AURORA | Aurora Public Schools has scheduled two information sessions for the end of January and the beginning of February to discuss the next steps in its Blueprint APS plan.
Blueprint APS is the district’s multi-year plan for managing its school buildings in response to changing enrollment trends. As part of the plan, some schools with low enrollment will be closed and seven campuses will be turned into specialized magnet schools that students located anywhere in the district can apply to attend.
As the next stage of its plan, APS announced in December that it plans to repurpose Paris and Sable elementary schools, which would close in June 2023. It will also build a health-focused innovation center on the campus of North Middle School.
The Sable Elementary decision caught the community by surprise, as it was not on the initial list of schools being considered for closure. At a December school board meeting, many teachers and families showed up to protest the decision.
The final vote on the plan will be taken at the board’s February meeting. Before then, the district is holding two information sessions to go into more detail about the proposals.
The first is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 26 at 5:30 p.m. over Zoom.
The second is Thursday, Feb. 3 at 5:30 p.m. in the auditorium of North Middle School. The meeting may be changed to virtual depending on the health situation at the time.
Sable Elementary right before COVID was a zoo in the morning (I learned how to drive around it in the morning) and again when they let out in the afternoon. Do those families no longer deserve to be served? I hope this isn’t like when they closed all but two libraries and said mea culpa after the fact. Also considering two very large apartment complexes were just built a few blocks away, there is something very wrong about this.
What exactly is this repurposing? This is a slippery word to be used when these leaders are not fully transparent. Why is it these public officials continue to insult the taxpayers with these vague and ambiguous terms? Then they ask the taxpayers for more money to make better education available and wonder why we don’t trust them.