3 APS superintendent finalists slated for school board scrutiny Monday

AURORA | After touring the district and holding meet-and-greets among families and staff last week, the three Aurora Public Schools superintendent candidates will meet before the board in open session Monday evening for the next round of interviews.

Each finalist will have an hour and 15 minutes to deliver a presentation to the board members and answer questions. The board voted 6-1 on March 28 to promote Michael Giles, Andre Wright and Nia Campbell as the three finalists under consideration to lead the district. A final decision is anticipated for late April or early May.

In advance of tonight’s special meeting, the Sentinel prepared candidate profiles of the three finalists based on interviews, information from public records and the candidate’s statements during last week’s meet and greets. Two of the candidates declined to speak to the paper unless they were named the next superintendent.

The questions asked at the public meetings suggest that many of the issues that have already been named — mental health, recovering from the pandemic, building trust — are top of mind for community members. School safety, which has once again been pushed to the forefront following school shootings in Denver and Nashville, was a prevalent topic of discussion.

The Sentinel will offer live-blog coverage of the board meeting later today, which is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Here are details about the three finalists so far:

Michael Giles

What would Michael Giles do on his first day as APS superintendent?

“Try to situate my office to get it feng shui,” he said with a laugh in response to a question from a district employee at last week’s meet-and-greet. “I’m an energy person.”

Giles is one of three candidates in consideration to lead APS. He is currently the assistant superintendent of equity, culture and community engagement for the Cherry Creek School District, where he has spent his entire educational career so far.

Giles addressed more serious concerns as he toured APS April 11 and met with district teachers, staff and parents. In response to a question about mental health resources, he said he thinks it’s important to support the adults in the schools along with students, and to explore what can be done at the school level to reduce stress and anxiety.

APS nurse Jennifer Barnes attended the meet-and-greet with a colleague and said she thinks providing support for teachers and bridging the disconnect between school level-staff and administrators are two of her most important concerns.

“We need leadership to realize they’re doing the best they can,” she said of teachers.

In response to an employee question about improving teacher recruitment and retention, Giles said he might start out by conducting a survey of current employees about what’s working well in the district and what needs to be improved.

A native of Queens, N.Y,, Giles grew up in a military family and moved around a lot when he was young, but has lived in Colorado for the past 25 years and said he considers it home. He has deep roots in the area, having worked in neighboring Cherry Creek Schools since 2002.

After working as a juvenile corrections counselor in Grand Junction and the Denver area, Giles started as a counselor at Falcon Creek and moved through myriad roles in the district. He became an administrator in 2014, and in 2018 joined the cabinet as assistant superintendent of performance. He assumed his current role in 2021.

As the head of CCSD’s new Department of Equity, Culture and Community Engagement, Giles has been at the forefront of the district’s attempts to boost achievement for students of color, which historically has lagged behind the academic performance of white students.

Giles declined to be interviewed by the Sentinel while the selection process was underway.

“I’ve had the pleasure of serving youth in this region for over twenty years as an educator in CCSD,” he said in a statement. “I am excited about the potential to continue serving students and community, and I’m humbled to be considered for the next Superintendent of the Aurora Public School District.”

Andre Wright

APS superintendent candidate Andre Wright is a familiar face. He came to the district in 2014 as the director of learning for community schools, and then was promoted to chief academic officer in 2017. He served in that role until 2021, when he left to join consulting firm MGT as a senior vice president for educational transformation. 

In a resignation letter obtained by the Sentinel, Wright said that the death of his father and “a reflection of professional events over the past several years” had influenced his decision to pursue the job at MGT.

“I look forward to serving Aurora Public Schools in a different capacity in the future via this relationship where possible,” the letter said.

Wright was one of three finalists in Denver Public Schools’ 2021 superintendent search, losing out to current superintendent Alex Marrero. While at MGT he briefly oversaw the work the firm was doing in the Adams 14 school district.

The son of educators, Wright worked in his native Georgia in the Dekalb County School District for six years and the Fulton County Schools for seven years before coming to Colorado.

Wright declined to be interviewed by the Sentinel unless he is named the next superintendent.

At a meet-and-greet with parents on April 13, Wright addressed reporting about his involvement in an investigation of alleged improper grade changes at Gateway High School under former principal Ron Fay, who is facing charges that he, along with his secretary, embezzled $100,000 while leading the school.

An outside audit found that some district employees thought that Wright’s investigation into claims that teachers were pressured to raise grades was not thorough.

Wright spoke with and provided documents to the Sentinel about the investigation into the grade changes, a six-month process which he oversaw.

He defended the integrity of the investigation and disputed statements from the outside audit, which he said that he had not read, that it was not as thorough as it could have been.

