I’ll admit it—when my legislative colleagues and I wrote the original charter school law in Minnesota back in 1991, we didn’t think much about the role of “sponsors,” now called authorizers. Authorizers are the legislatively-endorsed entities that oversee individual charter schools and hold them accountable.

I wondered why 12 of Hawaii’s 33 charter public schools were located on The Big Island. The answer became clear as I visited my last two charter schools. For many Hawaiians, chartering is an opportunity to preserve the Hawaiian culture. Parents, teachers, and communities are creating Hawaiian-focused and Hawaiian-immersion charter public schools to honor and integrate their cultural heritage and language with their children’s education.

You may have heard of the growing number of aquaponics projects, including gardening. Aquaponics is a hydroponic system that grows fish in simple water tanks and uses the water that contains bio-nutrients to feed plants organically.

Between September 2014 and February 2015, the world was transfixed on the rural city of Pahoa, on The Big Island of Hawaii. Lava from the eruption of volcano Pu’u O’o was flowing steadily toward the town, threatening to destroy the entire area. Hawaii Academy of Arts and Science Public Charter School (HAAS) was directly in the lava’s projected path, thirteen miles from the volcano’s origin.

The Hawaii Academy of Arts & Science Public Charter School (HAAS) in Pahoa, on the Big Island of Hawaii, is remarkable in many ways. I start with my visit to its Workplace Readiness Program open to students with disabilities aged 14-22.

High Tech Youth Network (HTYN) is a learning community focused on empowering young people in hard-to-reach and underserved communities throughout the Pacific. The goal is to help them become more confident, resilient, and creative lifelong learners by linking their unique cultural knowledge with technology.

I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Around 3:30 p.m., students from 5th to 12th grade come to their after-school “home” at Connections Public Charter School (CPCS) in Hilo—every day if they want until dinnertime—to explore their personal interests and passions with the help of skilled guides and the latest state-of-the-art technology.

Within an hour of landing at the Hilo airport on The Big Island of Hawaii, I walked into the K-12 Connections Public Charter School, one of the oldest charter schools in Hawaii. Established in 2000, the younger grades are located in a former department store, with spacious hallways and high ceilings. You can see the ocean from the front door. Upon arriving midday, imagine my surprise to find young ladies and gentlemen waltzing with each other in the central activity area! They were dancing to music played by their classmates on a nearby stage.

I was thrilled to learn that the Guam Academy Charter School Council, headed by Chairwoman Rosa Palomo, recently voted to approve Guam’s first charter school for three more years. Congratulations to Guahan Academy Charter School (GACS)! It is always most difficult to be the first charter school, and they deserve the opportunity to continue to serve their 600 students. I only hope that the 300+ students on their waiting list will also find a charter school home soon.

I loved that the Guam Women’s Chamber of Commerce invited me to speak during my week-long visit to the island. Our conversation on women’s leadership went well beyond charter schools, though there was an important connection to chartering. The charter school law in Guam was authored by the current Speaker, Senator Judith Won Pat. That parallels the origins of chartering in Minnesota, where three of four key bipartisan leaders on the legislation were women.

Guam Governor Eddie Baza Calvo and his Lt. Governor are both Republicans. The Speaker of the unicameral Guam Legislature (Iliheslaturan Guahan), Dr. Judith T. Won Pat, is a Democrat. The Chair of the Education Committee, Senator Nerissa Bretania Underwood, is a Democrat and former Superintendent of Education.

Public school choice is powerful. Once parents and families have new opportunities to educate their children, they exercise that choice. The rapid charter school enrollment in Guam is nothing short of amazing.

I arrived in Guam on Sunday evening, May 3, having traveled 24 hours in daylight. The setting sun was both a beautiful and welcome sight. So were the 40-plus teachers, students and charter school leaders who greeted me upon landing at the Guam International Airport in Hagatna, the capitol, showering me with beautiful orchid and floral leis for my neck and hair.

Minnesota legislators, in a rush to finish the 2015 legislative session, passed an E-12 education funding bill on Monday. On Tuesday, the governor announced his veto of the bill because it lacks funding for four-year-old preschool.

Check it out! This Innovation Action approach was presented by Valley New School (VNS) leaders Jen Plamann and Nicole Luedtke at the recent Innovative Schools Network (ISN) conference in Wisconsin Dells. As described in Tuesday’s blogpost, VNS is a project-based school for 68 students in grades 7-12 in Appleton, Wisconsin, which celebrated its tenth year of innovative education in 2012-2013.

Valley New School (VNS) of the Appleton, Wisconsin Area School District defines its mission as “A learning community that empowers individuals to become purposeful adults.” I love it!

Nearly all Wisconsin charter schools outside Milwaukee are known as “instrumentality” charter schools. These schools must be authorized by the local school district, and the schools are generally more district-controlled than what was originally conceived in chartering.

Imagine about 300 educators gathered in a room from charter schools, district schools, and supporting organizations all dedicated to “Taking a Stand for Change.” That describes the Innovative Schools Network (ISN) Innovations Conference where I had the honor to keynote last week in Wisconsin Dells.

I couldn’t be more excited that our new nonprofit, Heart of Dance, is bringing Dancing Classrooms to Minnesota in 2015-16. What a joy to see the transformation in fifth graders in just 10 weeks: this video will make you smile!

Maybe you’ve seen Mad Hot Ballroom, an award-winning documentary capturing the Dancing Classrooms journey in New York City from classroom experience to the city-wide culminating Colors of the Rainbow Team Match. Or maybe you’ve seen Dancing in Jaffa, a feature-length documentary released in 2014 depicting Founder Pierre Dulaine’s work in bringing ballroom dance to 5th grade Jewish and Palestinian children in his home town of Jaffa, Israel. Since 1994, Dancing Classrooms has reached almost 500,000 children in hundreds of schools in 24 cities across the United States and five sites internationally.