GREAT VALLEY EDUCATION FOUNDATION
BACKGROUND
In 1994, Keith Bandy began working to establish his first charter school. He recognized the need for public school choice more than thirty years ago when he began his professional education career as a high school English teacher. And, since 1994 he has been developing ideas that would help him achieve his dream of starting a new type of public school.
Bandy's dream became more real in 2000 when he received a charter planning grant from the California Department of Education. And, supported in part by that grant, he was able to start a k-8 charter school the next year in Riverbank, CA, a small community about ten miles northeast of Modesto. His plan was to get the school up and running and have his wife, Jeannie, who started her teaching career the same time as he, run the school while he worked on developing other charter sites.
However, in August 2001, Jeannie was the victim of a fatal auto accident. Consequently Bandy was forced to become the school’s director, which gave him little time or desire to work on anything else. He also decided not to return in any capacity to the Riverbank school after the end of the 2001/2002 school year. Instead, he began the process of developing methods that could be used to establish new charter schools. Through these efforts the Great Valley Education Foundation was born.
In July 2003, Bandy joined the Community Partnership Alliance (CPA), which was formed the previous March to insure the benefits of the new UC Merced are shared equally among all residents of the surrounding area especially those classified as disadvantaged, underserved or low-income. Bandy became a member of CPA's Education Committee where he met other like-minded individuals who were interested in the future of public education. Through these relationships, he was able to form a charter school planning committee, which is presently in the process of strengthening its membership and laying plans for a new 6-12 grade charter school called TriTech Academy and scheduled to open in Merced in the fall of 2008.And, in November, 2006, the planning committee was able to receive the first installment of a $150,000 grant that was awarded to GVEF by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and distributed through EdVisions, a non-profit charter school development organization in Minnesota that was chosen by the Gates Foundation to replicate throughout the U.S. EdVisions very successful Minnesota charter school model. TriTech Academy will be one of these replicated schools.
Other than being a high school English teacher and charter school developer/operator, Bandy has also been a residential and commercial construction superintendent and the owner of a modular building manufacturing company and commercial lighting company. He has also served as quality control manager for a large modular building manufacturing company and as plant superintendent for a poultry processing facility.
Bandy was born in Los Angeles but spent most of his childhood and as a young adult in Fresno where he attended Roosevelt High School. After high school he spent four years in the U.S. Navy as a boiler technician aboard a destroyer stationed in Norfolk, VA. After the Navy, he spent some time working as a carpenter, auto salesman, and a Sears sales associate in Fresno before deciding to complete his education at Fresno City College and Fresno State University.
Bandy met Jeannie at Fresno State where she was also a student. They were married in April 1971 shortly before they both graduated as English teachers. They bought a home in Merced in 1986 where Bandy still resides.
Bandy has three grown children: a son (34) who lives in Modesto, a son (30) who lives in Merced, and a daughter (29) who lives in San Diego. He also hasfive(six, as of Aug. 30) grandchildren.