Wright did not agree to an interview with the auditors, which he said was because he was no longer employed by APS at the time. He responded by email to a question from the auditors about a $60,000 budget transfer to Gateway, which was intended for an employee that was never hired.

At the meet and greet, Wright acknowledged that the district has “a difficult journey ahead of us.”

“We have a lot of things that have to change for us to become a district that you can be proud of,” he said.

While at APS, Wright said he believes he missed an opportunity to strengthen opportunities for bilingual students. He also said the district did not do enough to proactively try to recruit teachers of color, such as visiting Historically Black Colleges and Universities or Hispanic Serving Institutions.

“The people who are out recruiting don’t look anything like the folks we’re trying to recruit,” he said.

At the meet and greet, Wright passed out information packets that included his resume and information about his work in the district. From 2016 to 2019, Wright stated that the district’s four-year graduation rate increased by 14.1%, its dropout rate decreased from 3.4% to 1.9% and that the proficiency rates for English language arts and math increased at all levels.

The packet also included information about several different school safety technology purchases which Wright said would improve students’ safety at school, including a bulletproof storm shelter that could be installed in every classroom. When asked by a parent if this is something the district could afford, he said that he would like APS to work more with corporate and community partners to get funding for specific projects. 

He said he believes it’s important that the district distributes its resources equitably as it builds new schools along the E-470 corridor and closes other schools in northwest Aurora.

“We’re going to become, if we’re not careful, a tale of two districts,” he said.

Nia Campbell

APS superintendent Nia Campbell is the district’s current chief academic officer, a role she began in July after a long educational career in Florida.

Prior to joining APS, Campbell worked in Hillsborough County Public Schools in a variety of roles for over 12 years, was a principal in the School District of Osceola County for three years and was assistant superintendent for secondary education in the Highlands County school district from December 2020 until joining APS.

A native of New York City, Campbell told families at her meet and greet April 13 that the diversity of Aurora is what drew her to working with APS, along with concerns about the current educational trajectory of Florida.

Campbell spoke at the meet and greet about her current work as chief academic officer, where she touted her hands-on approach, and how she would continue to boost student achievement if named superintendent. 

She also answered multiple questions about school safety, which she said she viewed as a multi-layered approach that involves “not being afraid to hold our students to a standard of behavior and not being afraid of our kids,” she said. 

Along with physical security measures, the district has to be able to provide schools with resources to address students who are acting out due to trauma or behavioral issues and get them the social-emotional support they need. Campbell said there also needs to be more ways that students can report concerns without worrying about repercussions, and a continued focus on removing the stigma around seeking mental health services.

A lot of school safety is about relationships and knowing our kids,” she said.

In an interview with the Sentinel, Campbell said that she initially worked in finance but that though she has always loved math “just working in an office with numbers wasn’t fulfilling.” She started in public education as a math teacher before becoming an administrator.

“Florida is already very well-known for the shifts that are happening in education and they don’t align with my beliefs about what we should be doing with public education and how we should openly be able to address matters of diversity, equity and inclusion and ensuring we are providing a culturally relevant experience to our students,” Campbell said about what caused her to leave Florida for Colorado.

“It was beautiful to be able to come to a place with diversity and know that I’m not being limited in what I’m able to do for students,” she said.

Campbell said she “fell in love” with the district and that she applied for the superintendent position because she wanted the opportunity to expand the work she’s doing as chief academic officer.

“In every system that I’ve served in, in every role I’ve improved student outcomes,” she said.

Campbell said that in the past the superintendent role has been more hands-off when it comes to day-to-day instruction, something she thinks needs to be changed. 

“The engagement at the school level has been more of a gap and I do think that’s a key element in really turning around this post-pandemic struggle that we’re experiencing, not just as a school system but as a nation,” she said.

Campbell addressed an incident that took place in 2019 when she was principal of Osceola High School in Florida, where she was accused of shoving one student and grabbing another by the hair after a basketball game.

Campbell said that she and other employees were trying to prevent students from being injured in the chaotic aftermath of the school’s victory.

“Students rushed the floor and we were all hands on deck attempting to move students and making sure that no one was being trampled,” she said.

No charges were filed and the district did not find her guilty of any wrongdoing, Campbell said. A Sentinel records request to The School District of Osceola County is pending.

The incident is also mentioned in a candidate profile put together by APS when Campbell was in the process of being hired, which said that the allegation was unfounded.

The profile said that Campbell is considered to have the ability “to relate to the challenges in an ethnically and culturally diverse community.”

Campbell said she views public education as “the root of democracy” and is motivated by a belief that it can have an impact far beyond the classroom.

“The work can be very thankless, it can be difficult, but I’ve never really entertained going outside public education because our community needs the work that we do,” she said. “And as we improve public education we improve our society.”