AURORA | The dusty site near South Harvest Road and Belleview Avenue in Aurora seemed like an ideal spot for future development.
Bordered by the Cherry Creek School District’s transportation headquarters and the Arapahoe Park horse track on the north and the Aurora Reservoir on the east, the stretch of land includes plenty of room for growth. Judging by the explosive growth in the southeastern stretch of the city in the past 20 years, the site seems an ideal candidate for the next generation of housing developments and commercial storefronts.
That’s part of what made the site a perfect candidate for the future site of Cherry Creek’s seventh high school, an as-yet unnamed facility that would include a neighboring middle school and help ease the enrollment burden that’s currently straining both Grandview and Cherokee Trail high schools.
“In the 2008 bond, we actually put money in to start the development of high school number seven. We were growing over 1,000 kids per year and we knew we were going to need that extra high school,” said Scott Siegfried, assistant superintendent for the district. Siegfried spoke at Cherokee Trail, where a pair of mobile trailers are set up in the front parking lot. The mobile structures will house about 100 students in four different classes for the 2012-13 school year; a similar set of three mobiles are set up down the road at Grandview. “The plan was that we were going to ask in 2012 if that was to go forward … That’s $125 million. That includes the building and all of the things to fill the building to make it a working environment for kids.”
Those plans started to shift with the fallout from the economic crash of 2008. Real estate development slowed across the city, the state and the country. The influx of new students that drove the construction of new buildings like the Institute of Science and Technology at Overland High School and two new elementary schools – Pine Ridge Elementary east of the Southlands shopping center that opened in 2010 and Black Forest Hills Elementary School in the Tallyn’s Reach neighborhood slated to open this fall – abated enough to give administrators some breathing room.
“We were able to back up and say, ‘What are our real needs that will get us through 2017?’” Siegfried said, pointing to capacity issues at Grandview and feeder schools like Red Hawk Elementary. The planned King’s Point residential development that spans E-470, which has been in the planning stages for multiple years, is set to have a big impact. “That will significantly impact our facilities. We want to make sure that we provide for our kids an environment that is excellent.”
All of those factors changed the plans for the district’s seventh high school. In April, the Cherry Creek Board of Education formally approved a bond election question for November that would ask voters to put the $125 million to different uses. Instead of building the new middle and high school complex off South Harvest Road, the district would use the money in the coming four years for maintenance, technology and capacity improvements. That bond money would add a wing to Grandview High School worth $6 million and a wing to Cherokee Trail High School worth $7 million.
“The downturn in the economy and the slowdown in our growth allowed us to take a step back from what we thought we’d have to do,” Siegfried said. “In 2007, the plan was to build a new high school. As far back as that, we had plans on paper. With the downturn, it’s allowed to slow down – maybe 2017, maybe 2018.”
That’s not to say the enrollment strain on the schools has eased with a sluggish economy. Depending on a variety of formulas, officials anticipate a growth of anywhere from about 16,000 to nearly 17,900 students in the district’s high-school population by 2017. At Cherokee Trail, district officials estimate that the student population could rise to as much as 4,110 by 2017. At Grandview, the student population could hit as much as 2,826 by 2017.
District administrators are finding immediate ways to deal with that very immediate demand at both high schools, as well as at elementary schools across the district. Red Hawk Ridge Elementary School in the Grandview feeder area will adjust to a four-track schedule in a year in order to deal with the greater influx of new students.
“Some kids are always on vacation and some kids are always in school, but when those kids get to middle school and high school, we don’t put them on four-track,” Siegfried said. “The year is the year. We don’t have those opportunities, so we just need the extra space.”
The mobile classrooms at the high schools are a first step, but they’ve never been viewed as a permanent solution. High energy costs (more than $300,000 a year districtwide) associated with the mobile classrooms are only one of their downfalls.
“When you try to put 30 seniors into a mobile, it’s really limiting. I don’t think it’s good education,” said Kurt Wollenweber, principal of Grandview High School, earlier this year. “It doesn’t lend itself as much to groups that you can move tables around as easily. I’m a big believer in cooperative group learning (and) it’s just a little tight to be able to do those kinds of things.”
Finding a more permanent solution will depend heavily on the results of the bond election in November. Even if the $125 million bond election doesn’t pass, the capacity issues aren’t likely to disappear, Siegfried said.
“Even if the bond passes and we start the construction, that’s still a year and a half out. There are going to be more mobiles,” Siegfried said. “If it doesn’t pass, there are a lot of options we have to consider. Our job, our responsibility is to make sure that kids have a good environment to learn in. We’d look at all the options, work with our community, work with our board to recommend the best options.
“I’ve got a little bit of time before I have to think of that,” Siegfried added.
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com or 720-449-9707
Sensible idea to hold off on building another high school in Aurora. Population, and especially families with children, should begin to decrease in just a few years as industrial oil and gas development changes in Aurora from vertical to horizontal and becomes widespread throughout the city, as envisioned by Aurora City Council, who generally welcomes fracking anywhere. Generally, people flee once they are getting sick, etc. Meanwhile, most of us ignore the facts, such as 2012 findings in Erie, Colorado, that people living as much as 1/2 mile (2,640 feet) from wells were 60 or 66% more likely to have cancer. Facts like this year’s research findings that reveal children are more at risk from low doses of poisons typically coming from oil and gas development and that even their DNA is changed in a negative way to make them and Future Generations more suseptible to cancer; these facts were presented to Aurora Public School Board, with no noticeable public comment. The State Land Board is planning over 100 wells at the Lowry Bombing Range; wells in Aurora are in the permit process just east of Green Valley Ranch; wells are being thought of across the street of Aurora’s Vista Peak Campus (K-12+). My neighborhood abuts Flanders Park; it being spacious enough for drilling and yet inner-Aurora, I have time to move now, before people wake up to what’s really happening. Of course, Aurora’s new “regs” talk about needing to give Notice of a well on one’s property or very nearby ONLY to the FIRST buyer; let everyone else be fooled into thinking that the government is protecting them.
And just exactly where would i find factual research concerning the human health problems associated with fracking and the percentages of diseases of people living near these places? Inquiring minds want to know.
Try http://www.frackingcolorado.wordpress.com — here you’ll find links and other info!
Look for a Denver Post article on Erie, Colorado and testing done showing 60 or 66% more likelihood of contracting cancer at 1/2 mile from oil and gas horizontal fracking.
It’s really great to have as many schools as we can…..now if we could just get competent teachers.
and parents ….
really richard. I find it unlikely that you are remotely qualified to determine from your own experience and first hand information the percentage of qualified teachers in CCSD. Just another lackey for the political right. Must make you feel good in the morning.
I hope the bond passes.
Why don’t the middle and high schools go 4 track? What’s so sacred about their learning that they can’t do 4 track? CCSD is going to have 4 track elementary schools, why not at least have all the schools, including middle and high schools, on the same schedules? Right now I have kids on two different calendars and it stinks! At least families could take vacations together then. Spread out the misery across the grade levels, not just at the elementary age.