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More than an hour before the start of the school day, I found Larry Nauta already hard at work in his tiny cubicle. I was still off-balance from the series of delayed and bumpy flights that had brought me to Kenai, Alaska, from Portland, Oregon, the night before. The double shot of espresso I'd gulped down on my way to the Aurora Borealis Charter School hadn't completely compensated for the early hour and the unfamiliar place. The principal, however, was wide awake, cheerful, and ready to be interviewed.

We were nearing the end of my list of interview questions when my gaze happened to drift to the window behind his desk. Framed there was a patch of sky as black as deep space. A quarter-moon was shining bravely, but it couldn't dislodge the stubborn night. I sneaked a quick look at my watch. It was well past 8:30.

"So, what time does the sun come up around here?" I ventured, trying to sound as if idle curiosity, not mild alarm, had prompted the question. Nauta seemed startled at my question. "Uh, well, hmm," he said, thinking hard, "about nine or 10 o'clock, I guess." Then, dismissively, "I don't pay any attention to it."

By his reaction, I realized that only a "cheechako" — slang for a newcomer who hasn't yet survived an Alaskan winter — would remark on the darkness that drapes the Kenai Peninsula for nearly 20 hours a day in January. It's kind of like remarking about gray skies in Seattle. The locals just don't notice.

In this outpost on the fringe of the wilderness, charter schools fit. They fit the local character, which leans steeply toward the daring and the independent. They fit the landscape, where you don't have to walk more than a few yards in any direction to break new ground. Breaking new ground is, after all, what charter schools are all about.

The man at the controls of Aurora Borealis personifies the hearty, unflinching spirit required to steer a charter school to success. Until a few weeks ago, Nauta split his time between running the school and flying freight and passengers from the Arctic and sub-Arctic hubs of Kotzebue and Nome out to the 34 isolated villages they serve. The two jobs are a lot alike: flying blind into a blizzard, relying on three decades of experience to get you safely to your destination, whether it be a fishing village or a set of benchmarks in English and math.

The U.S. charter school movement is 10 years old this year. In the Northwest, charters were slow to get a toehold, lagging behind such pioneering states as Minnesota, Arizona, and California. But by now they've been around long enough for patterns of both promise and concern to emerge. Here we take you inside this bold new experiment in school reform and show you how it looks from the Northwest perspective. With Alaska taking the lead and Oregon and Idaho close behind, charter schools are carving out a definite niche in the region's school choice mix. Where these brave pioneers are headed is still a big unknown. But the journey is sure to be an adventure.

—Lee Sherman
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