Innovations! APS Board Meeting 3/15
For those of you who have not been obsessively following the development of the innovation zone in Aurora Public Schools, here's a quick rundown:
A combination of school leaders, teacher, district administrators, community groups and family members from Boston K-8, Paris Elementary School, Crawford Elementary School, and Central High School have spent months going through the innovation planning process. These four innovation schools will be linked by the theme “International Leadership” to provide cohesion across the Aurora Central feeder pattern. The goal of creating this zone is to drastically improve student achievement at these four schools, which have all been identified as Priority Improvement or Turnaround schools by the state at points in the past five years. The APS innovation zone will be led by a newly formed “Office of Autonomous School” that will be responsible for leading the four schools in the innovation zone and the seven charter schools that will be part of APS next year.
With that out of the way, let's move on to the actual board meeting where Aurora Central's plan took center stage.
Commentary about Central's plan dominated public comment with a teacher coming out in strong opposition to the plan, another teacher expressing her support of the plan, and Hanni Raley from Arc of Aurora--an advocacy group for students with disabilities--expressing her deep concerns about the relative lack of consideration of students with disabilities in the plan.
After a brief introduction of the innovation zone, a team of Aurora Central High School staff members (and one student!) presented their plan for school innovation. They presented the highlights of the 140 page plan put together by the school design team over the course of the past several months.
The board had many questions about the plan and ultimately determined that they would need another week to decide whether or not to approve it. In the intervening time, the board expects to see a 5-year budget projection that details how the school intends to pay for the proposed innovations.
The Board did unanimously vote to approve the innovation plans for Boston, Paris, and Crawford whose school design teams went through the same process of presenting and answering questions in the March 1 board meeting. So, congratulations are in order for those three schools! Now on to the State Board to see if they have the same confidence in the plans as the APS board.
Interesting moments
During public comment an ACHS teacher decided not to comment due to feeling uncomfortable with the people present in the room.
Director Wildman and Director Jorgenson calling attention to the proportion of teachers not returning to Central (about 1/3 based on the estimates presented by Central administration).
Director Wildman and an ACHS teacher both pointing to the seeming lack of positive, trusting relationships between school leadership and school staff.
Director Yamrick challenging the entire idea of having an Office of Autonomous Schools.
