Proposed Aurora bond throws crumbs to charters
Wednesday, August 6, 2008Written by: Alan Gottlieb
The Education News Colorado website has published several stories over the summer that cast the Aurora Pubic Schools regime of Supt. John Barry in a generally favorable light. Read stories here, here, and here, for example.
But one area where Barry’s forward-thinking regime has been slow to see the light is on charter schools. Last night, the Aurora school board decided to asked voters to approve a $215 million bond issue this fall. From that amount, the district is ofering a total of $750,000 to the district’s six charter schools. That’s a grand total of one third of one percent of the proceeds. Not exactly generous. Still, better than Denver, Adams 12 and Douglas, which are planning to leave charters out altogether.
In this article in this issue of the EdNews enewsletter, Jim Griffin, executive director of the Colorado League of Charter Schools, laid out the challenges faced by charters in Colorado when attempting to share in the bounty of school district bond issues. Aurora has reinforced Jim’s worst fears through its actions last night.
Read this article for an account of last night’s vote.
August 6th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Yes it is unfortunate that DPS and Aurora are not investing more in high quality charters and new schools. Interestingly, DPS’s last two bond elections helped fund Odyssey (in a new DPS owned facility), DSST ($5 million) and KIPP Sunshine Peak ($3 million??). All three investments, while very small in terms of total bond funds, have paid off dramatically in terms of student results and community need. DPS and Aurora could create a number of new high performing schools by just taking 10% of their bond funds and applying them to schools like West Denver Prep, KIPP and Odyssey.