Officials: Charter schools doing well in Durango
Visit offers opportunity to view terrain for alternative schools
When the executive director of the Colorado Charter School Institute visited Wednesday, administrators and board members from both Durango’s charters agreed that their schools are not only surviving but excelling.
Animas High School is in its third year, and Mountain Middle School is in its first year.
Mark Hyatt visited Durango as a part of the series of visits around the state to get public feedback about the charter school institute.
The institute serves as the authorizing district for 26 charters around the state.
While feedback from the public was sparse, the board members and heads of school from both schools used the opportunity to have a conversation with Hyatt about the state of Durango’s charters.
There have been road bumps, said Mountain Middle School head of school Jackie Oros. The middle school spent the first two weeks of school in an office building in Bodo Industrial Park, for example. It also has been challenging for teachers to create their own curriculum, Oros said.
And finances continue to be a concern for charters statewide, including those in Durango, Animas High School board member Tom Morrissey said. Charters do not have access to capital construction funds, so a big proportion of the student funds allocated by the state must be used to support their buildings, Morrissey said.
This year, Animas High School has to use $186,000 of its per-pupil revenue to pay rent, which works out to about $1,000 of the about $6,300 the state allocates to each student in the district, said Animas High School head of school Michael Ackerman.
Together, the charters serve about 10 percent of Durango’s middle and high-schoolers, the administrators said. That’s higher than the state average of 8½ percent, Hyatt said.
The reason is that parents wanted other options, the administrators and board members said.
“9-R wasn’t doing everything wrong, but they weren’t doing everything write,” said Mark Epstein, a member of Mountain Middle School’s board of directors.
Relations with Durango School District 9-R are slowly improving said Michelle McCullough-James, a Mountain Middle School board member. Since a meeting last spring between the district, Mountain Middle School and Animas High School, subcommittees with representatives from all three entities have continued to meet, McCullough-James said.
“Things are coming out that shed light on what has happened in the past,” she said.
