AURORA | Less than a week after staff at Aurora Central High School approved of a plan that would enact a slew of procedural changes at the school next year, the Aurora Board of Education unanimously signed off on similar plans for a trio of Central’s feeder schools in the city’s northwest corner.
During Tuesday’s meeting, the APS school board gave the green light to individual innovation plans intended to retool Boston K-8 and Crawford and Paris elementary schools.
The plans, which largely mirror one another and propose wide-ranging changes like longer school days and increased curricular freedom, are a part of APS’ ongoing push to create a so-called innovation zone comprised of as many as fives schools. If approved by the state board of education, the zone would grant each school innovation status, which is tied to a 2008 state law intended to grant struggling schools greater latitude in policymaking decisions.
But before the local school board gave the thumbs up to Boston, Paris and Crawford Tuesday night, teachers and administrators from Aurora Central outlined their own innovation plan in an attempt to also earn the board’s consent.
Several school board members probed the team of Central presenters, requesting additional details tied to the school’s loosely framed future budget.
“The devil is in the details and you’ve got a lot of details to fill in,” Board Member Cathy Wildman said at the meeting.
Board member Dan Jorgensen raised repeated concerns over Central’s anticipated teacher turnover rate and how that might affect the school’s ability to implement changes. About 40 of Central’s 132 total teachers are expected to move on from the school at the end of the school year, according to Damon Smith, chief personnel officer for APS.
“If you’re replacing a third to a half of your staff, maybe even the quality of the applicants will be diminished based on the fact that they would be agreeing to these other conditions that they wouldn’t have to agree to, and they again didn’t participate in the process overall,” Jorgensen said.
The board settled on requesting a fine-tuned, five-year budget for Central before voting on the plan. A formal board vote is tentatively set to occur during a special session next Tuesday, March 22.
Lisa Escárcega, chief accountability and research officer for APS, said that Central’s proposed innovation budget is balanced for next school year, but projecting anything beyond that would require making broad assumptions regarding future state and district expenditures. Nonetheless, she said that the APS finance team will prepare potential numbers for the school board.
During the public comment period of Tuesday’s meeting, several Aurora Central teachers and at least one community member expressed mixed views on the Central proposal.
“I believe that together we have created a good plan, a positive plan that will carry us forward to success,” said Shari Summers, an English teacher at Central. “I think by (implementing the plan) we are going to have one of the best schools if not the best school in Aurora.”
Hanni Raley, director of systems advocacy for The Arc of Aurora, voiced concerns over the school’s nebulous language regarding resources for students with special needs.
“We continue to be perplexed as to how any of the plans will be implemented for students with disabilities,” Raley wrote in a Twitter message. “The effort is critical and essential to the community, however students with disabilities are often overlooked and we believe they have been during this process as well.”
Gerardo De La Garza, current principal at Central, said that the school is not requesting any waivers that would block the school’s ability to provide services for disabled students.
All of this comes just six days after 82 percent of Central staff members approved the school’s proposed innovation plan, which calls for a slew of waivers from dozens of state and Aurora Public Schools regulations. Among the most prominent waiver requests at Central: Impose one-year contracts for teachers, allow the school to hire non-licensed teachers and shift to an alternative calendar system, which will be finalized by April 1, according to the Central proposal.
In recent weeks, Central teachers and administrators have been working to fine-tune the school’s proposal and waiver language. The district released a revised, final version of the Central plan March 4. The most-recent version totaled more than 140 pages in length.
“Aurora Public Schools understands there is an urgent need to accelerate student achievement at Aurora Central High School,” APS Superintendent Rico Munn said in a statement. “We are excited about the opportunity for Aurora Central staff to pursue innovation status. This opportunity will allow school leaders and staff to find unique and targeted responses to the various challenges and opportunities within the school and zone community.”
Already in the last year of the state’s five-year accountability clock, Central faces reconstitution, charter conversion or closure if it does not display marked improvement.
APS had initially aimed to have five schools included in the innovation zone: Aurora Central, Aurora West College Preparatory Academy, Boston, Paris and Crawford. However, teachers at Aurora West voted down their proposed innovation plan last month, citing a lack of detail in the document, according to Amy Nichols, president of the Aurora Education Association.
Under state law, the district needs the state board of education to sign off on at least two of the schools vying for innovation status in order to officially enact an innovation zone.
The state board is expected to vote on the approved plans for Boston, Paris and Crawford sometime next month.