first building fell through due to difficulties with zoning changes. However, New Beginnings was fortunate to find a church location that could accommodate them for two years. They then moved to their current building in 2001 after completely gutting and renovating it.

In our next segment, we'll discuss why Wayne wanted to start a charter school.

Wayne Millette gives an overview of the value proposition provided by charter schools and the process for starting one.

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Filed under: Education | Making Substitutes | New Beginnings Academy | Wayne Millette | Ypsilanti, MI

In this nine and a half minute segment (download iPod compatible, 46MB), Wayne Millette, Director of New Beginnings Academy introduces us to the mission of his charter school. In 1993, Michigan passed a law enabling charter schools to give parents choice so that they could search out schools of higher quality. Wayne and a partner started New Beginnings with the hope of creating a small intimate learning environment where children and teachers all knew each other.

The first step in starting a charter school is to obtain a charter from an authorizer. The law in Michigan allows four institutions to authorize charter schools:

• Universities (150 schools chartered). Central Michigan University alone accounts for 60 of the schools chartered by this category.
• Community colleges (36)
• Intermediate school districts (30)
• Local school districts (12)

The charter received covers the whole state of Michigan, allowing students from any location in the state to attend. As of 2005, Michigan had 100,000 students in charter schools, or about 10% of the national total. In future segments, Wayne will go into the details of the challenges he faced in getting New Beginnings off the ground.

Disclosure: Wayne is the husband of Diana Wong, an editorial contributor to the site.