AURORA | Staff at Aurora West College Preparatory Academy reversed course last week after teachers there voted in favor of an updated innovation plan that would enact sweeping reforms at the school next year.
The decision comes about a month after West staff members rejected an earlier version of the plan by a wide margin.
About 80 percent of West teachers voted in favor of the latest plan, Principal Brian Duwe said during a presentation Tuesday, April 5, to the Aurora Public Schools Board of Education. Only about 40 percent of West staff members voted in favor of the school’s original plan last month, with many dissenters citing a lack of details, Duwe said.
The initial hangup was largely due to dissatisfaction regarding a teacher evaluation system that would have allowed the West administration to get rid of teachers after two years of poor performance. After administrators removed that prong of the plan, approval among staff members swelled, according to Duwe.
“After we dug deep and did some analysis through some surveys and more intimate settings on smaller teams, and really identified the people that disagreed with the plan, it was … really the two waivers, two critical waivers (regarding) the two-year dismissal process,” Duwe said. “So going back in and processing that information and talking more about the plan, we felt more confident going in the second time.”
At least 60 percent of West teachers needed to approve of the new plan in order for the school to proceed with its goal of achieving state-sanctioned innovation status. If approved, the innovation tag would grant West more procedural autonomy.
West, which enrolls a student body that is about 72 percent Hispanic, now stands poised to join Aurora Central High School, Boston K-8 and Paris and Crawford elementary schools in a so-called innovation zone in northwest Aurora. Plans for Central, Boston, Paris and Crawford were unanimously approved by the APS Board of Education last month. The plans must now clear the final hurdle of receiving the approval of the State Board of Education later this spring.
Among the many waivers requested at West: Allow the school to refuse district-mandated teacher placements, offer one-year contracts to teachers hired after July 1, instate an alternative calendar, and grant the school greater autonomy in assigning credits to students. Apart from removing the two-year evaluation clause, the only other change West administrators made to the innovation plan leading up to the school board presentation this week was a tweak made to verbiage regarding the hiring of personnel who lack teaching credentials but are not involved in teaching activities per se, such as psychologists and social workers, according to Duwe.
The waivers are tied to the state’s 2008 innovation law meant to bolster the performance of struggling schools.
The APS board did not make a formal vote on the West proposal Tuesday. That school’s innovation plan will likely go to an official vote at the board’s next regularly scheduled meeting, which is slated for Tuesday, April 19.
Lisa Escárcega, chief accountability and research officer for APS, last month said that the innovation plans for the quintet of north Aurora schools vying for innovation status could appear on the State Board of Education’s agenda for its regular meeting scheduled for May 11.