The one school Denver Public Schools recommended for closure this year — an alternative charter school run by a for-profit company — is publicly challenging the district on its decision.
“I believe Life Skills is making progress,” said Life Skills Center High School principal Santiago Lopez. “I was pretty caught off guard.”
After months of evaluation, including data and document reviews, on-site visits, interviews and a review of an external audit, DPS staff presented a formal recommendation to the board on Thursday to close the school.
Life Skills has been rated as “accredited on probation,” the worst rating handed out by the district, for at least the past four years.
The core issue that Lopez and the school’s board members challenge is the evaluation process for new and contract schools. DPS has changed that procedure a lot in recent years.
“As the process moves forward, we are trying to get more and more clear,” said Alyssa Whitehead-Bust, DPS’s office of school reforms director.
Based on 12 conditions negotiated by the school and the district in the last probationary contract, renewed in 2009, four points are at contention.
The four points are goals surrounding the number or percentage of students that should be taking the state’s standardized tests, and how many students should be demonstrating proficient academic growth.
DPS said those four goals have not been met, while Life Skills believes they have been making “reasonable progress,” toward meeting them — which would be enough to comply with the contract under state law.
“In one case, what we are looking at is just six points away from meeting the goal,” Lopez said. “That to us is reasonable progress, but the district has never defined what is reasonable progress.”
Whitehead-Bust said the 2009 contract conditions are lower than standards the district would use for any school today.
In another recommendation made this year about Venture Prep, another charter school, she said, the district negotiated with the school to set clear score ranges moving toward defining reasonable progress — a practice that could extend to all school renewal contracts soon.
As an extra step in the process, new this year, DPS also paid about $36,310 to hire two external auditors to complement the DPS reviews of low-performing schools.
Lopez said he has no issue with the report compiled by the external auditor, T.L. Hill Group, which revealed that in all areas evaluated, the school is only showing emerging or below-emerging best practices.
But Lopez said it shows the school is making reasonable progress.
“I thought it was very helpful because it did point out and say here are the challenges, but here are the strengths as well,” Lopez said.
Yesenia Robles: 303-954-1372 or yrobles@denverpost.com
