Innovation Plan

Mesa Innovation School exists to reverse a specific piece of BVSD's enrollment decline: families who leave the district — for private school, for homeschooling, for districts with a lower cost of living — because no BVSD school offers a fundamentally different instructional model. It also exists to answer a second, parallel question the Board isn't formally being asked tonight but is worth asking anyway: as AI reshapes what's actually worth a school day, what should BVSD's own answer look like, built and tested inside a public school rather than imported from a private one? Innovation designation is what makes that model legally possible: mastery-paced (not seat-time-paced) instruction earning standards-based credit, a facilitator staffing tier alongside licensed subject-area teachers, and a schedule built around outdoor and venture blocks rather than a standard period rotation. None of that fits within BVSD's existing policy framework without waivers.

Mastery-paced instruction is designed to close two gaps a fixed-pace classroom structurally can't: students below grade level get more real practice time at their actual level instead of being carried along by pacing guides, and students above grade level keep advancing instead of waiting. We're setting realistic expectations going in: the largest real-world randomized trials of mastery-based programs found modest, not transformative, effects (roughly 0.1–0.3 standard deviations, often only after multi-year implementation) — not the outsized gains sometimes claimed for AI-personalized models. Target metrics TBD in collaboration with BVSD assessment staff — likely candidates include CMAS and SAT growth percentile relative to matched BVSD cohorts, and share of students reaching grade-level mastery benchmarks by spring diagnostic, evaluated externally rather than solely on our own platform's mastery checks. We're committing to that evaluation from year one rather than deferring it — Summit Learning's decision to decline outside evaluation while scaling to hundreds of schools is a cautionary tale, not a model.

• Reuses a building already slated for vacancy or disposal, at an enrollment scale that fills rather than pads it — the same right-sizing discipline behind the Resilient Schools plan itself, not an exception to it. This assumes minimal retrofit; converting a K–5 building for a 6–12 program (science space, secure entries, older-student furniture) is a real scoping question for BVSD Facilities, not a cost we're claiming is zero.
• In-house software avoids recurring per-seat licensing fees a commercial adaptive-learning platform would otherwise carry figure TBD.
• Guide-tier staffing for non-core-academic blocks costs less per FTE than an all-licensed-teacher model, while keeping licensed subject-area teachers of record accountable for every student.

Because Mesa Innovation School has no sitting staff or School Accountability Committee yet, the statute's usual majority-consent evidence doesn't exist to submit today. The process we're proposing to establish it:

1. Board designates the school as a focus school and authorizes founding-staff recruitment for a target opening year.
2. Founding principal, teachers, and guides hired; a School Accountability Committee is seated per standard BVSD practice.
3. Founding staff vote by secret ballot on the innovation plan and any collective bargaining waivers it requires — per 22-32.5-109(1)(b), at least 60% of the school's bargaining-unit members must approve.
4. Parent and community support demonstrated through the open-enrollment interest list gathered during the founding year.

We're not waiting for a hiring green light to start building family and community evidence, though. One of our own fact-checked cautionary tales, Unbound Academy's rejected Pennsylvania charter application, was denied in part because it “demonstrated little interest from Pennsylvania families, submitting no petitions or letters of support from parents, students, or educators.” We're circulating a founding-family interest list now, before this ask, specifically so this proposal isn't standing in that same evidentiary gap.

To be finalized with BVSD legal and Choice & Innovation staff; the categories we expect to need:

• Seat-time / Carnegie-unit equivalency rules, to allow standards-based rather than time-based progression toward graduation — the central waiver for a secondary mastery model.
• District policies governing standard period-based scheduling, to allow the Mastery–Land–Venture block structure.
• Staffing-ratio policy, to allow the guide role alongside licensed subject-area teachers of record — scoped narrowly enough to preserve every state-required licensure and case-management function.

One open legal question we want BVSD counsel's read on early: seat-time/Carnegie-unit equivalency may be a district policy this Board can waive for a single innovation school under 22-32.5-104, or it may require the broader “District of Innovation” designation under 22-32.5-107–108, which is a heavier, district-wide process. We'd rather surface that distinction now than have it discovered midway through a 60-day review.

To be determined with BVEA once founding staff are hired, per the process in Section 6 above. Likely candidates: provisions tied to standard period scheduling and planning-time structure, given the non-standard weekly rhythm.

We're also naming a risk directly rather than waiting for it to surface adversarially: introducing a new, lower-paid, non-licensed staff tier at the same moment BVSD is closing buildings is a predictable flashpoint if it reads as deprofessionalization rather than a distinct role alongside — not instead of — licensed teachers of record. We intend to engage BVEA leadership directly and early, well before the founding-staff vote, rather than treat this as a procedural step to clear later.

This draft is intended as the starting point for the meeting requested in the board memo — not a document ready for formal submission. Once BVSD's Choice & Innovation staff and legal counsel have shaped it into a submittable plan under 22-32.5-104(2), the Board has 60 days to approve or disapprove; a disapproval comes with a written basis and the plan can be resubmitted amended.