AURORA | The Aurora Public Schools Board of Education on Tuesday, June 21, narrowly approved three new charter schools to enter the district in the coming years.
Board members unanimously approved charter applications from the Academy of Advanced Learning, a proposed K-8 charter school slated to open in 2017, and Vega Collegiate Academy, a grades 5-8 charter school also expected to open next year.
While the vote on the Academy of Advanced Learning took place without incident, the decision to approve Vega Collegiate came with a surprise amendment from board member Dan Jorgensen. The amendment denied Vega’s last-minute request to be released to the purview of the state-controlled Charter School Institute, and instead specified that the new school would remain under the APS umbrella.
“My concern is, though, that we maintain authority of the schools that reside, or are within, our boundaries,” Jorgensen said. “For me, I believe these schools ultimately should be accountable to us, as the elected board … If they’re high performing we definitely want them, and if they’re not, we want the ability to make sure they’re not in our midst in the future.”
At a board meeting earlier this month, officials from Vega cited an ability to receive a greater cut of Title I funding as their reason for opting for CSI.
The third charter school approved Tuesday, Rocky Mountain Prep, involved much more debate from board members.
Starting with pre-kindergarten operations in August, Rocky Mountain Prep will slowly assume operations at Fletcher Community School, a beleaguered pilot school in northwest Aurora that has long struggled with high attrition rates, teacher turnover and paltry test scores.
Passed by a vote of 4-3, the dissenters said that they were concerned the district did not seek sufficient community feedback when rendering a recommendation on Rocky Mountain Prep’s application. Board members Cathy Wildman, Eric Nelson and Barbara Yamrick voted against the recommendation.
“One of the things that I thought that we didn’t do with this particular application was, from the get-go, go to the community and go to the staff and ask them what they want,” Wildman said. “I just feel strongly that I wish we had followed more of what our board policy says when it came to Fletcher, and I wish that we had said to the community, ‘We want you to solve the problem.’ Because I believe that when people have skin in the game, they want to solve it.”
Other board members, like Jorgensen, said that the academic straits at Fletcher do not lend themselves to the luxury of hesitation.
“I can’t leave this board in two years thinking that we’re in the same place we’ve been,” he said. “One thing I’ve heard since I started on the board from too many parents is that the results that we’re generating are not acceptable in too many places. This is a bold, challenging move — I support it.”
Jorgensen indirectly chastised community members who have voiced concerns with the decision to hand control of Fletcher to a charter network, saying that the discussion has centered on a largely irrelevant spat between public and private entities.
“Teachers, of course, came here expressing a singular view and the only thing I’ve heard, which is disappointing, is that charters aren’t public schools, and the discussion has not revolved as exclusively around the outcomes of our kids,” he said. “It’s also a right for all kids to be in a neighborhood that has a high quality school, and if they don’t have a high quality school, I don’t care what the governance model is, I can’t just sit passively by anymore and just say ‘Okay, well, we’ll tweak it, we’ll do a little bit more.’”
The upcoming transition has flustered Fletcher staffers in recent months, many of whom attended a board meeting earlier this month wearing stickers with the phrase, “#KeepFletcherPublic.”
An application for a fourth charter school vying to join APS, Dean Institute of Learning, was denied Tuesday due to a lack of details in the school’s original application.
Also at the June 21 meeting, the board voted to approve next year’s $550-million budget, which includes about $100 more per-pupil than this year. The new budget also allocates about $4 million more than this year for charter school funding.
Earlier in the evening, board members received information regarding a potential ballot question that could ask Aurora voters to approve a $300 million bond issue this November. Although exact tax increases have not yet been specified, the board must decide whether it intends to go forward with a bond issue by mid-August and certify a ballot question by Sept. 9.
Bond funds would be used to improve APS’ many crowded and aging schools.
The school board is expected to meet in a special session sometime next week to vote on the legal contract between APS and Rocky Mountain Prep.