AURORA | Aurora Central High School continued its march toward gaining more autonomy next school year after the Aurora Public Schools Board of Education voted in favor of the school’s proposed innovation plan Tuesday, March 22.
Passed by the APS Board by a vote of 6-1, the plan for Central outlines dozens of waivers from state and district protocols. The waivers — which call for one-year teacher contracts, hiring non-licensed teachers and an alternative school calendar — are tied to the state’s 2008 innovation law meant to bolster the performance of struggling schools.
Board member Barbara Yamrick cast the lone dissenting vote on the Central plan.
“I’m thrilled and I’m excited that we got the approval from the board,” said Gerardo De La Garza, principal at Central. “But the work really begins tomorrow morning. Now that we have this approval, it’s about bringing the staff together, working on that whole culture piece and ensuring that there’s going to be collaboration and trust moving forward to implement the plan.”
Staff at Aurora Central have been working to fine-tune the school’s more than 140-page plan in recent weeks. Earlier this month, 82 percent of Central staff voted in favor of the school’s proposed innovation plan.
Central now stands poised to join Boston K-8 and Paris and Crawford Elementary Schools in a so-called innovation zone — a cluster of at least two schools with state-approved innovation status — in northwest Aurora. Individual innovation plans for Boston, Paris and Crawford were unanimously approved by the APS board last week. The plans must now clear the final hurdle of receiving the approval of the State Board of Education later this spring.
At the special board meeting Tuesday, staff from the APS finance department compiled a five-year budget forecast for what Central’s coffers would like under innovation. APS administrators had raised concerns regarding the Central plan’s nebulous budget figures at an APS board meeting earlier this month.
In the first year of innovation, Central’s waivers would result in about $255,000 that the school could allocate in new ways, according to budget memo drafted by Lisa Escárcega, chief accountability and research officer for APS. In the second year of innovation, that total jumps to $450,000. Those flexible funds slightly increase with inflation leading up to the fifth and final year of the innovation budget forecast in the 2020-21 school year.
Escárcega said that the budget numbers are based on broad assumptions tied to pupil count and inflation and could very well change in the coming years due to possible shifts in the volatile statewide education budget.
However, Escárcega said that outlining even tentative monetary figures for the Central plan has helped to quell lingering concerns regarding the document’s lack of details.
“To give us a preliminary view, even as conservative as we were, I think it relieves us to know that they are definitely going to be able to have the monies needed to do the major components of their innovation plan,” she said. “It was a big relief to the board and to schools, but once we actually ran the numbers, it looks pretty good.”
Aaron Oberg, budget director for APS, said at the meeting that the money outlined in Central’s budget predictions would simply be available for new uses, and would not be coming from any sort of new funding source.
“They’re not necessarily receiving any more resources — they’re just being able to be more flexible with the resources they’re receiving,” Oberg said. “This wouldn’t be new spending to the district. It would be removing control out of… district-held resources and adding more flexibility.”
Escárcega said that the innovation plans for Central, Paris, Crawford and Boston could appear on the State Board of Education’s agenda for its regular meeting scheduled for May 11.