Corey Loomis, director of the Charter Schools Unit of the Riverside County Office of Education (RCOE), is the first recipient of one of three awards from the National Network for District Authorizing (NN4DA), a federation of state initiatives of which CCAP is a founding member. NN4DA recognized Loomis and RCOE with its inaugural Local Exemplar Award for an authorizer who has developed and implemented promising and excellent practices that serve as models for other authorizers.

“Corey has been great at sharing his work and learnings with his colleagues, which is especially helpful because he is so often innovating and developing new ideas to test out in our profession,” said Alex Medler, executive director of NN4DA, who presented the awards at NN4DA’s annual meeting held in Oakland in October in conjunction with the annual conference of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA).

In its praise of Loomis’ work, the awards committee wrote that “under Corey’s leadership, RCOE is setting an example of forward-thinking authorizing, with excellent authorizer-charter school relationships that are at the cutting edge of new, well-rounded approaches to oversight.” Loomis is a former CCAP board member and vice president and was profiled in CCAP’s December 2020 newsletter.

The two other inaugural NN4DA award recipients were Kia Sweeney Scott, senior director of School Choice Services at Orange County Public Schools in Florida and board president of the Florida Association of Charter School Authorizers (FACSA), who received the Community Contributor Award for her contributions her state’s authorizing community; and Mackenzie Khan, Executive Director of the Colorado Association of Charter School Authorizers (CACSA), who received the State Impact Partner Award for her successful work expanding CACSA to affect more authorizers in her state.

In 2021, CCAP, CACSA, and FACSA founded NN4DA to support state-level initiatives to strengthen the charter school authorizing practices of their local school districts and build a professional community of authorizers. Efforts are currently underway to develop state-level initiatives to support district authorizers in Georgia, Idaho, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin.