AHS Weekly Update- Week of February 28th, 2011

It’s Project Week at Animas High and our students are engaged in unique learning opportunities both in Durango and across Southwestern Colorado. We look forward to seeing all their great work and the results of their efforts. Please take a moment to review the following updates:

AHS Admissions Lottery
CSAPs
2011 Spring Break

AHS Admissions Lottery
Animas High School will NOT be holding an admissions lottery for the incoming class of 2015 on March 1st. All students who completed enrollment forms for next fall will be offered admission to AHS and will be sent registration packets from the school. Registrations are due back to Animas High’s Main Office by Friday, April 15th.

Enrolled students who do not return a completed registration packet will be removed from the school’s admissions roster. Once AHS reaches enrollment capacity (81 students), subsequent enrollees will be assigned to the school’s Waiting List in the order in which they enrolled. We want to thank everyone for such a rewarding enrollment season and we look forward to working with the class of 2015!

Additionally, Animas High continues to accept enrollment for limited spots in our Class of 2014.The school will enroll students for next year’s tenth grade until we reach capacity. Enrollment forms can be found online at www.animashighschool.com

CSAPs
When we return to school after spring vacation, it will be CSAP week. Students will be testing every day, March 14-18. We ask your help in making sure students get to school on time, are well-rested and prepared to do their best. Please see the attached Parent Brochure for more information about the CSAP testing. The 2011 CSAP schedule allows for extra time with advisory groups both in the morning and afternoon of testing week. We look forward to supporting our students as they navigate the 2011 CSAP experience. Questions or concerns can be forwarded to Testing Director Cat Lauer at cat.lauer@animashighschool.com and/or AHS Coordinator of Student Services, Jeff DiGiacomo at jeff.digiacomo@animashighschool.com

2011 Spring Break
Animas High School will close Friday, March 4th at 4pm for Spring Break. Campus will reopen at 7am on Monday, March 14th. Please have a very safe and super fun vacation!

We've Heard Your Feedback!

For Immediate Release: To AHS Families and 9th Grade Enrollees for the Class of 2015,

Interest in Animas High School and demand for enrollment into the Class of 2015 next fall has exceeded every expectation. As Animas High School continues to grow and shine, it’s important for us to continually listen to the students and families in our community. To this end, Animas High School wants all students who are interested in AHS to benefit from our unique high school program.

We’ve heard your feedback! Due to the increased demand for enrollment, we are pursuing facility options that will allow AHS to accommodate all interested enrollees. As a result of these developments, the Animas High School Board of Directors has increased the 9th grade lottery target to 81 students.

Because of this increase in 9th grade capacity, the lottery has not yet been triggered and all current enrollees are eligible to register for Animas High School in the fall.

However, please note that if more than 81 students enroll by the end of the day on February 28th, (next Monday) the lottery will be triggered and will be held at 5pm on March 1st at AHS. Enrollees should expect notification from the School on Monday morning as to whether the school will be holding an admissions lottery.

Our goal is to not have to turn any interested student away from our school. We are honored to hear students and families expressing a strong desire to be a part of Animas High School. I thank you all for your continued support and encouragement as we work diligently to accommodate as many students as we can next fall.

AHS Weekly Update-Week of February 21st, 2011

Greetings from AHS,

A reminder that following next week’s Project Week experience is SPRING BREAK! Campus will be closed from March 7th until Monday, March 14th. Please take a moment to review the following updates:


Thursday EXHIBITION Events
Project Week
2011-12 ENROLLMENT

Thursday EXHIBITION Events
Model U.N.: Thursday, February 24 9:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m., 12:15 p.m.-2:15 p.m.
John Fisher's class will participate in a model U.N., addressing issues of the Palestinian refugee crisis, and the recent provocations from North Korea. Come see students making speeches, using parliamentary rules, haggling over resolutions, and writing amendments to solve these challenging world problems. It is a great chance to see some critical thinking in action and learn about these global issues.

Shadows of Shakespeare: Thursday, February 24 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. Jessica McCallum's class will be holding 2 live performances of Shakespeare's A Mid Summer Night's Dream through the art of shadow puppetry. Join us and see our students perform their 21st century variation of this classic piece of theater and literature.

