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As you know, our schools have a major impact on our community and affect the desirability of life within a specific neighborhood.
Educational planners, along with Aurora community and business leaders, have created a new master plan for the addition of schools along the E-470 corridor. The E-470 Education Master Plan Report is made up of input prom more than 100 people representing more than 50 different organizations.
From the report:
“Over the next 25 years, nearly 50,000 new homes surrounding E-470 are on the drawing board across multiple developments. These new homes will require, among other things, approximately 22 new Aurora Public Schools...”
Estimates are that the total construction cost for new schools will be $676 million. Included in these projects are five K-8s and one high school to be completed by 2013 at a cost of $141.9 million. As the report points out, planners must balance costs of the new facilities with the need to spend an anticipated $195 million for existing facility upgrades and renovations over the same time period.
“The design and construction of these schools gives developers a chance to transform traditional buildings into comprehensive community centers that serve as the hub of activity for recreation and life-long enrichment,” the report states. “School planning, design and construction in the Aurora Public Schools district will need to consider what learning will look like 25 to 30 years from now. If the district does not take this long-term view, it runs the risk of limiting future opportunities. Schools and communities naturally have new and different needs over time that arise from demographic shifts and other social changes. Flexible school design ensures that these future needs can be accommodated.”
The Master Plan hopes to achieve these goals:
•“Give all young children the opportunity to attend infant and toddler preschool, full day kindergarten, and before and after school programs that are affordable, of high quality and contribute to school success.”
• “Offer a variety of options to successfully meet the diverse needs of Aurora’s kindergarten through grade 12 population.”
• “Create school facilities that become year-round anchors for both the new community development and existing community revitalization and that provide opportunities for all Aurora residents to meet their recreational, personal, and professional growth goals. These facilities should create sustainability and environmental stewardship, be highly flexible, and support evolving teaching and learning program needs over time.”
Strategies for success
As with any plan, strategies must be used to achieve stated goals. Planners of the E-470 educational growth plan have several tactics in mind for achieving their objectives.
One such strategy is to “design school facilities that can serve as community centers, are available to residents when school is not in session, that blend with the community, and may be adapted to changing educational demands.” This means making sure that schools sites are near parks, libraries, daycares and recreation centers.
“Today’s housing market is increasingly competitive, and it takes more that just quality housing to make a community attractive to buyers, especially those with school-aged children,” the report states.
Success depends on careful planning and collaboration by key stakeholders. “The planning effort requires the city, school district, the business community, and targeted non profit agencies to collaborate on a shared investment for the betterment of its residents, both old and young, that links schools, retail, recreation, housing and workforce development together at the outset,” the report says.
“Every school system has a direct impact on its neighborhoods. Schools affect housing markets. They affect the success of marketing newly developed housing. They affect the ability to retain residents in a particular school system or local community.”
Getting into action
The E-470 Education Master Plan intends to put several “action steps” into play in creating the new schools and programs, especially in regards to early childhood education (ECE). This special focus acknowledges that “62 percent of children live in homes where all parents are in the workforce, which creates a large demand for high quality early education.” Action steps include:
•“Make quality preschool and full day kindergarten available to all Aurora Public School students free or for an affordable tuition.”
•“Create publicly-supported incentives to increase the number of quality early care and educational slots for infants and toddlers.”
•“Ensure that special needs students are included in the early care initiatives with emphasis on an inclusion model.”
•Create incentives through zoning, covenants, and public-private partnerships for the construction and operation of quality early care and educational facilities for toddlers, preschoolers and school-age children.”
•“Use mechanisms such as mill levies, special taxes, homeowner’s fees, grants, public-private partnerships and the reallocation and braiding of existing public funding streams to generate additional resources to support ECE.”
•“Establish a homeowner’s association fee in the new E-470 developments to address the provisions of early care and education for the children age birth to five years.
There are many good case studies in the report which merit reading. I have only touched on a few on the many important issues of the report. The credit for the above information goes to the dedicated people who spent countless hours researching and planning the future for our children’s education here in the city of Aurora. We owe them all special thanks for their hard work and vision to the future.
To view a complete copy of this informative report, please go to www.buildinggreatcommunities.com.
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