D49 staff recommend one-year renewal with supports for Mountain View Academy; board schedules public hearing

Members of the El Paso County Colorado School District 49 Board of Education spent more than an hour on Jan. 22 discussing a proposed one-year renewal of Mountain View Academy’s charter with prescribed supports and corrective steps.

District staff told the board the recommendation is the first full renewal conducted by the ICONNECT zone office and that the team expanded its review team to include specialists on culturally and linguistically diverse education and special education. Staff described recurring reporting problems that have affected the district’s October pupil-count submissions — which determine state funding — and said Mountain View failed to submit one required December report on time. Staff also cited leadership turnover at the school and inconsistent access to some systems and records needed for authorizer oversight.

The board heard district staff describe a calibrated recommendation: a one-year renewal with monitoring supports and conditions, followed by possible extension if requirements are met. Board members pressed district staff on three consistent concerns: the extent and causes of recent staff turnover at the school, whether operational remedies would overreach the district’s authorizing role, and the repeated errors in data submissions that affected October count reconciliation.

Board members and staff repeatedly emphasized a distinction the district faces in overseeing Mountain View: National Heritage Academies (NHA) carries out human-resources functions and provides some operational systems for the school, while District 49’s contractual relationship is with Mountain View Academy’s governing board. District staff said that arrangement limits the district’s leverage over NHA, while also requiring the district to rely on data exports and cooperation from NHA when performing oversight.

On data integration, staff described a recent migration to a Snowflake-based workflow and said extract/conversion steps from NHA’s proprietary student information system increased error counts during state uploads. District staff said the most recent NHA submissions produced “three times the errors of any other school in the district” on one report cycle and that staff had met with NHA representatives and agreed on corrective action plans in the past.

Board members asked whether the school had violated the charter contract. Staff said they would not categorize the issues as contract violations in most cases but said reporting requirements in the contract were the source of the concern and that the district had issued a level-2 notice of concern when problems recurred.

Members repeatedly requested direct response from Mountain View Academy’s governing board and administration. The board agreed by consensus to formally invite Mountain View Academy leadership to present at the Feb. 13 board meeting and to treat that presentation as the public hearing on the renewal. Board members noted the board has an extension in writing from counsel to make a final renewal decision as late as mid‑March (the meeting record referenced March 13–15 as the extended deadline).

Next steps the board and staff described are: the Feb. 13 public hearing with a school presentation, continued district monitoring of the corrective action steps, and staff follow-up meetings with the school’s interim administration and NHA representatives to resolve data-integration and reporting workflows.

Board discussion included statements that Mountain View’s academic outcomes remain strong; one director noted Mountain View was “one of the top two schools in the district,” reporting an academic score of 80 with 95% participation, and that only a small number of parents (about 2 of roughly 250) had registered complaints in recent months. Staff cautioned the board that strong test results do not by themselves eliminate operational risk if reporting failures or systemic turnover continue.

The board did not vote on renewal at the Jan. 22 work session. The board’s action to move the item into action at the Feb. 13 meeting and to schedule a public hearing gives Mountain View Academy the opportunity to respond before the board makes a formal renewal decision.