Denver college closures: Mother and father dismayed, superintendent defends picks

Jasmine White doesn’t need her third-grade daughter to have to change faculties. 

She selected the college, Palmer Elementary, for a number of causes. For one, it’s near each her home and her older daughter’s center college so the sisters can stroll residence collectively. And it’s extra numerous than different faculties within the neighborhood. White, who’s Black, didn’t need her youthful daughter to be bullied for her pores and skin shade as her older daughter was.

“At Palmer,” White stated, “they embrace my child.”

Palmer is one among 10 Denver faculties that Superintendent Alex Marrero beneficial Tuesday be closed or consolidated with different faculties. The ten faculties embrace eight elementary faculties, one Ok-8 college, and one center college. The college board is ready to vote on the closures as a bundle deal — all 10 closures or no closures in any respect — on Nov. 17.

Enrollment in Denver Public Faculties is declining, and Marrero stated faculties with fewer college students can’t supply sturdy programming. His closure suggestions, he stated, are based mostly on standards developed by a committee of fogeys, academics, and neighborhood members that recommended closing faculties with fewer than 215 college students in kindergarten or above. 

In an interview Wednesday, Marrero stated 14 faculties really met the standards. However the different 4 had been spared due to geography, he stated: There wasn’t one other elementary college inside 2 miles that might obtain the small college’s college students. 

“That’s how we settled to the ten,” he stated. “And I consider that they’re the fitting 10.”

Enrollment on the 10 faculties this yr ranges from a low of 93 college students at Denver Discovery Faculty to a excessive of 212 college students at Eagleton Elementary, not counting preschool, Marrero stated. 

9 of the ten faculties serve a pupil inhabitants that’s predominantly Black and Hispanic, and most college students qualify for sponsored college meals, an indicator of poverty.

That the closures would hit low-income communities of shade hardest — as previous Denver college closures have — flies within the face of the district’s said worth of fairness, dad and mom stated.

“The district talks a really robust fairness recreation however doesn’t essentially reside that out,” stated Manuel Aragon, whose youngest baby is in fourth grade at Colfax Elementary, one of many 10 faculties.

He stated the timing of the information, within the midst of a pandemic, is especially tough.

“It feels disheartening to get this information when these communities of shade are fatigued,” Aragon stated. “So many had been impacted financially and emotionally and have misplaced relations to COVID and gone by way of such excessive circumstances — and right here’s another.”

Marrero stated this record of 10 faculties is extra truthful than a earlier record of 19 faculties that he scrapped a yr in the past, which he stated was “obvious” in the way in which it predominantly impacted college students of shade. This record, he stated, features a college — Palmer — the place a majority of scholars are white. Final yr, 56% of scholars at Palmer had been white, 17% had been Hispanic, and 16% had been Black. Districtwide, 25% of scholars are white, 52% are Hispanic, and 14% are Black.

Marrero additionally described the record of 10 faculties as “community-driven” as a result of it’s based mostly on standards developed by a neighborhood committee. However mum or dad Shantelle Mulliniks disagrees. She stated the district’s makes an attempt at gathering suggestions have been inauthentic.

“It seems like the selections have been made lengthy, way back they usually’re simply stringing us alongside within the course of,” stated Mulliniks, who has two kids at Colfax Elementary.

The timeline for the closure choices is brief. The college board is ready to vote in about three weeks. Between from time to time, Marrero stated there can be “intimate and intense neighborhood engagement” that can encompass conferences at every of the ten faculties, plus a single public remark session on Nov. 14, three days earlier than the college board is ready to vote.

“In the event you go deep, there’s no must go lengthy,” Marrero stated of the brief timeline for suggestions.

He added that he understands “the argument that this is usually a little bit tight,” however that the potential for closures has been on the desk because the college board handed a decision in June 2021 directing the district to provide you with choices for consolidating faculties.

That decision additionally directs the district to current the board with a number of choices, and to record the professionals and cons for every. Some board members have stated they oppose college closures, and a minimum of one, Vice President Auon’tai Anderson, stated he plans to vote towards the closures. 

“At the moment I can be voting NO on closing all 10 faculties,” he tweeted.

Mother and father stated they’re holding out hope that the board will reject the closure suggestions as too disruptive for college students, dad and mom, academics, and communities. Mulliniks stated she hopes the board will see that closing a faculty like Colfax Elementary, which serves college students experiencing homelessness who reside in close by household shelters, is mistaken.

“I nonetheless have a little bit little bit of hope that the board will say there’s no means that is good for teenagers,” she stated.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, overlaying Denver Public Faculties. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.