Original Research by School Decision on Aurora Science & Tech High School
Aurora Science & Tech High School is a charter high school within Aurora Public Schools, currently serving ninth and tenth graders. Because it serves only two grade levels, a great deal of the standard public-school performance picture is absent: there is no state testing data, no graduation rate, and no chronic absenteeism rate to review. That is not a reflection of quality, but a structural gap. For a parent, the question becomes what kind of foundation this school is building in its earliest years of high school, since there is no tracked record yet of how students finish.
The school is small. Its enrollment is heavily Hispanic, with a large majority of students identifying as such, and a substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body also includes a modest number of Black, white, Asian, and multiracial students. What the data does not show, and what a family would want to ask about directly, is the share of students receiving special education services or classified as English learners. Those counts are missing from the profile, which is a meaningful gap in understanding the full support profile of the student population.
The charter status matters here. The school sits inside Aurora Public Schools, a district that has recently pursued significant restructuring. Publicly reported information shows that the district voters approved a bond measure for facility improvements and safety upgrades, and that the district has undertaken a school consolidation and repurposing process, closing or repurposing underutilized buildings. How that restructuring touches a small, niche charter high school is something a family would want to clarify with the school directly; the district has not restructured every school, and the charter’s independence may or may not insulate it from those broader decisions.
The school is located within the sprawling suburban city of Aurora. Aurora is the third-largest city in Colorado, covering a vast area, and is car-dependent in its built environment. The city has major employers in Buckley Space Force Base, the Anschutz Medical Campus, and the school districts themselves. Growth continues, especially along the corridor near Denver International Airport, and the Anschutz Campus is a major economic engine. Housing rent in the school’s zip code has recently been below the prior year’s level. For a family, the setting is a large, growing suburban city with a wide range of housing and employment options, but little in the way of a traditional walkable downtown or neighborhood continuity around the school.
The programs offered were not included in the data. A parent would need to investigate what academic pathways, career and technical offerings, or advanced coursework are available to these ninth and tenth graders. Given that the school serves only the first two years of high school, families will also need to know where students go after tenth grade and how credits and programming align with that next step. Without that information, the school is an early-stage academic setting whose longer track record and upper-grade programming are not yet visible in the available data.
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