Trust is infrastructure
Reminder: Independent parent group — not affiliated with or endorsed by FASD.
TL;DR
FASD is a small school — 225 students, one campus, and a community that runs in large part on trust, goodwill, and volunteer energy. That is part of its appeal. It is also part of its vulnerability.
At a school this size, governance gaps do not stay neatly confined to agendas, bylaws, or committee charts. Over time, they show up elsewhere: in parent trust, volunteer energy, leadership pipeline, fundraising, and confidence in the school's direction.
That is the "so what."
Poor governance increases institutional exposure — reputationally, operationally, financially, and over time, legally too. And for a school FASD's size, there is not much cushion to absorb those shocks.
Parent Analysis
The Colorado League of Charter Schools' governance playbook is direct about the board's role: a charter board is responsible for the school's academic success, financial stability, compliance with its charter and applicable laws, external relations, and its own internal functioning. That includes adhering to bylaws, providing oversight, evaluating leadership, and assessing board performance annually.
FASD's own board responsibilities say much the same. Board members are supposed to build awareness of and vigilance toward governance matters, prepare for meetings, ask strategic questions, and commit to continuous improvement through annual self-evaluation.
FASD's strategic plan (now expired) makes clear that family participation is not a side issue. It says the active participation of families and volunteers in fundraising, classroom and recess support, field trips, and special events is "a cornerstone of our success," and it set goals for 50% parent volunteer participation and a PTO leadership cohort with all executive roles filled.
On the fundraising side, the school set an initial annual goal of $80,000, later stretched to $100,000. As of the March board meeting, the year-to-date total is approximately $92,000 — a strong result, and a credit to the community. But the underlying numbers are worth noting: Colorado Gives Day brought in $31,385 against a $43,000 goal, and the gala raised approximately $40,000 against a $60,000 goal. Both headline events fell short of their stated targets. The overall total is encouraging — but it also raises a question about where the remaining ~$20,000 came from, and whether the current fundraising model is as visible and understood as it should be.
Several other concerns parents have raised over the last year also do not live in separate boxes.
The bell schedule change is one example. Many families expressed concern about aftercare costs and disruption to family routines. Whatever one thinks of the final decision, a number of parents did not feel meaningfully heard — and I never saw evidence that the full range of family-cost implications was publicly worked through before the Board voted.
Mission and program continuity are another concern. Families chose FASD for a particular value proposition: French immersion, academic rigor, and a distinctive school model. Recent changes — including larger kindergarten class sizes and the bell schedule change — have led some parents to question whether the school is fully protecting that proposition.
Leadership transitions are another. The departure of the previous school director came as a surprise to many families. More recently, the full-time school director hiring process concluded with a single finalist. Colorado law requires a 14-day public notice period before any offer can be extended — a window designed for meaningful community input, not just notification.
There are also still open questions about financial stewardship. The board's role is not merely to describe revenue pressures; it is to monitor financial health, review expenditures, and ensure resources are being used in a way that aligns with mission and commitments. Questions about how restricted funds — including Mill Levy Override 2020 — are being used have not received a public response. That is not outside the board's lane. It is squarely inside it.
The School Accountability Committee is another relevant example. FASD's charter appendix includes SAC bylaws that say the committee should recommend spending priorities, provide advisory input on Head of School development plans and evaluations, and meet at least quarterly. Yet updated SAC bylaws are still in process and have not been shared with the community at large. The school’s SAC page describes bylaws as “coming soon”.
It is also worth noting that the entire PTO executive team is not returning for 2025–26, and finding replacements has been challenging.
None of these concerns, taken alone, necessarily proves catastrophe. But together they point in the same direction: governance is not just an internal process matter. It is a school-health matter.
The “Since You’re Here…” Section
Unofficial reflections — offered in good faith (and with a grain of salt)
I want to be explicit: the section above is my attempt to keep things factual and balanced. This section is my personal perspective.
Here is the part that feels increasingly hard to ignore: At a small school, trust is infrastructure. When trust is strong, families volunteer, donate, recruit friends, give leaders the benefit of the doubt, and stick with the school through bumps in the road. When trust starts to erode, the opposite happens. People pull back. Some quietly. Some all at once.
That is why governance matters so much more than people sometimes want to admit. Weak governance does not just produce messy process. It produces downstream effects. Fundraising gets harder. Volunteer leadership gets harder to sustain. Community confidence gets shakier. Mission drift becomes easier to rationalize. And the school has less margin to recover when things go sideways.
To be clear, not every challenge at FASD is caused by governance. Raising money is hard. Running a small school is hard. Recruiting volunteers is hard. Nobody needs a blog post to learn that. But it is also true that weak governance makes each of those things harder than they need to be.
Families are not just being asked to trust the school with their children; they are also being asked to supply time, money, goodwill, and leadership. Governance is the mechanism by which that trust is either protected or squandered. That is the real issue.
The concern is not simply that the board could run cleaner meetings or keep tidier documentation, though yes, that would be nice. The concern is that when governance basics are weak, the school becomes more exposed — reputationally, operationally, and financially. For a school this size, those are not abstract risks. They are the kinds of shocks that can compound quickly.
A board taking its stewardship role seriously should not wait until the consequences are undeniable. It should treat these as warning signs and respond with visible corrective action: clearer oversight, better discipline around process, more transparent analysis, and a more credible effort to rebuild trust.
Because for a school like FASD, trust is not a nice-to-have.
Trust is infrastructure.
~ Greg
