Edison Charter Academy
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Not everything about EdisonLearning was bad. The company "got us to a certain point, because Edison was really having trouble back in the '90s," Senteno says. Her son is proof that the for-profit days turned out some bright students. With black-rimmed glasses, black stocking cap, and light goatee, Jack lends a bohemian air to his otherwise typical teen dress code of a black hoodie and slouchy jeans. An aspiring artist now at a charter high school, he hopes to apply to New York University or the San Francisco Art Institute. "I grew up developing my art skills" at Edison, he says. "Without that, I wouldn't be the artist I am today."
With EdisonLearning's roster of independent charter schools shrinking from 120 to just 40, the company's losses show it's not easy to score a buck off underfunded public education. (Founder Whittle has moved on to create a global chain of elite private schools, Nations Academy, that charges top dollar for rich kids.) Eric Premack is the executive director of Charter Schools Development Center, a California-based consultant and lobbying group. He says donors' initial interest in for-profit charters like Edison dissipated. "They kind of freaked out when they saw how virulent the reaction was in San Francisco," he says. Now most major foundations giving to charter schools — many of them based in the Bay Area — direct the big bucks to national nonprofit charter organizations.
Edison Charter School hopes to find some of those dollars. The school just incorporated a nonprofit foundation with the state to be able to fundraise, and Kriete hopes private sources will someday make up 10 percent of the school's revenue. But Kriete also says the school is doing great things with mere tax dollars. "We're proving you can be a successful, nimble community site school, and up until a year ago everyone told us it will never work," he says
Last year, some of the teachers wanted to rename the school Dolores Charter Academy to distance it from "all that Edison junk," as Senteno puts it. But the parents objected.
In a democracy, the people can also vote against you. So now the school must redefine what it means to be Edison.
