CLOSE CALL? APS mulls next steps at Central High as state takes control

With dismal test scores and lagging graduation rates at Aurora Central High School, state officials four years ago gave Aurora Public Schools five years to turn around the troubled school.

But nearing the end of year four, the same struggles bedevil Aurora’s oldest high school — graduation rates are up, but well behind state averages, and test scores still lag far behind other Colorado students.

Those continued struggles mean state education officials will likely recommend the school, which serves an impoverished corner of Aurora with large refugee and immigrant populations, undergo dramatic changes for the 2016-2017 school year.

The options include turning Central into a charter school, letting an outside agency manage it instead of APS, installing an “innovation” model that would give staff more flexibility to make changes, or even closing the school — though district officials stress closure is not an option they support, and one they deem unlikely.

“We have seen progress, we haven’t seen enough and we haven’t seen it fast enough,” APS Superintended Rico Munn said.

Munn backs the innovation path, something he said will allow staff there some autonomy for the school and give them the flexibility to improve student performance as they see fit. Plus, Munn said, the model requires cooperation between staff, district leaders, state officials and others.

District officials are set to present their plan to the State Board of education on April 19, with both the APS board and the state board expected to make a decision on the plan by June.

Last year, 60 percent of Central’s seniors graduated. That’s up from just 49 percent in 2010, but it still trails the state average of 77 percent.

Test scores are a mixed bag, with reading and writing scores up since 2010, but math and science down. And across the board, Central students are far behind the rest of the state. In writing, for example, just 21 percent of Central students were proficient or advanced last year compared to 51 percent statewide. In math, just 11 percent scored proficient or advanced compared to 36 percent statewide.

Under state law, schools like Central, which are placed on a five-year “Priority Improvement Plan,” have to launch dramatic changes after year five if they haven’t turned things around by the end of the fourth year. As of now, 30 other schools around the state are facing the same deadline.

Any major changes at Central would take effect after the next school year, with the 2015-2016 school year serving as a sort of planning year, said APS School Board President JulieMarie Shepherd.

Shepherd said she also prefers the innovation path. She said she hasn’t seen charter schools thrive in a situation like Central, and closing the school and moving 2,200 students isn’t financially feasible. 

Board member Cathy Wildman agreed that closing a school the size of Central wouldn’t be practical.

She said she leans toward the innovation notion as well because she isn’t convinced a charter school or outside management agency could take on a school of Central’s size with its challenges and turn things around.

“If you can show me a plan that has the same demographics as what we have in Aurora, where the system has worked, I want to look at it,” she said.

Munn, who took over the district in 2013 and previously served on the state board of education, said the fast-approaching state deadline is an important milestone for the school, and he and district officials have been working hard to explain the process to parents, staff and students. Recent public meetings have drawn dozens of parents, students and alumni worried about what the future could hold for Central.

But, Munn said, district efforts to fix Central aren’t driven by state deadlines or a potential state takeover. Instead, he said he and his staff recognize the cold reality that the school isn’t performing as well as it needs to.

Munn said he wants to focus not just on Central, but on the surrounding elementary and middle schools that serve the same challenging population of immigrant and refugee students.

“It’s not about Central in particular, it’s about a larger community,” he said. “Central doesn’t exist in a vacuum.”

But there’s not even a sketch of what those changes would look like, let alone a plan written in stone. Munn said all options are on the table — from restructuring Central to include multiple schools operating in one building, shuffling the school calendar and daily start times to reorganizing staff. What those might look like are up in the air as of now, he said, and won’t be crafted until state officials, district leaders, central staff, parents and community members help draft what the changes could look like.

That flexibility is what Munn said he likes about the innovation choice.

“It could be anything because the idea of an innovation zone is you start from the ground up and say, ‘What things do we need in place to serve this particular group of students?’” he said.

And while there isn’t a set plan in place to change things at Central, board member Mary Lewis stressed this week that there will be soon, but only after students, parents, district officials, staff and others come together and draft one. “There will be a plan, a definitive plan, that the board will have to sign off on,” she said.

Still, some Central backers are frustrated that it took until the fourth year of the state’s turnaround clock for the district to consider drastic changes.

Tina Abeyta, a 1990 Central graduate and member of the alumni association, said the ongoing problems at Central are a sign that the district has let the kids there down.

She said she doesn’t have a problem with an innovation zone or any of the other options, and isn’t concerned with which bureaucrats manage Central as long as those leaders — be they APS, charter school officials or an outside management group — have the best interests of the students at heart.

“I don’t think that they are bad ideas, I just don’t understand why they haven’t done something until the 11th hour,” she said.

Shepherd said the district has been implementing changes and trying to turn Central around, but they have been doing it in an incremental way.

“Drastic changes could be very disruptive to a school,” she said.