AURORA | When they plop their backpacks down and turn their attention to their teacher one morning in September, about 800 Aurora Public Schools students will do so in the district’s newest digs.
The brand-new Edna and John W. Mosley P-8 school is set to open Sept. 10 for students in grades six to eight, Sept. 14 for first through fifth grade and Sept. 15 for preschool. The last group, the kindergarten students, report for class Sept. 17.
Carrie Clark, the school’s principal, said the staggered start dates mean older students will be in the building and established for a few days before the younger students show up for class.
“We want them to help with the little guys,” she said.
Because of ongoing construction, Mosley will start about a month later than other APS schools. To make up for the missed time in August and early September, 40 minutes have been added to each school day at Mosley.
So far, 750 students from preschool through eighth grade have enrolled, but Clark said she expects there will be about 815 students when the last wave of kindergarteners arrive in mid-September. The school has a capacity of about 1,000 students.
The new school — named after longtime Aurora residents and community activists John and Edna Mosley — is located on Aurora Public Schools’ Community Campus near East 2nd Avenue and Airport Boulevard. The campus also includes William Smith High School, Pickens Technical College and several other APS facilities.
Among those other facilities is the Aurora Quest K-8 magnet school for gifted and talented students. Quest sits right across the street from Mosley, and Clark said she and her staff have already met with staff and parents at Quest in hopes of working together.
Clark said the partnership hasn’t taken shape yet, but she hopes it includes events such as a block party on Second Avenue or a fun run with students from both schools.
That sort of connectedness is an important part of the Community Campus, Clark said. Mosley seventh- and eighth-graders will visit Pickens Tech and William Smith students will use the Mosley gym for after-school activities.
“We are building a connection with all the schools,” she said.
Construction on the Mosley school started last year after the APS Board of Education voted in late 2013 to use a complicated funding mechanism to pay for the $30-million school.
So far, 750 students from preschool through eighth grade have enrolled, but Clark said she expects there will be about 815 students when the last wave of kindergarteners arrive in mid-September. The school has a capacity of about 1,000 students.
Citing the district’s debt load, APS officials opted to use Certificates of Participation to fund the project. The move means APS won’t have to go to voters to take on more debt to pay for the school immediately, and could wait a few years to ask voters for a bond measure to pay for the school. In the mean time, the funding plan means APS is on the hook for about $1.4 million in annual interest payments.
The decision to use a COP — which the district previously used in the late 1990s for the renovation of Central High School — was somewhat controversial and one board member, Kathy Wildman, voted against it.
District officials said the project was necessary because enrollment is expected to grow by about between 1 percent and 2 percent for the next four years, with the bulk of that being at the elementary and middle schools.
Mosley and Vista PEAK Exploratory Academy P-8 — the district’s newest school before Mosley — both use the P-8 model. But Patti Moon, a spokeswoman for the district, said APS hasn’t ruled out traditional elementary and middle schools in the future.
About a fourth of the students at Mosley will live on the adjacent Buckley Air Force Base, Clark said. The base has built a secure gate near the school, and APS is building a sidewalk from the school to the gate. That gate will be used by more than just Mosley students, Clark said, and buses will drop Buckley students from other schools nearby so they can use it, too.
Clark was hired as the school’s principal in summer 2014, before construction and well before the school even had a name. Since then, Clark’s focus has been on hiring staff and getting ready for those first students.
That experience has been unusual, but Clark said it’s been the best of her career. Still, after a year outside of a school, Clark said she’s ready to get back to the day-to-day work of being a principal, something she is reminded of whenever she visits other schools.
“Every time you are with kids you are definitely reminded that’s why you do the job,” she said.