The Founders Program

The purpose of the Founders Program is to recruit founders and founder families to help the school become a reality. Founders are individuals in the community who would like to get involved in the excitement of starting a new school. Founder families will consist of at least one parent or guardian and at least one potential student. Family founder members as well as non-family founders will attend monthly meetings and/or participate on at least one committee.

The advantage of being a founder or founder family is that when the school opens, the children of founders will be given preference in the lottery that will be held for prospective students. The children of Founder families will be able to gain preference admission when they are ready to attend the school. For example, if a Founder family has a student in the 3rd grade, when that student becomes old enough to attend our school, the student will still have preference enrollment provided that the Founder family status was established prior to the opening of the school.

It has become common practice in California for good charter schools to have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of students on waiting lists for admission. Once the Mark Twain Academies opens, all admission from that point forward will be by lottery unless (as just explained) the Founder status was established prior to opening. Parents who think they might like their sons and daughters to attend our school would be advised to look into the Founders Program as soon as possible.

As the school moves to within eight months of the opening date of August, 2007, the Founders Group and/or committees will meet once a month in the evenings. Committees will do as much of their work as possible by email or phone, meeting only when necessary. For more information, please click on Contact Us and email this request or contact the President, Rick Jimison at krjimison@charter.net.