For audiences at school board meetings in recent weeks, it has been hard to tell the district is working on deep and controversial budget cuts. The only issue consistently drawing residents to speak has been whether or not a group of South Jeffco sixth-grade students will join seventh and eighth graders at a new middle school.
Parents in the area are concerned the Jefferson County R-1 School District went too far toward a sixth-through-eighth grade configuration without consulting PTA groups and accountability committees. R-1 Superintendent Cindy Stevenson said at a recent board meeting that she has directed her staff to reconsider the process.
“Thank you for clarifying that we would change the process if we had to do it all over again,” said Board Member Vince Chowdhury to Stevenson. Chowdhury represents the new middle school, which is near Chatfield High School.
The district is now forming a new steering committee to study grade configuration options for the school. Included on the committee will be principals, teachers and parents from each school in the Chatfield High School articulation area, as well as five at-large community members chosen by Area Administrator George Diedrich.
The group will discuss options and educational research, and recommend a configuration to the school board.
Chowdhury said he is glad the new committee will be formed. He said the process should have started at a more grassroots level from the beginning.
“We could have avoided all this misunderstanding and all this pain in the community,” he said. “We needed to have the discussions in accountability committees.”
Board members said the new committee’s work could also impact future decisions in other parts of the county. For example, a group of elementary schools in Arvada with shrinking enrollments could be partly consolidated by making a sixth-through-eighth Arvada middle school. A new Standley Lake Middle School, which has been delayed by budget cuts, could also become a sixth-through-eighth school.
However, board members and district administrators insist none of these decisions are made, and promise to include parents and teachers in any decision-making process.