Stargate’s Project Selection Process

In August of 2016, prior to placing the Issue 3D on the ballot, the Adams 12 district requested information from all district schools about needed investments, and how each might use money from the proposed bond.  Stargate replied with a list of possible projects, but no commitments were made prior to discussions with the Stargate Community.

After Bond Issue 3D was passed by the voters the Stargate Governance Board of Directors (GBOD) began a deliberate process to identify and select campus improvement projects with input from the parent community, staff, and students. Information about the bond measure was communicated in the weekly C-notes beginning on November 28, 2016 and the Community was invited to participate in an online survey and/or attend a Community Engagement night in January 2017 to submit ideas for use of the bond allocation.

January 11, 2017 - Interested members of the Stargate community met in the Secondary Commons to provide ideas and discuss desired projects. Attendees were given the opportunity to write down their ideas and suggestions, which were then reviewed and discussed by the attendees. This ideas presented at this meeting were later combined with input from the online surveys and tabulated to reflect the expressed interests of the Community.

January 18, 2017 - At the GBOD meeting the administration gave an update on the selection process and the Board requested the formation of an informal group to summarize and prioritize the requests from the Community. The following day an email and post to the Stargate Supporters Page on Facebook invited Community members to attend a planning meeting on January 27, 2017 to begin the recommendation process.

January 27, 2017 - Approximately 20 members of the Community convened to review the tabulated results of the outreach surveys and meeting. Lynne Allen, our Business Manager, discussed how charter schools such as Stargate are funded and also the specific conditions as to how we may use the bond funds. At the time of this meeting the final appropriation to Stargate was unknown but estimated to be in the range of $5.5mm to $5.7mm. The attendees identified and discussed the major themes expressed in the previous community input and created a list of approximately seventeen potential projects.

See here for a list of the major themes and highlights of the discussions.

At this time the total value of the listed projects was still in excess of Stargate’s expected allocation. The informal group was therefore asked to prioritize the listed projects for recommendation to the GBOD. To help in this task the Community was again asked to submit input via an online survey.