Much of America’s approach to educating children can be explained in two words: local control. Those same two words explain – and justify – the Durango School District 9-R board’s decision to reject a Golden-based charter school firm’s attempt at an end run around 9-R’s authority.
Ascent Classical Academy operates charter schools in Douglas County, south of Denver, and in the Northern Colorado city of Windsor. It is planning to open a third in Brighton, northeast of Denver and hopes to open a fourth in Durango.
There is nothing wrong with that. But neither does it suggest that 9-R owes anything to Ascent.
Ascent asked the board to allow its application for a Durango charter school to bypass 9-R and go through a state approval process instead. The company saw state approval as a way to speed its application’s approval.
The 9-R board voted unanimously to deny Ascent’s request. The proposed school would be in Durango and this community should have a say in the matter.
Durango parents and students already have choices. This town has public schools, private schools, parochial schools and charter schools. Does it need more? If so, of what sort? Does Ascent fit Durango’s needs? Are there downsides to adding more schools?
These are questions that deserve to be asked and answered in Durango. And to facilitate that discussion, more needs to be known about Ascent.
The problem is that having Durango learn more about Ascent may be precisely why the company did not want to go before the local board. Even a cursory look at its thinking raises questions.
One of Ascent’s talking points is the teaching of Latin, which would seem to make sense in a curriculum touted as “classical.” But Ascent’s website explicitly says that learning Latin is not meant to help students better understand English – or pharmacology, physiology or the law. It is intended to allow students to read ancient literature in the original Latin.
There are other questions as well. Take this, from the headmaster of the Ascent Classical Academy of Douglas County:
“Abraham Lincoln said, ‘The classroom of one generation is the government of the next.’ If this is true, we have a large responsibility – teachers and parents – to make sure that students are educated properly. However, in so many of our educational institutions today, instead of studying Euclid, Locke, Shakespeare, Churchill, Lewis, or Reagan, we educate our students about microaggressions, cultural appropriation, victimhood, gender identification, safe spaces, and the like. … Our parents understand the world their children are entering, and they are looking for a partner in helping to gird their children against the prevailing winds of modern culture.”
Whether that represents right-wing politics, a particular religious view or a simple aversion to the 21st century is unclear. What is more, if parents want that for their children, they have that right.
But whether 9-R wants anything to do with it is another question. That question should be answered in Durango, not Denver.
