My first three years teaching — in what seems like a completely different lifetime — I taught at a huge middle school in the south of Jefferson County. We had 1200 students. It was so large, my last year, we had to do a split schedule where every day one team was out of the building, just to make room for everybody.

But, that kind of size did give us a certain flexibility of programming. For instance, within this one middle school, we housed three distinct “schools”: a traditional program, one team that followed a program very much like what we think of these days as Core Knowledge, and one team that followed a program similar to what we think of as Montessori. But, all three “teams” interacted in the elective programs and at lunch.

I think back on that with wonder and awe. What a nightmare that must have been for the administration! The complications of scheduling, the amount of autonomy they had to grant the nontraditional teams, the trust they had to have in their teaching staff … ah, the Halcyon days!

But, what a great thing for the community! Imagine having access to programs that would allow you to tailor an education for your child, all within the neighborhood school! Whether your child was “normal,” or functioned better in a highly structured environment, or functioned better in a looser setting where they got to self-direct, parents had that option. Of course, this was a few years before the advent of high-stakes testing, so schools had a bit more freedom to be innovative.

I think of charter schools as one symptom of the demise of that sort of educational creativity. In just my little hamlet of Arvada, there are three different Core Knowledge charter schools, all of whom have waiting lists, all of whom serve a population whose parents tired of the neighborhood schools becoming instruments of social engineering. And now, as of November, there will be another new charter school opening in Arvada, Doral Academy, with an arts-integrated curriculum, a design where music, dance, theater, and the visual arts are part of every subject. Perhaps, to serve the other end of the spectrum.

Charter schools are an awkward conversation for me. I recognize that charter schools often serve an underserved population, and that they frequently exist in response to the shortcomings of the neighborhood school. At the same time, they present challenges to the public schools. The Jeffco Board of Education recently approved funding to build a new school in the Candelas development. When they do that, they do so based on specific projections for enrollment, which gives them an idea what kind of programming and facilities they will need. When a charter school opens in the area, it inevitably draws students away from the neighborhood school, which alters — sometimes dramatically — what kind of program can be offered.

I wrote last week that we should recognize and honor that we aren’t all the same, that we don’t all fit into nice, neat little boxes. I still believe that the vast majority of students are best served in the neighborhood schools; at the same time, there are some students who would absolutely thrive in a school like Doral, that has a colorful entrance, hand-painted murals on the walls, music sounding from every classroom, and a special room with a dance floor rather than private offices for administrators (a setting that, to a Core Knowledge kid, is anathema).

But, perhaps an accommodation can be found from my early years. Surely, we are clever enough to accommodate all the diverse, difficult, challenging, wonderful talents spread around our student population in one building. All it would take is the will l —and the structural support — for the education community to unleash its collective genius on this problem.

That, or we just accept the diffusion of our talents and philosophies across more and more facilities.