Project Week
Next week is Project Week at AHS! Students have met with their teams and we are ready to go. Parents, look for a final permission slip/liability release coming home to you this week. Please contact your student’s Project Week Leader with any questions or concerns about this experience!

2011-12 ENROLLMENT
On March 1st, Animas High School will hold its first ever admissions lottery for the incoming class of 2015. Please join the Animas High community as we solidify the roster for next year’s incoming freshman class. Any student who completes an online enrollment form by February 28th, will be included in the lottery. Students, their families and the public may join AHS on campus for the lottery on Tuesday, March 1st at 5pm. The school will inform all enrolled students of their admissions status following the lottery experience.

Colo. educators decry Hickenlooper's proposed cuts

Colo. educators decry Hickenlooper's proposed cuts
By Karen Auge and Carlos Illescas
The Denver Post


Slashing $375 million from Colorado's public schools, as Gov. John Hickenlooper has proposed, could cost teachers' jobs and shrink the paychecks of many who remain, and would mean nearly $500 less spent on each schoolchild.
Deep cuts to education were widely expected. Nevertheless, the actual numbers delivered by Hickenlooper Tuesday hit educators like a gut punch.

They responded with expected outcry, while the governor's budget proposal generated a topsy-turvy political response, with some in the governor's party decrying the bloodletting and asking for additional revenue — i.e. taxes — to stanch it.
"Gov. Hickenlooper's budget is full of tough choices," said Wade Buchanan, president of the Bell Policy Center. "What's different now is that these cuts truly threaten bedrock investments in our future."

Overall, Colorado's public colleges and universities will see $125 million less next year. Of that, $89 million was an expected loss of federal stimulus money.

That leaves total expected cuts of $36 million for 2011-12. This year, the state higher-education budget was $555 million. The proposed cut will mean $877 less per student.

The potential cuts to K-12 education come despite Amendment 23, which is supposed to increase education funding each year by at least the rate of inflation.

But as the current recession began engulfing the state in 2009, then-Gov. Bill Ritter seemingly found a way around that requirement.

In 2003, legislative attorneys opined that Amendment 23 did not protect mitigating funding factors — such as a district's cost of living and its number of at-risk kids — and lawmakers could lower the total money for schools without touching each district's base amount.
How the cuts affect students, teachers and schools will vary, said Bruce Caughey, executive director of the Colorado Association of School Executives.

"Public education is supposed to be for all kids regardless of circumstances," he said. "For those kids who come from difficult circumstances, like poverty, public schools are often their only hope."

Jefferson County schools had expected to have 95 fewer teachers next year. But Superintendent Cindy Stevenson said the state's largest district underestimated how much it would lose under Hickenlooper's plan. Now the district may ask employees to take a pay cut, likely through furlough days.

This year's proposed cuts come on top of two years of financial blows to schools.
Kindergarten through high school education took a $260 million cut — a 6 percent net reduction — in the current 2010-11 budget year, which ends in June.

The cuts are becoming more than schools and teachers can or should bear, said Brenda Smith, president of the AFT Colorado teachers union. "Teachers are doing their part with fewer resources in larger classes, but at some point Coloradans will have to decide if education is really our priority."

With everyone from the governor himself to the state's millions of unemployed residents talking about the need to create jobs, it makes no sense to yank money out of the institutions that prepare the state's future workforce, Caughey said.

"I don't think there is any better investment in jobs than schools," he said.

Karen Auge: 303-954-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com

Governor targets schools for cuts

Governor targets schools for cuts
Hickenlooper’s proposal would set a lower spending baseline
By Joe Hanel Herald Staff Writer Article Last Updated: Tuesday, February 15, 2011 11:51pm


DENVER – Gov. John Hickenlooper called Tuesday for historic cuts to public schools that will place “almost inhuman demands” on teachers and government workers, he said.

Added to cuts that former Gov. Bill Ritter proposed last November, K-12 schools would lose $500 per student next school year, and colleges would lose $877 per student, compared with this year’s funding.

Currently, the state spends an average of $6,813 per pupil.

State workers would see further pay cuts, and senior discounts for state parks would be eliminated as part of the plan Hickenlooper announced for the 2011-12 budget, which starts in July.

Ritter already proposed a 2011-12 budget, but Hickenlooper said a worse-than-expected economy and a desire for a conservative budget with more money in reserve forced him to ask for additional cuts.

“The four-letter word today is ‘math.’ We have a structural imbalance to the budget,” Hickenlooper said.

The state has fallen $1 billion short every year in its approximately $7 billion budget since the recession hit – a mismatch of revenue and expenses that Hickenlooper calls a structural gap. Ritter’s policy was to fill the gap as best he could with federal stimulus money and cash from savings accounts.

Hickenlooper made clear Tuesday that he intends to make permanent cuts that will eliminate the structural gap after two years. Most of Tuesday’s cuts will set a new, lower baseline for future years, and schools should not expect their budgets to bounce back next year.

Republican legislators, in general, lauded Hickenlooper’s plan.

“What you’ve presented here, I think, is a realistic and honest appraisal of where we are,” said Sen. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, a member of the budget committee.

But the governor left his fellow Democrats stunned, and some of them scolded him publicly Tuesday.

“My guess is the per-pupil spending (cut) will take us close to the bottom in the country,” said Sen. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder. “The continuation of cutting our way out of this is not going to work.”

The Legislature will get a chance to approve Hickenlooper’s plan or make changes, with the main debates scheduled in late March and early April. All cuts will take effect starting in July.

It will be up to each school district to decide what to cut, and Hickenlooper said the new budget doesn’t necessarily have to cause layoffs.

But Jane Urschel, deputy director of the Colorado Association of School Boards, disagreed, noting that most school districts spend 85 percent of their money on employees.

“It’s a people industry. So there certainly will be cuts to teachers. There’s no way to avoid that,” Urschel said.

The cuts will total about $2 million for Durango School District 9-R, said Laine Gibson, chief financial officer of the district.

To help soften the blow, the board will most likely realign mill levy dollars, Gibson said. Voters approved the mill levy increase, which will bring the district $3.2 million annually, in November.

Major cuts to staff, for example, may not be as drastic as they would have been without the money, Gibson said.

The school district will still feel the blows of Hickenlooper’s new budget proposal, though.

“It’s going to cost us, it’s basically doubling the cuts we made last year,” Gibson said.

Rocco Fuschetto, superintendent of Ignacio School District 11-JT, said the cuts will put the district in an even tougher position when it comes time to create next year’s budget.

“Just like everyone else, $500 per kid is a lot to lose, and I know it will have some kind of effect on hiring,” Fuschetto said. “We’re going to start working on the budget in next couple months and every line will be looked at.”

The state is requiring more of the schools, but isn’t sending the necessary funding to complete those goals, he said.

“We want to keep going with our programs and offer more opportunities for kids, but at same time we get our funding cut,” he said. “How do you balance those things?”

Colleges were already facing steep cuts, and they would see an extra $36 million cut under Tuesday’s plan.

For Fort Lewis College, it means $577,000 less than college leaders had expected.

“We think we’ll be in reasonable shape with this amount. We have been budgeting really conservatively,” said Steve Schwartz, the college’s vice president for finance and administration.

Although K-12 schools would suffer the most under Hickenlooper’s plan, it has plenty of pain to spread across the state.

State employees will have to divert 4.5 percent of their paychecks into their retirement accounts, compared with a 2.5 percent cut in Ritter’s plan.

The plan leans heavily on savings accounts for local governments. Legislators are fighting this week about whether the natural-gas and oil tax accounts should be used to balance the state budget or for their original purpose – making grants to local governments and water projects. Hickenlooper’s plan takes $65 million more from the accounts than Ritter was proposing.

Other notable reductions Tuesday include the closure of the Fort Lyon Correctional Facility in Bent County, closing Bonny Lake State Park near the Kansas border and “repurposing” three Western Slope state parks – Paonia, Sweitzer Lake and Harvey Gap – to be managed with reduced services.

Also, the plan would end the 50 percent discount that senior citizens get on state park passes.

Hickenlooper plans $57 million in additional cuts to health-care programs like Medicaid, including an extra 0.5 percent cut to the pay of doctors and nurses who provide health care for the poor.

