Aurora Public Schools overhaul sent off track after board denies school closure plan

AURORA | The Aurora Public Schools board of education narrowly voted at its Tuesday night meeting to turn down the superintendent’s recommendation for the next phase of the Blueprint APS plan, which included the controversial closure of Sable Elementary School.

The vote was met with elation by audience members, who unfurled a banner reading “Dear Community, You Just Saved Sable” immediately after the vote was taken. The decision now throws the rest of Blueprint APS into limbo, as board members failed to demonstrate a clear vision of what they would like the superintendent to do instead.

Blueprint APS is the district’s multi-year strategy for managing school buildings in response to changing enrollment trends. The plan divides the district into seven geographic regions. Some schools with low enrollment will be closed and seven campuses (one in each region) will be turned into specialized magnet schools that students located anywhere in the district can apply to.

The district has had steadily declining enrollment for the past several years, due in large part to falling birth rates in the region. Because of that, some boundary schools that are underenrolled will be slated for closure in upcoming years, with students sent to nearby schools instead. 

District officials have said that schools with low enrollment usually do not have meaningfully smaller class sizes than larger schools and often do not have the resources to provide the same support as larger schools, creating equity problems between students.

However, the recommendation for the Region 1 phase of Blueprint APS, announced in December, was met with anger because it included the proposed closure of Sable Elementary School, which was not on an initial list of buildings being considered.

The district said the initial list was only a draft, and should not have been understood as the final word in what schools were under consideration. However, many Sable families and parents said that they felt blindsided by the decision, and have spoken in opposition to the plan at the past several board meetings.

Many also voiced the belief that Sable was a unique school, and didn’t understand why a school that was so well-performing and beloved in the community would be shuttered. Some parents, many from immigrant backgrounds, said they were worried that their students would get a worse quality of education if they were sent to another school.

“I know teachers are working hard everywhere, but staff here really bends over backwards for students and their families,” Sable second grade teacher Taylor Egbert told The Sentinel on Tuesday. “We’re not just another neighborhood school.”  

The recommendation also included plans to close Paris Elementary School and build a One Health Innovation Center on the campus of North Middle School that will offer programming for K-12 students. It will also include space for a P-TECH program, a six-year program beginning in ninth grade that allows students to graduate with a high school diploma and an associate’s degree, along with experience and connections in the workforce.

At the school board meeting, discussion on the recommendations largely focused on Sable.

President Debbie Gerkin said she supported the recommendation even though she acknowledged it was a painful decision.

“I believe the recommendation was made to address equity for all kids, knowing that kids in low enrollment underutilized schools are trying to get the same education as kids in higher education but on less of a budget,” she said.

The board is also responsible for being good stewards of taxpayer money, and small schools are more inefficient, she said.

Several board members said they were uncomfortable with how the process was handled, and that even though Blueprint APS has been going on for several years were not comfortable with the fact that Sable families were only given several months’ notice that their school might close.

“I am so highly uncomfortable with the process” that has taken place here, director Vicki Reinhard said.

Director Tramaine Duncan said it was disheartening to see Sable families fight for resources they believed they would not get at other schools.

He asked if all the students from another local school, Park Lane, could simply be transferred to Sable, and have Sable stay open. Superintendent Rico Munn said that would technically be possible if some students went to class in mobile units.

A motion to accept the recommendation ultimately failed, with Gerkin, Anne Keke and Michael Carter voting in favor and Nichelle Ortiz, Duncan, Stephanie Mason and Reinhard voting against it.

Audience members were quiet throughout the meeting except for occasionally snapping to signal agreement with comments from board members, but a sense of elation spread through the room as it became clear the vote was going to fail.

The board then had a long, circular conversation about its next steps that did not reach consensus. The “no” vote triggered a requirement that Munn come back to the board with another recommendation within 30 days.

Munn repeatedly explained to the board members that if they wanted him to come back to them with a different recommendation, they would need to change the criteria for how schools were evaluated for potential closure. If they wanted to subsidize keeping low enrollment schools open instead, they would need to figure out how to work that into the budget.

 “If you give me the same criteria you will get the same recommendation,” to close Sable and Paris, he said.

Ortiz said she would like the district to look at potentially making cuts in the administrative department. Reinhard said she agreed.

“If we have to cut at one level it makes sense we do it equitably across the board,” she said.

Duncan stressed that he didn’t want it to become the expectation that “all you have to do is make some noise at board meetings” to keep your school from being closed. 

“These are tough decisions that have to be made and we need to be really intentional,” he said.

Board members said they would have voted to approve the magnet and P-tech program if the decisions were separated out into individual votes, but were hesitant to vote a second time on whether to close Sable and Paris if all the options were separated out at a future meeting.

There was some discussion of pausing the Blueprint APS program altogether. Brandon Eyre, the district’s legal counsel, spoke to the board about their options.

From his perspective, Eyre said it seemed like “Munn needs to hear, is this a vote not to close Sable and Paris? Or not to close Sable and Paris because it was not communicated properly?”

Ortiz said she would like for a school to be on a list for a full year before it could be voted on for a closure, for the sake of transparency.

The board ultimately agreed to temporarily pause the process and give Munn 60 days to come back with information about the ramifications of potentially keeping small schools open, and what that would mean for the district’s long-term budget. At that point, the board could potentially take another vote on the Region 1 recommendations.

Regardless of how the board decides to go forward with Blueprint APS, the underlying issues still remain. 

“We are losing millions, we are going to be losing funds within the next year,” Gerkin said. “If we continue to keep these smaller schools open and subsidize them, it will mean that eventually other schools will be feeling that same inequity.”