WASHINGTON, December 8, 2015 – Donald L. Hense, who founded one of the District of Columbia’s first public charter schools in 1997, has announced that he will retire as CEO of that institution—Friendship Public Charter School—effective June 30, 2016. But will remain Chairman of the Board. Friendship’s chief operating officer, Patricia Brantley, will succeed Hense, as CEO a member of the National Charter School Hall of Fame.
“When founding Friendship, my vision was to ensure that urban youth have every educational opportunity afforded to their counterparts in suburban public and private schools,” said Hense. “As I look back on the two decades since opening, we’ve been extremely successful in preparing our scholars for life at the next level, helping them secure their college acceptance letters, scholarships and diplomas. Our students have earned more than $60 million in college scholarships making it possible for them to attend the schools of their choice.”
As chairman, Hense has overseen the development and expansion of Friendship’s network of charter school campuses as well as the renewal of the school’s charter after its first fifteen years of operation. Friendship now educates more than 4,200 students in pre-K through the twelfth grade at 11 charter campuses in the District, three of which are classified by the D.C. Public Charter School Board as Tier One, high-performing charter schools. Friendship’s two D.C. high schools, Friendship Collegiate Academy and Friendship Technology Preparatory Academy, have on-time (within four years) graduation rates of 92 and 97 percent, respectively; outperforming the average rates for D.C. Public Schools (64 percent) and D.C. public charter schools (72 percent).
Under Hense’s leadership, Friendship has also expanded beyond D.C. to operate an online charter academy for homeschooled students, two partnership campuses in Baltimore and one in Baton Rouge in Louisiana on behalf of the traditional public school systems in those cities.
A graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Hense attended graduate school at Stanford University. He also has been a Rockefeller intern in economics at Cornell University, a Merrill Scholar at the University of Ghana, a Ford Foundation Fellow at Stanford, and a lecturer at the University of California.
Prior to founding Friendship, Hense served as vice president at the National Urban League; director of development at the Children’s Defense Fund; and director of governmental relations at Howard University, Boston University and Dartmouth College. He also was director of Friendship House, a community nonprofit that provided assistance to low-income families in the District.
Hense noted that Friendship will be in good hands with Brantley at the helm. “I’m confident that Pat Brantley will build on our many achievements and continue Friendship’s tradition of providing unparalleled academic, emotional and mentoring support to our deserving scholars,” he said.
A graduate of Princeton, Brantley joined the Friendship team in 2003 and has long served as Friendship’s COO. She formerly was a close, trusted advisor to Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women. Following her experience there and at Friendship, Ms. Brantley often quotes Dr. Height who would say: “You never teach a subject, you always teach a child. You teach children in a way that they will learn, and then things will fall in place for them,” adding her own belief that “Friendship must be a place where children come first always. When we teach with the child in mind, everything else falls into place.”
- Friendship educates children from communities which, historically, have been least well-served by the traditional public education system:
- 99.7 percent of Friendship’s students are African-American;
- 75 percent are from the District’s Ward Seven and Eight: east of the Anacostia River;
- Three out of four students are growing up in low-income families;
- 15 percent of students have special needs;
Several hundred students have earned D.C. achievers scholarships; others also have been assisted on the way to college and successful careers by the prestigious Posse Scholarships, and also Gates Millennium Scholarships, which provide a full ride through undergraduate and post-graduate higher education.
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Donald L. Hense, who founded one of the District of Columbia’s first public charter schools in 1997, has announced that he will retire as CEO of that institution—Friendship Public Charter School—effective June 30, 2016.