View Resource: Call for New Quality Schools Board Recommendations 2015
This presentation is an example of the way that Denver Public Schools presents its new school approval and denial recommendations to the elected Board of Education. It includes recommendations for all new schools (whether district-run or charter). This particular presentation includes one approval for a restart operator, University Prep II, which sought to replicate an existing high performing charter to take over a closing charter school. The recommendations ground the conversation in the existing local and state policies that apply to new school approval processes as well as the over-arching school quality goals articulated in Denver’s strategic plan.
Outcomes and Lessons Learned: Denver’s new school approval recommendations have evolved over time since they were first introduced in approximately 2009. In 2011, Denver introduced the School Quality Framework to guide the evaluation of both school applications and implementations in terms of the quality of the various program components. This modification created a unified approach to quality assessments on the front, middle and back end of a school’s life cycle. In 2012, Denver started using a mix of standard and school-specific conditions in its approval recommendations to address the fact that sometimes new school applicants came very close to meeting the quality bar, but needed to adjust one or two items to fully be in compliance. In 2013, Denver started calling out the details of the proposed school’s facility placement in a separate callout. This callout is the place where staff recommends the operator to serve as the restart provider (or not) of an existing low-performing school.
Related Resource:
Call for New Quality Schools 2016