AURORA | Aurora Public Schools wants the community to help them define what success looks like across the school district.
“We want to engage, to share our vision and values,” Anne Keke, the president of the Board of Education for Aurora Public Schools, said during a city council meeting this week. “We would like the community to weigh in again, as far as what they would like to see the board work on or monitor for our students and staff next.”
Every five years, APS has been working to find ways to reach out to the community to learn from the community and identify where to set goals and guardrails for the next five years. The school board officials are asking the community to tell them what they want to see from their students going forward.
Last year, Aurora voters approved a groundbreaking billion-dollar bond measure, which continued a mill rate that was ending, resulting in no additional taxation for taxpayers.
“We passed a generational bond, and part of that generational bond was our willingness and our commitment to speaking with all members of the community,” Michael Carter, vice president of the school board, said. “Aurora is the most diverse city in the state of Colorado. Some communities are harder to get to, and so part of that survey is to get that perspective.”
Carter and Keke presented to the Aurora City Council on Monday during the study session to ask them to help spread their survey.
“The best way to get accountability is to ask our population exactly what they want us to do, and then do it,” Carter said.
In the presentation, the school board officials said that the school district is home to more than 38,000 students and more than 4,700 employees.
Their students speak more than 160 languages, with 42% being multilingual learners. 74.6% of those students are on free or reduced lunch plans.
The Aurora Public School District has 59 schools and four programs, which include five child development centers, 20 elementary schools, nine preschool through eighth-grade/kindergarten through eighth-grade schools, five middle schools, one sixth through twelfth-grade academy, five high schools, four magnet schools, two magnet high schools, one vocational/technical college, nine charter schools, one online program and one home school support program.
“I can tell you at this point, we are one of the few cities or school districts that are actually growing in the State of Colorado,” Carter said. “Our graduation rate is exploding.”
Carter said the school district has more recently started tracking students’ early success rates starting in the ninth grade and beyond, and honoring students in their junior and even sophomore years who are on track to graduate on time.
In the presentation, Keke said the school board is monitoring early literacy, which involves examining the percentage of 3rd-grade students in APS-operated schools who are demonstrating grade-level literacy skills based on state assessments.
They are also monitoring the percentage of students graduating in four years, as well as monitoring the percentage of sixth-grade and ninth-grade Hispanic/Latinx and Black students who are on track with their grade level through state assessments and PSATs in the ninth grade.
The school board has also established values for the district through creating expectations for the superintendent, including not being allowed to implement or adopt any program that does not prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“In a sense that the superintendent has to make sure that everyone feels seen and heard, both students and staff and also our families,” Keke said.
The second value requires the superintendent to value the needs of the individual students over the urgency of academic achievement, including the need for art, music, physical education, social-emotional learning and mental health, Keke said.
“The superintendent has to make sure that there is a balance between academic and also the students’ well-being; social, emotional, mental and physical education as well,” Keke said.
In the third value, the superintendent may not propose major decisions to the board without engaging students, parents, the community and staff.
In the fourth value, the superintendent may neither cause nor allow district circumstances for current or prospective students, their parents/guardians, or community members that are unsafe, undignified, disrespectful, or unnecessarily intrusive or restrictive, according to the presentation.
“Making sure that the superintendent ensures that our parents, our students, feel safe, dignified, respected and welcome in our buildings, and that we monitor that as well by way of survey once a year,” Keke said.
In the fifth value, the superintendent will not allow the retention rate of Black and Hispanic/Latino educators to drop significantly below the retention rate of all educators in the schools.
“We want to make sure that our staff reflects the population of students that we educate, and so we make sure that the superintendent does not allow the retention rate of black and brown educators to be significantly low,” Keke said.
These values, which are limitations for the superintendent, are one way the school board will decide the future of the superintendent.
“Those results and limitations are how we determine whether or not we go forward with this superintendent in this contract,” Carter said. “On the simplest basis of these are the metrics. This is how we’re going to determine whether or not you’re doing your job, and if you cannot complete those metrics, then that’s going to impact whether or not you’re brought back as a superintendent.”
Although the meeting was focused on promoting the survey, city council members Steve Sundberg and Stephanie Hancock asked to see specific metrics and numbers to show the district’s success, and the school board officials said they would be happy to provide them in the future. The meeting ran out of time before the city council could ask many more questions.
can you post a link to the survey?
https://auroraps.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0vQQtxvl56EYUoS
Aurora Public Schools is looking to the public for direction in defining success and would appreciate taxpayer’s input.
Well, the values for this local taxpayer is APS culture get away from their brain washing students with WOKE politics – ASAP.
Executive director for the APS WOKE political department aka CRT/ DEI annual salaried position is $175,000 held by Jaelyn Coates. What a great gig, pushing nothing but politically loaded theories.
In short, manufactured equality being the fundamental basis loaded into any APS program. Programs that make this synthetic social justice scheme part of any education period and its instruction time is a genuine waste of taxpayer’s funds.
“Aurora Public Schools teacher Bryan Lindstrom previously made national news for comments on teaching critical race theory.”
“In May 2023, Fox News reported that Lindstrom, also a union organizer, introduced a resolution to “dismantle capitalism and replace it with a new, equitable economic system.”
“Lindstrom is running for House District 36.”
Be that as it may, Bryan Lindstrom, the Hinkley High school instructor endorsed and backed by the Democratic Socialists of America in his run for HD36 as the similar backing group with Denver Rep Elisabeth Epps.
A textbook example of runaway DEI in action through a forced policy that touches deep into the APS schools. A little something to consider what APS politics looks like to the rest of us.
When APS figures out the bus driver crisis their facing for what now the kids ride in sub-contracted luxury buses all over the district while the Aurora bus barn on Airport Road sits partially full of parked busses as APS has not enough drivers to fill the seats. The reality, APS budget cannot sustain this gigantic cost. These big luxury busses, longer-wider than any kind of normal school buses struggle winding through the tight city neighborhood streets. They weren’t designed for this. For APS to have a solid qualified staff of CDL bus drivers, would that also include and happen to be another program that drivers like teachers have to attend DEI-CRT skills seminars?
If there is a purpose of childhood, and the educational system that teaches them, it is to prepare them for their successful navigation through life as an adult – not to create left-wing activists for their political party. Aurora Public Schools would best serve their clientele and the citizens of Aurora by keeping this in mind.