Under new leadership, Eagle County Charter Academy’s goals remain the same

While Eagle County Charter Academy’s academic performance has grown in recent years, its progress on increasing the diversity of its student population has slowed.

In Eagle County School District’s annual review of the charter school, it celebrated the school’s progress thus far, but also gave feedback for it to continue growth, both academically and with student diversity.

New leadership

The charter academy is under new leadership for the 2023-24 school year.

The former principal, Kim Walter, retired from the school at the end of the previous year after 12 years in the role. Molly Brown, who has been at the school for 20 years most recently as its assistant principal, stepped into Walter’s role following her retirement.

Brown referred to her first semester as principal as “successful.”

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“Change is rarely seamless, but I am fortunate to be able to lean into both a deep understanding of ECCA’s values and an incredible staff, which makes a world of difference in times of transition,” Brown said. “Every new role brings challenges along with opportunities to grow and improve.”

Brown’s goals include continuing the school’s focus on “excellence in character and academics,” which she said have been at the forefront since its inception.

Additionally, “community has been a big focus this year with the goal of strengthening our partnerships and supporting students so they can better engage with learning,” Brown added.

Academic performance

In its annual review, Eagle County School District Superintendent Philip Qualman commended the school for its academic achievement.

In its 2023 Colorado Department of Education school performance review, Eagle County Charter Academy received the highest performance rating, scoring 84.7. This was a significant jump from the previous school year in which it scored 69.1 and is more in line with its pre-pandemic rating of 83.3 in 2019.

“They have successfully implemented more strategic interventions, including Bridges, SAVAS, and additional supplemental math and reading time built into the schedule. ECCA is also leading the way in the implementation of Standards-Based Grading,” read the district’s annual report for the school.

Brown, in October, said the academic growth could be attributed to “Sustained efforts staff-wide to bring us back to pre-COVID practices and high expectations also had a positive impact on our students’ achievement.”

She added that this included a building-wide focus on individual goal setting, small group support and collaborative efforts to help students meet growth targets.

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While the school has shown “tremendous growth,” Qualman reported there is still room for improvement in the school’s math performance. In the school performance frameworks around academic growth in elementary school math, Eagle County Charter Academy received an “approaching” rating — meaning the median growth percentile was between 35 and 49. The district hopes the charter school can push this into the next rating.

To do so, Brown said the school “continues to look at our staffing and scheduling to create opportunities for supporting small group math instruction across grade levels.” 

“Additionally, we’ve recently partnered with a math consulting group to help us refine our curricular pathways and support professional development specifically in math instruction,” Brown added.

Increasing diversity

In addition to improving its academic growth in math, the annual report calls out one other area for improvement: the school’s efforts to increase diversity.

The diversity goal is a core part of the charter agreement with the Eagle County School District. The district has been pushing the school to have a student population more consistent with Eagle County’s demographics since its 2012 charter review.

While the school has made some strides in minority enrollment and is “getting there,” it is “not where it needs to be yet,” Qualman said.

In the 2023-24 school year, the school reported 15% non-white enrollment. While this is up from 8% in the 2018 to 2019 school year, it is stagnant with the 2022-23 enrollment, which was also at 15%. In the three years before this year, the school saw its non-white enrollment increase by 2% each year.

For comparison, Eagle County School District typically has just above 50% minority enrollment.

Eagle County Charter Academy’s steady increase before this year has been attributed to adding a weighted lottery system as well as broadening its marketing efforts.

It began weighing its lottery process for the 2020-21 school year and has since made some changes in an attempt to diversify participation in the lottery. For the 2021-22 school year, the school increased the number of points offered from three to 10 for any resident of Eagle River Village mobile home park and Lake Creek Village apartment complex as well as any student that qualified for free and reduced lunch.

This year, the charter school also combined its lottery process with the school district’s open enrollment so that both exist on the same platform.

“Our partnership with Eagle County Schools has had the most positive impact (on diversifying the student body),” Brown said. “We’ve worked closely to schedule the timing of our information meetings and lottery to align with other school information meetings throughout Eagle County. Over the years we’ve also streamlined our lottery enrollment process with the district’s open enrollment in an effort to simplify for families.”

Brown also commended the school’s community outreach committee for its role, emphasizing that it has helped ECCA connect with a broader audience.

“They help us provide information to community groups and organizations through different media and platforms and continue to evaluate our processes through the lens of access, equity and diversity,” she said.

However, despite these efforts, the district continues to push the school to do more.

“While the ECSD Board is appreciative of efforts related to improving the diversity at the school, substantive progress is slow to materialize,” read the annual report.

Brown remains optimistic that the school is heading in the right direction academically and with its efforts to diversify the student body.

“Moving forward our goal is to continue building upon the foundation of high expectations and find creative ways to meet the current challenges facing education,” Brown said.