The state budget should expect cuts of the same magnitude in 2012, although not necessarily to schools, warned Hickenlooper’s budget chief, Henry Sobanet.

“We’ve used our savings account to pay our ongoing expenses, and the savings account is now gone,” Sobanet said.

jhanel@durango herald.com. Herald Staff Writer Emery Cowan contributed to this report

Could charter, public schools get along?

STEVE LEWIS/Herald
Sophomore Johnathan Cannon, a student ambassador at Animas High School, talks to parents and prospective students during an informal presentation and question and answer session at the school.

Could charter, public schools get along?
Meeting could signal a new era of collaboration
By Emery Cowan Herald Staff Writer Article Last Updated: Monday, February 14, 2011 11:19pm

It’s no secret that relations between public charter schools and traditional public schools can be tense. The failure of two charter schools, Excel and Community of Learners, led to disagreement and blame-placing among many of those involved. The bitter memory still lingered when a new charter school, Animas High School, announced plans to begin.

Durango is no exception. The failure of two charter schools, Excel and Community of Learners, led to disagreement and blame-placing among many of those involved. The bitter memory still lingered when a new charter school, Animas High School, announced plans to begin.

But then Animas received the “go-ahead” from the Colorado Charter School Institute, which oversees the school, and enrolled enough students for a full freshman class. Now another charter school, Mountain Middle School, is set to open next fall, and both schools are close to triggering lottery enrollment because of the high level of interest they have attracted.

Though charter schools often are seen as a threat to public schools because of their potential to draw away students and funding, Durango School District 9-R decided to tentatively extend an olive branch.

In a meeting earlier this month, the board voted to schedule talks between the boards of Mountain Middle School, Animas High School and 9-R to discuss what future relations will look like between the boards and their schools. Scheduled for March or April, the meeting will be the first formal talks between the three groups.

“I feel like what happened last night was historic for Durango,” said Nancy Heleno, president of Mountain Middle School’s board of directors, after the board meeting. “It’s a paradigm shift of thinking and perceiving charter schools. For 25 years, the go-to feeling has been that they’re competition.”

Though school administrators aren’t guaranteeing any type of outcome and emphasize their primary responsibility is to their own schools, the plans suggest a new movement to find a place of coexistence that so far has been difficult to reach.

Much of the tension between the schools comes down to funding, which has been sorely lacking all around since the economic downturn.

Keith Owen, superintendent of Durango School District 9-R, said 9-R loses almost $7,000 per pupil each time a student enrolls at Animas High School. The case will be the same when students enroll in Mountain Middle School because both schools are chartered through the Colorado Charter School Institute. Like any other school district, the institute receives separate per-pupil state funding and has authority over the schools it charters.

In many other districts, charter schools are run through the local school district. In these cases, state funding would go to the district.

Laine Gibson, the district’s chief financial officer, said that in the two years since Animas High School started, Durango High School has lost five teaching positions and reduced several programs because of falling enrollment.

Districts see charters as competitors, which creates an automatic adversity, said Mark Hyatt, executive director of the Colorado Charter School Institute.

Such financial dynamics are likely to continue, with the state institute counting a 21 percent increase in enrollment this year, according to Education News Colorado, a news website dedicated to Colorado’s schools.

But a wave of partnerships is beginning to happen in Colorado and nationwide.

Hyatt said there are good working relationships between traditional public schools and public charter schools in about half of the districts in the state. On a national scale, nine cities have signed on to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s District-Charter Collaboration Compact, an initiative designed to highlight and share best practices and knowledge among public charter schools and traditional public schools.

Still, Durango would be fairly unique, at least among schools in Colorado, if any sort of mutual support or collaboration came out of the boards’ talks, Owen said.

From what he has seen, it’s a rare occurrence for charter schools run by the state institute, as opposed to district-run charters, to have much collaboration with local district schools because they have no legal obligation to work together, he said.

Floyd Patterson, president of the 9-R board, said the board’s decision reflects the recognition that the educational landscape is shifting as charters continue to grow.

“It’s a change in thinking, we’re in the era of choice,” Patterson said. “A lot of our friends have children in these schools, and we can’t be hostile.”

