District 11 to brief state on plan to keep Mitchell High open, seeks outside instructional partner

Superintendent Goll told the Board of Education at a special meeting April 16 that District 11 will present a plan to the Colorado State Board of Education on May 14 asking to keep Mitchell High School on innovation status while adding an external academic management partner to boost classroom instruction.

The superintendent said the district’s preferred path is to “continue with our innovation status, but we want to bring in an external management partner” — the same partner the district has used in other turnaround efforts — to provide on-site coaching and alignment across schools. He added, “I do not think it is healthy for our community to recommend the closure of Mitchell High School.”

The Board received data showing modest reading gains and lagging math performance, attendance improvements and ongoing staffing work. Principal George Smith said attendance has trended upward since 2021 and that the school is “currently sitting right around in 88%,” a figure he described as meeting the school’s short-term plan.

Why it matters: Mitchell has been on the state’s watch list for multiple years and, by statute, the district must offer the state a set of options ranging from continued local innovation with supports, to outside management, conversion to charter, or closure. The board was told the district’s preferred route is to combine the innovation plan with an external academic manager to improve instructional rigor and coherence across departments.

What the district presented: administrators summarized local findings from a School Comprehensive Needs Assessment (SCNA) and classroom observations. Sherry, the district’s lead contact with the Colorado Department of Education (CDE), said the SCNA identified strengths in learning conditions and data collection but found gaps in classroom rigor that will be a focus for coaching. She said Instructional Empowerment — an academic management partner referenced in the briefing — will place coaches on site to observe, model and co-teach, and to work with school leaders on short-cycle data-driven lesson planning.

Funding and timeline: administrators said they applied for EZ-Grama funds to cover the cost of the external partner and expected that application to be supported. The superintendent explained the state board will hear the packet May 14 and vote May 15; if approved, the state issues an order and the district would have two school years (2025–26 and 2026–27) to implement changes intended to move Mitchell off the clock.

Board questions and staff responses: board members asked for clarifications on behavior and suspension data, the composition and retention of staff, and whether Instructional Empowerment would address behavior systems as well as academic rigor. Staff said the partner’s work is primarily instructional and systems-focused (conditions for learning), although discipline leads may receive coaching. Principal Smith described discipline incident counts as “distinct students” (not repeat counts) and said unsafe-event totals are in single digits for a school of roughly 700 students.

What the district emphasized: presenters repeatedly framed the plan as tied to statutory obligations and multi-year reviews with CDE. Superintendent Goll stressed alignment across the district’s turnaround sites and said bringing a single external partner to work with multiple schools would promote coherence in instructional expectations and teacher development.

Next steps: the presentation at the State Board of Education in mid-May will be informational and result in a state vote; the district expects to receive a formal state order within weeks of the vote that will define the implementation period. The Board was not asked to take action on the plan at the April 16 meeting.

Ending: district leaders said they will report back to the Board after the state’s decision and that early coaching work with Instructional Empowerment may yield short-term wins before the external partner’s full onboarding.