February 24, 2015 Dear Ms. Wang, I was dismayed to read your article When a Wildlife Rehab Center Regulates Charter Schools: Inside the Wild World of Charter Regulation. As the Executive Director of the Audubon Center of the North Woods, I feel the article grossly downplayed and discredited our ability as a charter school authorizer. It seems as if the decision was made to seek out minor, non-related programs we offer and say this is all that we are, instead of pointing out that they are a small piece of something larger. It was convenient to label us as simply a wildlife rehab center that shows animals to people. Had more effort been given to get a full view of who we are you would have found out several items that were glaringly omitted from the piece that made us look inadequate in the world of charter school authorizing. Items such as:  We are a residential environmental learning center, not a wildlife rehab center, wildlife rehabilitation is only one of the scores of programs we offer  We are an accredited k-12 school by AdvancEd- recognition of our quality educational programs  We educate over 4,000 k-12 students every year in our residential k-12 programs that cover of 40 science, cultural, historical and adventure subjects  We are an undergraduate and graduate level field campus and instruct dozens of courses for myriad post-secondary institutions and our staff hold faculty positions at schools including Northland College and Hamline University  We have been chosen one of the top ten environmental learning centers by the New York Times, been awarded Outstanding Service to Environmental Education from the North American Association for Environmental Education, been awarded the Official Best of Environmental Education for Minnesota, and two of our staff have recently been honored with Lifetime Achievement and Educator of the Year by the Minnesota Association for Environmental Education  We have a wholly dedicated charter school division with staff housed in our Minneapolis Charter School Office led by our Director of Charter School Authorizing, a highly-respected educator who has decades of experiencing teaching in public schools, creating and directing charter schools  We became an authorizer as an extension of our mission to instill a connection and commitment to the environment in people of all communities through experiential learning, and require each school to have an environmental education mission match  We have an Environmental Education Evaluator- the only position of its kind in the nation, whose purpose is strictly working with the charter schools to assess environmental education in each of our schools, and provide feedback and resources for them to improve  Our Charter School Division works with professional educators and consultants across the state to provide site visits, oversight, accountability and feedback to schools to ensure their success and viability  Our charter schools are made up of 65% low-income students, 61% students of color, 14% special education students, and 25% English-language learners- all numbers well above the state-wide averages  We have a rigorous process for school contract renewals and our board of directors looks at each diligently to determine the best path forward, whether to continue authorizing and determine the length of that contract, or whether to close the school     We host an annual conference at our residential environmental learning center for charter school leaders from across the state to come together and discuss best practices, feature thoughtprovoking keynote speakers, and provide resources and networking sessions for charter school authorizers to engage, share and improve practices Publicly funded charter schools in Minnesota receive significantly less funding per pupil than publicly funded district schools and are still expected to compete academically Each state has different governing rules for charter schools and authorizer requirements and the framework that Ohio operates with and the comments made by the Ohio Dep. of Education spokesperson have nothing to do with Minnesota and the Audubon Center of the North Woods I feel as if more time should have been spent to actually learn who we are, about our capabilities and why charter school authorization fits with our mission, instead of branding us as some secluded wildlife rehab center with birds, a porcupine and reptiles that somehow, bizarrely authorizes charter schools. Even the last line gave the innuendo that it will be all too likely we won’t receive a good rating when our score is announced in 2017 by the MN Department of Education. Being prominently featured in the title, the opening paragraph, and the ending paragraph with many negative comments made about charter authorizers in between gives the impression that we are guilty by association because as you wrote, “the real problem is bad authorizing”. I am very disappointed that this article inaccurately portrayed us in such an incompetent and negative light. Sincerely, Bryan Wood Executive Director