Michael Ackerman, Animas’ head of school, and Heleno already have ideas for collaboration.

Ackerman said he would like to see the schools put their resources together to do a high school information night to clarify the benefits of and differences between Animas High School and Durango High School.

Heleno said she could see the schools applying for grants together to have district development days that are open to all schools, public, private and charter.

Neither of them hold illusions about the amount of work required to reach a level of substantial collaboration.

“We still have a long way to go,” Ackerman said.

ecowan@durango herald.com


STEVE LEWIS/Herald
Michael Ackerman, far right, answers a question from Matt Pope, left, during a presentation for parents and prospective students at Animas High School.


JOSH STEPHENSON/Herald
Ninth-grader Brittany Lee, 15, goes to her next class at Animas High School.

Animas High students take look at genocide

How can people kill others in name of faith?
Animas High students take look at genocide
By Ann Butler Herald Staff Writer Article Last Updated: Friday, February 11, 2011 8:11pm

http://www.durangoherald.com/article/20110212/LIFESTYLE06/702129996/-1/Lifestyle06

Millions of people were killed in the 20th century in the name of faith, ethnicity or political belief. Even as genocide continues today in places such as Darfur and Uganda, people still ask why.

“We tend to see genocide as something that evil people do to innocent victims,” Lori Fisher, a teacher at Animas High School, said while discussing The Genocide Project, an assignment she gave to her sophomore humanities students.

“It’s more complex than that. Many people are capable of it in certain contexts. If people are feeling insecure, economically, politically, in their identity, it tills the field,” she said.

Animas High School, a charter school in its second year, provides project-based learning. In this project, students studied the genocides of the last century and created everything from multimedia projects to art and music to share what they had learned.

“It was a really emotional experience for me,” student Jenna Brooks said about her project on the genocide of Bosnian Muslims, when Serbs were responsible for the deaths of 200,000, the displacement of 2 million and the systemized rape of thousands of women and girls. After conducting research about the brutality, Jenna, a poet and lyricist, wrote a song as part of her exhibit, annotating individual lyrics and singing from the point of view of the victims.

“I realized how closed off America is from the world and how serious genocide is,” she said. “Thousands of people died (in Bosnia) just 16 years ago, and I didn’t know anything about it.”

Students examined genocides on four continents, including those in Armenia, Ukraine, Guatemala, Cambodia, Darfur, Rwanda and the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. In one of the projects Fisher found most interesting, Jewish student Elliott Saslow and German exchange student Florian Hermann looked at the history of anti-Semitism and compared it to where anti-Semitism flourishes – or has been virtually eliminated – today.

Another project, about the Ukrainian genocide when Stalin killed more than 7 million people by creating an artificial famine with collectivization, was a multisensory experience with a loaf of bread wrapped in barbed wire while a bread machine working underneath projected the aroma of baking bread as quotes from Stalin were recited.

“The total number of deaths in Uganda could exceed Rwanda (an estimated 800,000),” said Carly Pierson, who did her project on the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Internally Displaced Persons camps in the African nation. “It’s not seen, not broadcasted, because it’s happening so slowly. I definitely don’t understand how people get violence like that out of the Ten Commandments.”

From propaganda to social psychology, students learned about how genocide happens. They studied the seven stages of genocide as explained by Gregory Stanton, director of the World Federalist Association Campaign to End Genocide. The stages are classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, identification, extermination and denial.

“It really makes me so mad, especially in the places where we see some of the seven signs genocide is happening, like in Uganda and Darfur, and no one is intervening,” Jenna said.

abutler@durango herald.com


STEVE LEWIS/Herald
Lori Fisher wanted students to do more than just learn about genocide when she assigned The Genocide Project to her sophomore class at Animas High School. She wanted them to educate others about it. From left, parents Maxine Christopher, Mark Crosby and Rhonda Crosby watch multimedia presentations on different instances of genocide. At right is a scene from sophomore Hank Stowers’ presentation “Imperialism in Ethiopia.”



Enlargephoto
STEVE LEWIS/Herald
Madlyn McClure, 13, left, and her mother, Maxine Christopher, watch a presentation on the genocide in Rwanda by Animas High School sophomore Lily Oswald.