Can the district step up?

A school year has passed since the grenade exploded in Greeley-Evans School District 6.

The Colorado Department of Education placed District 6 on a watch list reserved for the state's poorest performing districts. Excuses were out the door, and it was time for the district to step up or lose everything to state control.

The task was arduous. Test scores were shown to be in the bottom 10 percent of the state. All subgroups of students, from Anglos to special education students, were performing below their peers across the state.

To get a better handle on the problem, the district hired a team of independent consultants to do an audit of district programs.

In some areas, the picture the audit team painted was brutal. The audit showed a district that lacked focus from school to school and classroom to classroom. Students weren't getting the lessons they needed to pass the Colorado Student Assessment Program tests. Teachers and staff members didn't trust their administrative leaders.

After a school year of planning and millions of dollars to implement dozens of new programs, a research-based plan of action is in place.

But one big question still haunts the community:

Can the district pull it off?

Too much too fast?

Since the academic watch was first announced, District 6 began a complete overhaul.

Changes that normally take years to implement will occur in a matter of months. There were sweeping changes, such as aligning the reading programs in each school, adding all-day kindergarten in eight elementary schools and developing whole new systems to teach English-language learners and special education students. Then there were smaller details, such as postponing spring break until after the CSAP tests and removing extra days added to the calendar at Jefferson Elementary School.

In this day of educational reform, school districts around the country are making similar changes. But what makes District 6 different is the amount of changes that had to happen, said Janet Alcorn, a District 6 education consultant who helped create an audit of district programs.

While some districts have to find a new piece, District 6 is putting together a whole new puzzle.

"Everything needed looking at," Alcorn said. "What's different about District 6 is the sheer number of changes that needed to be made. We're changing a whole system."

Problems can arise when so much change happens so quickly. Big decisions were made many times without much community input. For instance, the decisions to postpone spring break and eliminate the extra school days at Jefferson were made at single school board meetings. Normally, before big decisions are made they are given as information items one meeting and voted on at the next.

Also, so many changes have been made that the individual successes might be hard to measure.

"I think the risk is that when you make multiple changes that quickly, you don't know which ones made a difference," said Mark Wallace, former school board president. "You run the risk of not being able to know what is working and what is not."

Bruce Broderius, school board president, said rapid change was needed.

"If we took a whole year to study this, that's just one more group of kids that starts through the system without adequate types of teaching," he said. "We couldn't have moved any faster but we didn't move too fast. Kids are what's in the balance on this thing."

Is the community engaged?

Since the advent of the CSAP, District 6 has never performed well. The district's scores have never reached the state average. But the news of the accreditation watch became the spark that lighted a fire in the community.

"I think it helped give this town a wake-up call," Wallace said. "Everyone who was inside knew our kids weren't doing well. None of us inside needed to hear it. But it opened up the door for the community to get on board."

Soon, several businesses and the Chamber of Commerce were jumping in to help out. Several community meetings were organized, some with more than 100 people in attendance. When the school district turned over its strategic plan to the state education department, 115 people showed up in support.

But are those the only people the district needs? The students with the greatest needs are those who come from poor families and those whose families don't speak English. The biggest changes in the school district will be made when these students start improving. Many people think the families of these students -- whose support the district needs the most --are the ones who are the least engaged.

"I see so many parents who don't seem to be prepared to do what's right for their kids in school," Wallace said. "That community really has to step up, and I don't think they are on board yet. The people who are here are already motivated, already care and have been there all along. It's the same people who have always been around."

Latino leaders say there hasn't been nearly enough communication with Spanish-speaking families.

"They know changes are coming but they don't know why. They don't know how. They have no idea," said Sylvia Martinez, a leader of Latinos Unidos, a Greeley Latino activist group.

For example, she said at a recent school board meeting, several Latino residents attended who helped to create a district plan for English-language learners. The meeting, however, was entirely in English and most of those people sat for two hours with no idea what was going on, Martinez said.

"That was pretty sad and frustrating for me to see," Martinez said.

The Latino leaders argue they felt they were often cut out of discussions, mainly because they disagreed with some of the changes the district was proposing

"If you want to have a comprehensive discussion, a solution that is win-win, you have to include people who might not necessarily agree with you," said Roberto Córdova, a retired professor at the University of Northern Colorado and a Latino leader. "I think a significant part of the community has not been invited to be a part of the discussion at a level I would have liked to have seen."

Broderius said the school district still needs to reach more of those families. However, if they haven't become involved yet, it is their own choice, he said.

"I was sometimes disappointed we didn't have more parents engaged," he said. "The process has been, I think, very transparent and very open. I feel very satisfied that everyone has had an opportunity to be as engaged as they wished."

Getting people on board

So far, the school district has looked at its flaws in harsh detail and a comprehensive plan has been created to help address its problems.

The next step is putting it into action, said Bob Tointon, an education advocate and Greeley business leader.

"Next is the execution of the plan," Tointon said. "That is always the most important part that still has to happen. They have to get all of the district employees pulling in the same direction."

Getting everyone in the district on board will be the next big challenge, Alcorn said.

These kind of changes are always disruptive and if staff members don't make the changes, the new programs being implemented won't be effective.

"It's not a program; it's not a book; it's the teacher," Alcorn said.

She said the school district has produced a good road map, but to make it work, it has to give staff members the skills and the desire to pull it off.

"People have to understand the changes and have the skills to make the changes," she said.

This is a big hurdle the district still has to clear, said Pat Kennedy, a District 6 elementary teacher who retired this year. There seemed to be a lot of teacher input at the beginning of the school year, when administrators studied the district, she said. But since the decisions have started coming down, teachers feel they have been left out of the process.

"Teachers want kids to learn and be successful," she said. "But I don't think teachers have really been involved in the changes, and I don't think the administration understands the impact of the changes they have made."

Teachers are finding out about many of the changes through rumor and word of mouth, she said. Many teachers will try to go along with the changes, but they are still leery of them. The workload is also starting to weigh them down, she said.

"Any seasoned teacher who can get out is figuring out how to get out. The work load is horrendous," she said. "If I wasn't retiring, I would have quit."

What's next?

While students are taking a break this summer, teachers and principals will be in the classroom. The district has a daunting schedule of training for staff members this summer that includes learning the new reading program and how to teach all-day kindergarten.

After months of planning and preparation, the rubber hits the road in the fall.

In a perfect world, everything will go off without a hitch, students will ace their tests and the district will be off of the watch list in a year. The world doesn't always work that way.

Alcorn said no matter how much the state or district would like, you can't put a timeline on the long-term changes that need to happen in District 6. The programs need to be perfected, the bugs need to be worked out and the general attitude around the district needs to change. Everyone needs to be convinced that all children can learn, she said. These things simply take time.

"While we can have no excuses, it's not going to happen tomorrow," Alcorn said. "Time will tell whether they were the right changes."

Still, there seems to be a sense of faith in the community that District 6 will pull it off. The school district seems to have taken a good look at itself and found its direction, some say.

"I'm sure that they will work their way out of it," Tointon said. "Will everything that they are going to do work? No. Some things will work better than others. That's the way the world works."