Current Challenges

Change in leadership. The two key players who propelled the renaissance of Granby —the principal and a district administrator —have recently left these leadership positions. Change in leadership is a common threat to any successful school reform program. The more the school community attributes program success to its strong leadership, the more anxious it may feel when leadership changes.

Students gather and socialize in one of Granby High School's common areas.

At Granby, faculty members feel invested in seeing that progress continues, perhaps because they participated in planning for reform. Furthermore, continuity is reinforced by having a school building designed specifically for smaller learning communities in which day-to-day contact with the administration supports the academy model.

Group cohesion. Growing enrollment and constraints in the faculty size and number of classrooms have meant that students may have to go outside their academy to take many of their classes —diluting the benefits of a smaller learning community. The school is currently exploring ways to serve students in their academy as much as possible, at least for core academic subjects.

Academy identity. Recently, a school survey at Granby identified a desire to make each academy unique and increase the sense of academy identity. Although increased sense of identity is associated with stronger smaller learning communities, it could backfire if it were to cause increased homogeneity among students within each academy and stratification between academies.