Every student at Bok Academy Middle School in Lake Wales, Fla., uses a Nook, iPad or laptop in class. The school recently was recognized nationally for its efforts to create a 21st Century learning environment.

Five hundred students sat cross-legged on the floor inside Bok Academy Middle School’s cafeteria, where Principal Damien Moses, a gentle giant with a booming voice, greeted them. “Great moments don’t happen by accident,’’ he told them.

They happen, he said, because someone had a vision.

Then he asked all the teachers at the A-rated Lake Wales, Fla., charter school to stand as he announced that Bok Academy was one of 43 schools in the nation to be designated an Apple School of Distinction. The morning celebration focused on the award, which recognized the school’s commitment to providing every student with an iPad, Nook and laptop in the classroom.

But it also marked just how far the Lake Wales Charter Schools system has come.

In 2004, it took over five district schools. Now the system has six schools, a $30 million operating budget, 400 employees and 3,800 students. It’s on the fast-track to becoming a state-designated “high-performing” charter system, meaning its schools are top performers academically and financially.

Betty Wojcik

“We are now at a point where we can see the benefits,’’ said Betty Wojcik, executive director of the Lake Wales Area Chamber of Commerce, a city commissioner and one of the charter system’s trustees.

Lake Wales is a worthy stop on the school choice map, even in a state that now boasts 579 charters. It's a story as much about small-town pride as it is about alternative ways to govern schools. Community leaders who launched the effort were motivated by a common fear: that if their schools continued to decline, so would their idyllic city of 14,000 in the rolling hills and orange groves of Central Florida.

Striking out on their own has meant embracing a do-it-yourself attitude from everything to serving hot lunches, to fixing school buses, to lobbying Tallahassee for money. It still presents big challenges. The number of low-income kids in Lake Wales’ schools ranges from 50 percent to 90 percent. But if anybody regrets bushwhacking a path on education’s new frontier, they’re few and far between.

“Having choice and that little bit of competition has made everyone more effective,’’ Wojcik said. (more…)