Story by Joshua Cole
(originally published in Jan. 21, 2010, Villager)
With parents, politicians, school districts and many media outlets focused on potentially dangerous cuts to education budgets, leaders of the Cherry Creek School District said they would take a night off to listen to parents' priorities, visions and concerns about education in the next decade.
Cherry Creek Schools had its second community forum Jan. 13 at Smoky Hill High School. The first was in December at Overland High School. A third forum is scheduled for Cherry Creek High School on Jan. 26.
“Deliberately, we are not talking about the budget,” said Cherry Creek Schools Superintendent Mary Chesley to about 200 community members and district staff, Jan. 13. “We are talking about values.”
The forums are part of creating the District Performance Plan, which is required by the state as a way to set goals and priorities that align with the district's mission and values. A planning committee plans to review comments and create the five-year plan, which is scheduled to be reviewed and voted on at the May district Board of Education meeting.
The district's designed values and the mission – “To inspire every student to think, to learn, to achieve, to care” – are what the district has used in creating policies, but they're general. The performance plan is intended to provide more substance and specifics for the mission and values.
Education is in an era of high-stakes testing and accountability on state and national requirements. Curriculum is aligned realigned what seems annually. Technology shifts constantly. Children are identified with various behavioral differences. In Cherry Creek Schools, new neighborhoods are booming on the east side of the district and neighborhoods are aging on the west side. With all of the changes and all of the attention, school leaders, teachers and parents need to know what they're doing and what they want.
The forums were a chance for parents to talk about some of the things they want for their children in school.
“Our youngest boy is in fifth grade, so we still have seven more years in the district. We want to make sure we're getting the best for our sons,” said Dennis Jenkins, who attended the forum with his wife.
Jenkins said that he and other parents in his group were most concerned with students being labeled and limited by learning disorders or special education needs.
“The biggest thing we talked about was making sure our kids aren't stamped and would move through the system in a box,” Jenkins said.
A difficulty of neighborhood schools is that their size make them difficult to appeal to different types of students. So certain types of students, parents said, are treated differently. Students with special needs are set apart in various ways, while gifted students are pulled out at different times. Plus, the district's only magnet school for gifted students, the Challenge School, is at a northwest corner of the district, more than 30 minutes away for most students.
“Ideally, they should be doing that (things done at the Challenge School) in the neighborhood school, closer to home,” said Jenny McConnell, who has two middle school children at the Challenge School. “They don't walk home with other children if they go to the Challenge School. Driving to and from school, they're losing an hour every day. The neighborhood schools don't do what the Challenge School does for gifted students, aside from pull-outs, when the kids are expected to know what to do when they're not there.”
Parents, community members and district staff in one group set as their priority safe and secure schools, with warm and friendly staff – a comfortable environment to learn, to talk, to share and to be creative.
“Safety is a huge factor,” said Eddie Quinn, who has two girls, an eighth grader and a high school sophomore. “My experience with my kids, the elementary school was nice and comforting, but it became a little more threatening as kids grow up. Kids are more rambunctious as they get older. It concerns me. One of my girls is very confident, but the other is more shy.”
Parents and other community members can comment by e-mailing forums.feedback@cherrycreekschools.org
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