Parents, staff ask Poudre School District to slow down plans to consolidate schools

Pump the brakes.

That was the message a gathering of about 120 parents had Sunday for Poudre School District Superintendent Brian Kingsley and the PSD Board of Education about school consolidation plans that became public late last week.

The plan, as spelled out by Kingsley and the Poudre School District leadership team in a series of emails, is to move Polaris Expeditionary Learning School and its curriculum into Olander Elementary and Blevins Middle School next fall; combine the district’s two alternative high schools, Centennial and Poudre Community Academy, in a single building that now houses Polaris; and move Cooper Home, Community Connections and possibly other transition programs for students ages 18-21 with special needs to the building that now houses Centennial.

The moves, Kingsley and the district’s leadership team said in the emails, are designed to address declining enrollment at schools in west Fort Collins and to better utilize the district’s existing facilities. Decreased enrollment produces decreased funding, the email said, and PSD has an estimated $1 billion in capital needs, according to an outside firm hired to assist the district with long-term facilities planning.

Parents meeting Sunday on the playground at Olander understand the motivation behind the plan, and many suggested they could even be on board with it if they had an opportunity to be involved early on and have their voices heard.

Instead, many said, they were “blindsided” and given little time to digest the proposal and react.

The PSD Board of Education is scheduled to vote on a resolution supporting the plan Tuesday night at its regularly scheduled meeting. The board’s limitations on the superintendent’s powers include requiring board approval for the consolidation or closure of schools.

“It feels too rushed,” said Sally Harris, a mother of two students at Olander. “There’s too many questions … not enough collaboration and not enough information. It feels like they haven’t figured out all the details.”

The first mention of potential consolidation during a public meeting of the PSD Board of Education came Sept. 26, when Kingsley warned of declining enrollment in some parts of Fort Collins leading to reduced per-pupil funding for the district. Some tough choices would need to be made to maximize the district’s use of space, accommodate student interests and proactively address population changes, he said during his superintendent’s report and in a districtwide email that went out that night.

Kingsley declined multiple requests from the Coloradoan to discuss those issues further before the Oct. 10 meeting.

“This lack of transparency hits people the wrong way,” Harris said. “We need to have decisions be more transparent. If we had gotten a heads-up in April that there might be schools consolidating or shifting, that would have been different than getting an ominous email on Sept. 26 and then, boom, this decision.”

Harris helped organize Sunday’s meeting to bring together staff, parents, guardians and students from all impacted schools so they could work together to present alternative timelines or “solution-based ideas” before Tuesday’s vote.

More: What we know about Poudre School District's plans to consolidate schools

Concerns were also raised about the district's school-choice application process, which opens Nov. 1.

Staff, parents, guardians and students have received little to no information about what the consolidated schools will look like next fall and beyond, when the district has already suggested it will be redrawing school boundaries. That raised another concern for parents considering sending their children to another school through the school-choice process, several said.

Polaris had 108 students in grades K-5 and Olander had 316 in 2022-23, the most recent year official enrollment figures are available from the Colorado Department of Education. Polaris had 278 students in grades 6-12, and Blevins had 504.

The district’s communications with parents have said the Polaris at Olander and Polaris at Blevins, as they plan to call the schools, will both remain neighborhood schools with their current boundaries. Parents and guardians who want a curriculum other than the expeditionary learning model can use the school-choice process to find a different school within the district, the emails said.

Olander parents were told the district can’t even tell them what time of day school will start and end each day in 2024-25, or whether they’ll adopt Polaris’ schedule of early releases every Wednesday.

“I think that the culture and the philosophy of Olander and Polaris are not too dissimilar, that a blending of the K-5 is possible with good results,” said Tim Han, the father of two fourth-graders at Olander. “Ten months is not enough time to do that.”

Eric Bowman, president of the parent-teacher organization at Blevins, expressed similar concerns. He’d also like to know who the principal at that school next fall will be. So far, he said, he has only been told that the existing principals at both Polaris and Blevins will have to re-interview for what will just be one principal’s position.

As for the other schools, Poudre Community Academy, currently housed in a historic building across the street from the PSD administrative offices on West Laporte Avenue, had 268 students last school year, and Centennial had 141.

Enrollment figures for Cooper Home and Community Connections were not readily available.

How PSD plans to get feedback in coming weeks

PSD’s plan seeks community input on the back end of the consolidation announcement rather than the front. The district has scheduled “community engagement sessions” over the next three weeks.

“This is an opportunity to learn more, ask questions and offer feedback,” read the email for the Polaris session scheduled for Thursday evening. “Your input will be considered as PSD moves forward with these changes.”

Jessica Zamora, the only current school board member running for reelection, told those gathered Sunday that she first learned of the consolidation plan in August and believed it had a lot of merit. She was particularly pleased, she said, that Cooper Home and Community Connections would be getting a larger facility where their needs would be addressed first. She also liked the idea of expanding expeditionary learning opportunities by moving the Polaris program into larger schools that could accommodate more students.

“I wish I had a full-fledged plan, but I also understand why we don’t have a full-fledged plan, because we need you guys and your expertise on each of these schools’ identities, each of these schools’ cultures and programs to be part of that solution,” she said. “I shouldn’t be making all of those decisions. No one at our district office should be making all of those decisions. And I also hear you loud and clear when you say we can’t do that in 10 months.”

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Three other candidates for seats on the PSD Board of Education in the upcoming elections and one city council candidate with children at both Olander and Blevins also attended the meeting and spoke briefly to the group before it split off into smaller groups by school.

District B Board of Education candidates Kevin Havelda and Kurt Kastein, who both live in the Olander and Blevins district; District G candidate Caleb Larson and Fort Collins City Council candidate Melanie Potyondy, who has children at both Olander and Blevins, were all highly critical about the lack of input from administrators, staff, students, parents and guardians from the impacted schools.

“Like you, I’m a parent that learned about this entire thing this past week, and it doesn’t sit well with me, there’s a lot of anger, there’s a lot of frustration, there’s a lot of uncertainty and there’s not a lot of information,” Havelda said.

The 40 or so people in the Polaris group expressed concerns about increased class sizes and retaining their teaching staff, expeditionary learning model and inclusivity, particularly as it relates to LGBTQ+ and gender non-conforming students. They want to work with the Olander and Blevins communities to better understand their needs and concerns, several said.

Another 40 or so people in the Olander group wondered what would happen to the well-regarded integrated-service learning program at their school as well as a behavior and education support program at Blevins. They were also concerned about maintaining their “robust” English as a second language program and what they believe is a uniquely caring and respectful culture.

The 10-12 parents in the Centennial group were concerned about maintaining the Discovery program that helps at-risk students develop their social-emotional skills while also earning a high school diploma.

The smaller group of Blevins parents and staff were concerned about undoing all the hard work new principal Joe Zappa has done to move the school off a state-imposed improvement plan while rebuilding enthusiasm for learning and school pride.

“I believe that just because programs look similar on the outside doesn’t mean they’re the same,” said Kim Donegan, a teacher at Centennial for 20 years and Polaris parent for 10. “I think time is critical. We have great staffs here, in all seven of these different programs. None of has have been given a chance to come together. I’d love to work with the PCA staff, but I cannot do that with efficacy in 10 months, and integrity and giving those folks voice; I just can’t.”

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Parents, staff ask PSD to slow down plans to consolidate schools