AAPS Comprehensive High School Update
In recent months, the Ann Arbor Public Schools (AAPS) Board of Education has heard updates from its three comprehensive high schools – Pioneer, Huron and Skyline. [The district also includes three alternative high schools – Community, Stone, and the Roberto Clemente Student Development Center.]
Updates to the board on the three comprehensive schools had been scheduled for last June, and the presentation on Skyline High School was delivered June 9 as planned. But a tornado warning on June 23 saw the board retreat to the basement of the downtown Ann Arbor district library, resulting in a delay in the presentation on Pioneer and Huron high schools planned for that day. The board received an update on Pioneer and Huron at its Oct. 13 meeting.
Skyline is the youngest of the three comprehensive high schools. Its creation was approved by voters as part of a comprehensive school improvement program in 2004, and it is now in its third year of operation. It opened with just a freshmen class in 2008, and has added one grade each year, gradually providing significant relief to the overcrowding at Huron and Pioneer. Next year, Skyline will have its first class of seniors, who will graduate in 2012.
In the wake of enrollment shifts among the schools, administrators and teachers from each of the three schools provided the board with updates on their transitions.
Pioneer and Huron staff made a joint presentation to the board about the changes in their buildings, organized around “characteristics of successful high schools.”
Skyline’s staff began their presentation by delineating differences in structure and organization between their school and the two other comprehensive high schools. They then moved into a review by subject area, with emphasis on Skyline’s four magnet programs. [Full Story]