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| Amphitheater Public Schools: Bound Together |
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| Written by Eric Slack | ||
| Sunday, 01 November 2009 00:00 | ||
 Amphi is the third largest public school district in Tucson. It serves roughly 16,000 students through its three high schools, three middle schools, two K-8 schools, 11 elementary schools, and three alternative or special programs. For the past two years, the school district has been engaged in a large-scale infrastructure improvement campaign funded by a voter-approved $180 million bond.There were many reasons why the bond funding was so critical to Amphi, and the district took steps to ensure that each of the individual projects was planned prior to the election in November 2007. A blue ribbon committee of community stakeholders and business and civic leaders conducted initial planning, taking about five months to determine district capital needs and set priorities for projects to be tackled. After that, an independent community group was formed as part of a grassroots effort to communicate to parent and community groups around the district and get their support. The work to create detailed plans about how the money would be used and then getting the proper message out to the people of the district was instrumental in getting the bond measure passed. A substantial portion of the bond funding will be used for the replacement of portable buildings with permanent ones. Superintendent Vicki Balentine said Amphi had 92 portables in the district that were supposed to be removed in the 1990s. The state didn't fund the projects, however, leaving the district to continue maintaining 20- to 30-year-old buildings that were meant to be temporary. Other important pieces of the plan included the renewal of Amphi's bus fleet of approximately 120 buses to be more fuel efficient, as well as technology infrastructure upgrades and health, safety, and security projects. As of September 2009, nearly $40 million of bond funds had already been committed to projects. Once projects began, Amphi started submitting a monthly report to its governing board and then issuing an informational e-mail to project stakeholders to keep them abreast of what is happening with the bond projects. The district formed some focus groups to generate the names of key communicators who should be kept informed and receive the e-mails. "All of the work put in before and after the bond measure was passed has gone a long way toward helping people feel like their 'yes' vote is making a difference and that the district is moving forward responsibly," said Balentine. One situation hitting Amphi, and all of Arizona, is the state of the state's economy. Arizona was hit hard by the economic slump. The result in Amphi's district has been a declining population due to the construction slowdown. "If you have a construction slowdown in one of the fastest growing states, workers tend to go somewhere else," Balentine said. Determined to succeed An area where this has hurt Amphi is with its Pay It Forward Program, a fund that had been supported by a donation of a per-home fee of $1,500 from developers after closing a home sale. Balentine said Amphi hasn't collected any donations through that program for a while because of the slowdown in the construction market. Those donations have been helpful in the past and were used to purchase computers and for the construction of several elementary school classrooms. Balentine is optimistic the program will become viable again once the housing and construction markets recover. In addition to meeting the language and literacy needs of the district's student population, Balentine said the biggest focus from a curriculum standpoint is ensuring math and science skills are fully developed. Graduation requirements have been increased in the last few years to require students to take additional credits in math and science to graduate from high school. "Ultimately, the 21st century skills of collaboration, communication, and use of technology are critical for today's graduates, so we are looking for ways to offer more high school credits in the middle schools," said Balentine. "That opens options for additional electives that might have some distance learning components or integrated course work that leads to the application of project-based learning because people learn best when engaged in their projects." By hiring experienced and knowledgeable principals and teachers, and subsequently supporting their professional development efforts, Balentine thinks Amphi can improve instruction and reinforce instructional strategies that make a difference in learning. Balentine is hopeful that this approach can help the school district prepare students to move right into college or the workplace without the need for remediation that many recent high school graduates have. Amphi is measuring its success in instructing students, among other means, by looking at the growth in student achievement levels over time. To maximize this growth, the district is implementing new classes where students are using laptops in the classroom, as research is a major component of education in a project-based learning environment-something the district is trying to foster. "We are triangulating several factors to show that more people are participating and that participation is having traction in terms of their ability to move on to higher levels of education," Balentine said. With the Arizona economy still in need for serious repair, Balentine knows more budget cuts are inevitable. Many recent K-12 education budget cuts were vetoed, but the state budget remains about $1 billion in the red, and some kind of solution will be required sooner or later. "For the near and far future, Arizonans have to identify what our priorities are and find some kind of stability so we can plan," she said. "Technology investments are a huge issue, and unfortunately right now I have to ask our community for additional funds that are repeatedly cut at the state level. Fortunately for us, we have the community support we need." |