The Atrisco Companies management, as founders and builders of Ascend Business Services, bring forward this same philosophy into the charter school realm. Like any small business or non-profit organization including charter schools, a strong back office skill set is essential to the success of the organization at all phases of its growth. However, most founders and entrepreneurs do not start their ventures with these particular skill sets. In early stages of an organization’s life cycle, either individuals with lesser skill sets are employed to do the back office functions or the organization burdens the programmatic/administrative staff with this responsibility. As the charter school grows the limitations of the early stage back office approach become more apparent and can make the charter school even more vulnerable financially. Ascend offers a broad and deep bench of talent for charter schools, bringing to charter schools experienced staff with specialized operational skills in a multitude of areas. Moreover, because of the experienced nature of our staff, Ascend can scale or grow along with your school thus allowing your charter school greater continuity at all stages of its life cycle. Ultimately, we help charter schools become more streamlined by prudently and professionally taking care of business in the back office and allowing charter school leadership, administration, and teachers to focus more on educational strategy, classroom instruction and improving student achievement.