AURORA| While teachers at three of five struggling schools in northwest Aurora approved innovation plans to help them turn around their academic performance, one of the remaining two schools has rejected theirs.
Teachers at Aurora West College Preparatory Academy this week voted against a plan that would have granted the school more autonomy by deeming it exempt from several state and local regulations. The thumbs down makes West the first and only school to reject such a proposal — formally known as an innovation plan — in the group of five Aurora Public Schools institutions seeking similar sanctions.
Roughly 40 percent of the teachers who voted on the West plan — which clocked in at more than 80 pages in length — were in favor of the plan, according to APS Superintendent Rico Munn. The document would have needed approval from at least 60 percent of West teachers to move forward with the adoption process.
Munn said that the votes were cast using a secret ballot and that he does not know, specifically, what caused the staff at West to disapprove of the plan.
“We didn’t do exit surveys or anything like that, but we’re going to follow up with that staff and do surveying to try and understand if there were particular issues or sticking points, or an overall disinterest in that plan,” Munn said. “We just don’t know.”
Although some details were vague, a draft of the West plan dated Feb. 18 outlined dozens of proposed changes to school policies, including several that would result in more planning time for teachers and alternative teacher evaluations.
If the forthcoming surveys reveal that the hangups are minor, the district may attempt to repeat the voting process, according to Munn.
“If it’s one or two small things that were just sticking in people’s craws, we’ll talk about if those are things that could be changed,” he said. “If it’s a broader, thematic issue, then maybe not. I just don’t have answers until we delve into the whys.”
Amy Nichols, president of the Aurora Education Association, which acts as the local union for APS teachers, said that she believes teachers at West were skeptical of the lack of detail in their school’s plan, but that the school could still retool the proposal and put it to a new vote.
“I think staff were concerned about some of the details that weren’t there,” she said. “But there were some components that they really liked. They’re going to go back and start with the pieces that they find really intriguing, and then find a way to build those things out. They’re not scrapping everything.”
Munn added that he believes West is still a suitable candidate for the district’s proposed innovation zone, and that if the West staff decides to permanently decline its innovation waivers, the zone will still be enacted.
“In the end, West just opted not to (participate in the action zone), which is fine, but we want to make sure we understand why,” he said. “We think they are a good fit for the zone, but if they don’t want to go in that direction, that’s not troubling.”
Apart from West, APS has identified four other schools —Aurora Central High School, Boston K-8 and Paris and Crawford Elementary Schools — to seek innovation status, which is tied to a state law passed in 2008 that frees qualifying schools from many state and local regulations, including those regarding budgeting, graduation requirements and credit disbursement. Under state law, the district needs at least two schools to create an innovation zone, which is a moniker used to describe a cluster of schools with the more autonomous status, according to Munn.
Earlier this week, staff at three other schools aiming to join the innovation zone in ZIP Code 80010— Boston, Paris and Crawford — overwhelming voted in favor of plans that largely mirror the one rejected at West. At Boston, a resounding 98 percent of teachers approved of that school’s plan. The approval rates at Crawford and Paris were 80 percent and 95 percent, respectively.
The voting process at each school was conducted by an administrator, a staff member and a representative from the AEA, according to Lisa Escarcega, chief accountability and research officer for APS.
Boston, Paris and Crawford will present their plans to the APS Board of Education at the group’s regular meeting March 1. Unless the Board finds any major flaws, it will vote to approve or reject the three plans when its members convene on March 15. Between those two meetings, the Board will likely make minor recommendations and suggest tweaks to the plans, according to Munn.
Teachers at Aurora Central have yet to vote on that school’s innovation proposal as the document is longer and denser than those for its surrounding feeder schools, according to Munn. Central teachers will vote on their school’s plan on March 9.
“Central is a much bigger and more complex plan,” Munn said. “Trying to work through all the questions, the feedback, the comments, and the changes is just taking a little bit more time…the complexity combined with making those changes is why they’re pushing it back.”
Any plans approved by the APS Board will also need to earn the approval of the state Board of Education later this spring.