The Rocky Mountain Raptor Program rehabilitates injured eagles, falcons, hawks, owls and other birds, and it conducts educational programs related to the birds and conservation.

My daughter volunteered at the Raptor Center every weekend for over a year. She worked long shifts (such as 4 pm to 9 or 10 pm) and performed tasks related to cleaning the enclosures and chopping up rodents. She loved it. She loved everything about it. And she accepted the fact that she was new and therefore needed to perform menial jobs, so she could learn enough to eventually handle the birds. She also faithfully attended the weekly meetings.

Then she noticed that – while she was out in the January cold, wiping down bird perches – the more senior staff were in the building hanging out. Once that realization sunk in, she quit going.

The Raptor Program rescues and cares for a large number of birds, and in order to do so, it relies on an equally large number of volunteers. A constant theme of the weekly meetings is how challenged the program is to find enough people to perform the jobs that need to be done. Of necessity – and for the benefit of the Program and the birds! – the Program cajoles (i.e., "guilts") volunteers into working more hours than what they may have originally intended.

Based on my family's experience, we are skeptical about the Raptor Program's proposed hosting of an on-site charter school (as described in the Coloradoan article hyperlinked above and partially reproduced below). The charter school sounds to us like a strategy for the Raptor Program to obtain a steady supply of enthusiastic volunteers.

In addition, the Raptor Center's northeast location on Vine Drive is inconvenient to get to, from virtually everywhere in Fort Collins. The only neighborhoods in close vicinity to the Center are the historic Sugar Factory neighborhoods of Alta Vista, Andersonville and Buckingham Place. Does the Raptor Program plan on reaching out to those neighborhoods in order to recruit students? They seem like a natural pool from which to draw.

Altogether, we think the proposed charter school would enhance the Raptor Program more than it would provide educational benefits for the families of Fort Collins, whose tax dollars would support the school.

A proposed environmental charter school previously denied chartering rights in March by the Colorado Charter School Institute [CSI] will reapply through the Poudre School District and CSI.

The Nature School, which will work in conjunction with the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program, said it has revamped its curriculum and reapplied for its charter through PSD and plans to apply through CSI soon...

The Nature School will offer a standards-based curriculum with an emphasis on environmental education.

The kindergarten through eighth-grade school will house up to 450 students in a renovated facility adjacent to the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program.

Larry Neal, president of the Poudre school board, said he believes the school's environmental focus is timely.