Aurora Borealis charter renewal clears school board

The charter renewal application for Aurora Borealis Charter School on Monday cleared the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s Board of Education and will next be heard by the State Department of Education and Early Development.

At a special meeting of the school board, Aurora Principal Cody McCanna and Academic Policy Committee Chair Daniel Mahr appeared for the fourth time this year to take questions about their renewal. Where previous meetings were characterized by a back-and-forth over the school’s policies for special education, student transportation and food service, Monday’s meeting was straightforward.

“I want to thank you for addressing some of the concerns we had,” Board President Zen Kelly said. “I think you heard input from the board and moved forward in a productive way.”

Aurora Borealis is seeking routine renewal of its charter starting in the next school year and stretching through the 2035-2036 school year. When that process began on Oct. 14, before the school district’s Charter School Oversight Committee, questions were asked about the school’s policies and funding for special education students, as well as other services.

At a second meeting, on Oct. 21, the school packed the Betty J. Glick Assembly Chambers where the school board meets with nearly 100 supporters, and Mahr said he was “extremely disappointed” by what he called “accusations and attack” on their charter in a public space.

Beyond that meeting, parents and other people testified in support of Aurora Borealis at regular meetings of the school board and to the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly.

McCanna during those committee meetings told the board that Aurora Borealis has staff and has access to staff who can provide special education services, and the school revised the language in its application to read that, when a student with an individualized education plan enrolls, that plan and their needs will undergo “a detailed assessment,” before Aurora Borealis will “provide services to meet those needs.”

Previous language read described a similar review process, before the school’s staff “determines if Aurora can meet the student’s individual learning needs.” Neither iteration of the text was authored specifically by Aurora, as both were created in collaboration with the school district’s student support services department.

“You changed language I created eight years ago,” KPBSD Superintendent Clayton Holland said during the last meeting on Aurora’s application, on Nov. 4. “But it’s better now. I think the questions that were asked are important, and the dialogue that resulted from that is important.”

With the renewal, Aurora also added defined “foundation stones” to its charter, increased its facilities to include a portable soon to be vacated by the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Kenai Peninsula, and made other modifications to their school handbook in response to board and committee questions.

During that Nov. 4 meeting, KPBSD Assistant Superintendent Kari Dendurent said she was thankful for Aurora’s work and responsiveness in making changes, saying that the recommendation from district leadership and the charter school committee was “that we do support moving forward.”

Conversations about special education services and the questions faced by Aurora Borealis continued to dominate most of the discussion on Monday.

Suzanne Phillips, a former Aurora Borealis teacher and one of the “five original teachers,” spoke during the meeting of her experience with students at the school who had individual learning needs, saying that she thought students at the school rarely required special services because of the teaching style employed.

Theo Lexmond, who described himself as a former Kenai Peninsula school psychologist, said that he followed closely the conversations surrounding Aurora’s services for special needs students.

“Parents of children with special needs are seeking and deserving of school choice for tier kids,” he said. “I want to emphasize to the parents of children with special needs in the greater Kenai, Soldotna and Nikiski area, that, to Aurora Borealis’ great credit, their newly adopted special education policy language now unambiguously affirms the school’s intention to provide services to children with special needs within the scope of their individual education plans.”

Michelle Maguire, a former Aurora Borealis secretary who said she used to oversee the school’s lottery system and interact with parents considering enrollment, said that the language changed in this year’s renewal now matches the practices that are in place at the school.

“The gentleman before me said that practices follow,” she said. “We already had those practices going. The verbiage just needed to follow. We’ve already been doing this for a long time.”

Chris Van Slyke, a member of the Kenai Middle School site council, said he was “disheartened” by the comments made at previous meetings by Aurora Borealis representatives to the school board.

“We got off to a bumpy start with this whole process,” board member Kelley Cizek said. “I think it was a good bump in the road, because it allowed us to come and have this dialogue — what we do support about charter schools.”

On Monday morning, she said, the school district showcased two distinct charters that fill different needs that have significant demand from the community — referring both to Aurora Borealis and the Tułen Charter School proposed by the Kenaitze Indian Tribe.

“This board should not ever be a rubber stamp,” board member Virginia Morgan said. “I have appreciated, in this renewal application process, the work that your school has done to update the language and the description of plans for special education at Aurora Borealis Charter School. That update has been a great improvement, I would say both for fairness and for our legal obligations.”

The school board is “the conduit for the whole public,” Kelly said. He said they’re meant to bring forward and explore concerns of the public, to ensure that all 42 KPBSD schools “properly serve all our student population.”

“That was done, that was addressed,” he said.

Kelly and other members of the board said they look forward to 10 successful years working with Aurora Borealis. The board voted unanimously in favor of advancing the renewal application to the State Department of Education and Early Development, targeted for a meeting on March 10 and 11.

“I’ve been an administrator now for nine years at Aurora Borealis, and I would like to let you know how thankful I am to work at a school that has this type of parent support and staff,” McCanna said in closing words to the school board. “When you look at the success of Aurora, it belongs to the students. It belongs to the parents who make sure their kids do their homework every day. That success belongs to my staff.”

A full recording of the meeting, and the previous meetings on this year’s charter applications, can be found at the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s BoardDocs website.

Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.