July 21, 2003

 

Dear CANEC Members,

 

Summer is upon us and although most of our schools are on break, your CANEC board continues to work hard to complete the task before us – the reinvention of CANEC and the proposed merger resulting in NewCo, a new, more powerful advocate for the charter school movement in California.

 

As you will recall, we signed a non-binding Letter of Intent in support of this effort at our open board meeting during our annual conference in March, 2003. A funding proposal was submitted to the foundations for a start up grant that would provide bridge funding to CANEC during this transition period and support the necessary activities around the merger and development of NewCo. To that end, a NewCo board was formed and one of the first priorities was to initiate a search for a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) that would provide the necessary leadership to bring together a cohesive and strategically aligned organization capable of supporting and broadening the charter school movement in California.

 

The search firm of Korn Ferry was selected. One of the names that came forward early was Caprice Young, recent past president of Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Looking for a way of continuing her work with public school reform she decided to submit her papers for consideration.

 

A search committee comprised of the majority of NewCo board members working with the search firm, reviewed resumes of eight final candidates for this position. It was the unanimous decision of the committee that Caprice Young be recommended to the NewCo board for the position of CEO. The board supported the recommendation. Caprice accepted the position of CEO for NewCo starting July 22, 2003.

 

Caprice is committed to public education reform and moves with a sense of purpose and urgency. Her leadership while president of the LAUSD resulted in over 30 new charter schools being sponsored by the LAUSD Board. Committed to a wide variety of educational options, the schools ranged from large to small and from innovative to the more traditional.

 

Caprice comes to NewCo after serving for four years on the LAUSD Board. She has exhibited strong leadership skills in changing the culture within the school district, and has demonstrated her commitment to charter schools and choice within public education.

Caprice received her bachelor's degree from Yale University, a master's degree in public administration from the University of Southern California and has also served as a business executive and assistant deputy mayor for the city of Los Angeles.

 

As the new CEO of NewCo, Caprice brings the skills and experiences that are necessary to assume this leadership role in moving the charter movement to the next level – an organization focused on education reform with the influence to support the development and expansion of a wide variety of high quality charter schools for all public school children in California.

Next steps:

 

Working with Caprice, CANEC staff will set up regional meetings beginning in late August and early September to introduce Caprice to our members in each region and to share NewCo’s preliminary strategic plans and merger information. The schedule for these meetings will be sent to members in early August.

 

So that we are on track to be very active in the 2003-04 legislative session – promoting charter schools – we are hopeful that in September a decision regarding the merger will have been reached by a vote of our membership.

 

In the meantime, CANEC continues to prioritize its advocacy work and services on behalf of its membership!

 

Marta Reyes

President