AURORA | After a months-long interview process that included as many as 12 candidates, Aurora Public Schools officials didn’t have to look far to find a permanent principal for Aurora Central High School.

Gerardo De La Garza, who has served as the interim principal at Central since the beginning of the current school year, was named the school’s permanent chief earlier this week, according to Aurora Public Schools spokeswoman Patti Moon.

The district notified community members of De La Garza’s selection via a letter posted on the Aurora Central website and a call that was made to students’ homes in both English and Spanish.

“Over this past year and throughout the interview process, Mr. De La Garza demonstrated a commitment to student learning, a willingness to hold people accountable for school performance and the ability to focus on sustainable results,” APS Superintendent Rico Munn wrote in his letter to the Central community. “Mr. De La Garza’s demonstrated turnaround traits, coupled with his existing connections to the community, will provide Aurora Central with a strong platform to launch its innovation efforts.”

De La Garza previously served as the principal at North Middle School, a feeder school to Aurora Central.

At a community forum held at Central earlier this month, De La Garza said that improving the school culture at Central, which frequently battles high teacher turnover and subpar student test scores, will be the first issue he will address as principal going forward.

“I get it — there’s a lot of hurt in this building right now,” he said. “The culture and climate is something that we definitely have to address in order to make a difference with our students. That’s going to be priority number one.”

De La Garza also outlined several prongs of Central’s lengthy innovation plan, which he has helped craft for nearly a year.

“Over this last year Mr. De La Garza led the Aurora Central community through the challenging process of developing and ultimately adopting an innovation plan that will serve as the school’s blueprint for turnaround,” Munn wrote in his letter.

Facing De La Garza in his newly permanent role at Central is the daunting task of enacting a slew of procedural changes. Central, which is currently in the last year of the state’s five-year accountability clock for school performance, is in the process of gaining innovation status — a tag tied to a 2008 state law that would grant the school additional freedoms in the way it sets up calendars, retention policies, curriculum and other hierarchical structures.

Both the APS Board of Education and a majority of Central teachers signed off on the school’s innovation plan earlier this spring. The school now stands poised to clear the final hurdle in the innovation process by gaining approval from the state board of education in May.

There have been three principals at Central in the past five years, a number that includes De La Garza in his current transitional role, according to Moon.

Pending approval by the APS Board of Education, De la Garza will resume his duties with a new contract in July.

The announcement was first reported Monday by the education news website Chalkbeat Colorado.