Greenlee students sing to board members
Call it Round 2, the opposition.
More than 100 people signed up to speak at the second public hearing on Denver Public Schools’ recommendations for turning around six of its lowest-performing schools. Three are recommended for closure and three for new leadership.
And while speakers at Monday’s session tipped in favor of support for the plans, opponents dominated Thursday’s marathon hearing of more than four hours. School Board President Theresa Peña said it was the highest speaker count in 15 years.
Students from Greenlee K-8 in west Denver, where DPS recommends removing the principal and most teachers, sang to school board members in an effort to get them to vote no on Nov. 30.
“All I know is, everything’s gonna be alright,” they chorused to Alicia Keys’ pop hit No One.
Another group of students chanted “We are P.S. 1” as their classmates talked about how the school has changed their often troubled lives. DPS is recommending closure for the charter in central Denver which serves many students with special needs.
“The majority of our students come from the margins,” said P.S. 1 Charter Principal Laura Laffoon.
Some adults – parents, teachers – came close to tears as they spoke against the proposed changes.
“My name is Helen Garcia and I’m sorry, I’m going to cry,” said the woman known as “Grandma Helen” to those at Lake Middle School in northwest Denver, where the proposed changes have prompted the most outcry. “What you’re trying to do is separate my family.”
Groups also took their sides - the Denver Classroom Teachers Association against the proposals, the parent-organizing groups Metro Organizations for People and Padres Unidos in support.
“The status quo is not an option for our kids,” said MOP member Jennifer Gonzalez.
DPS hopes to receive at least $13 million in federal funds over three years to make dramatic changes at the long-struggling campuses, part of President Obama’s push to turn around the country’s worst-performing schools.
Northwest numbers questioned
Proposed changes at Lake, the district’s lowest-performing middle school, include scaling back and re-starting the school’s struggling International Baccalaureate program with a new principal and staff.
A number of parents in northwest Denver spoke in favor of that change on Monday.
The more controversial part of the proposal is to require that Lake share its building with a new branch of the district’s highest-performing middle school, West Denver Prep Charter.
DPS also wants to place a second West Denver Prep program at the Emerson Street School, about two miles from Lake.
Christopher Scott, a former school board candidate, was among those who argued Thursday that there are not enough children to support two new charters, Lake and nearby Skinner Middle School.
“There simply are not enough kids in northwest Denver to fill these schools,” he said.
But DPS statistics show 950 children live within Lake’s boundaries and attend a district middle school program. Of those, only 430 attend Lake.
Similarly, 644 children live within Skinner’s boundaries and attend a district middle school program. Only 186 attend Skinner.
The district also is reporting larger class sizes in area elementary schools that are expected to swell the middle school population.
For example, the number of middle-school aged children living near Skinner is expected to grow by more than 140 students over the next three years, said David Suppes, DPS chief operating officer.
He also points to bulging classes at elementary schools near Lake, such as Brown, where enrollment this fall is up by 95 students since fall 2005. Brown’s combined first-grade classes this year top 100 students.
“It’s not a stretch to say you can have that many kids,” Suppes said in an interview last Friday.
Segregation a concern
Some northwest Denver parents who drive their children to middle schools outside their neighborhood said West Denver Prep will not draw them back.
The original charter serves a high-poverty, predominantly Hispanic population and is known for its firm discipline, uniforms and longer school days.
Anne Button, who drives her seventh-grader across town to the Hill Campus of Arts & Sciences, said she’s representative of the many parents who choice out of Lake and Skinner.
“Unfortunately, it’s generally the parents of high-achieving kids who have higher incomes and more mobility who are leaving,” she said. “Please understand that the high-achieving elementary school kids like mine don’t need West Denver Prep and will not come back for West Denver Prep.”
Button said the choicing out by more affluent families has left neighborhood schools increasingly poor and increasingly segregated.
Arturo Jimenez, the school board member who represents northwest Denver, said he’s concerned the proposed boundaries for the new Lake and West Denver Prep will only deepen that segregation.
DPS would essentially split Lake’s current boundaries between the two, with each school having 300 to 400 students.
“What the district is proposing right now is … a small IB re-start tailored towards a higher-income and a higher percentage of Anglo students,” Jimenez said, “and it’s proposing that the West Denver Preps serve the low-income Latino students …
“It looks like unintended, and I say unintended, segregation will occur if we let that play out and I’m worried about that.”
Jimenez is proposing the West Denver Prep program recommended for Lake be placed instead at the former Del Pueblo Elementary in central Denver, now used for administrative offices.
‘Weigh really carefully’
A number of speakers on Thursday backed Jimenez’ Del Pueblo plan, including State Rep. Jerry Frangas, who represents northwest Denver.
But that wasn’t enough to convince Michelle Moss, the board’s vice president, who points to district data showing 300 children in grades 3 to 5 near Del Pueblo and 1,332 in those grades near Lake.
“It really showed there aren’t as many kids in the Del Pueblo area as are in the Lake area,” she said. “And so I’m not sure why we would put (West Denver Prep) there to compete for fewer kids.”
Co-location – or placing a new school program in an existing school building as proposed at Lake – has drawn strong opposition.
Thursday, Lake teachers questioned how they would share common areas such as the library and worried the change would upset students in three special education center programs there. DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg has said the programs would stay at Lake but that few other details have been decided.
And Patrick Ridgeway, an active northwest Denver parent, warned co-location would be the “death” of Lake.
But parents in other parts of the city praised the idea.
Greg Allen, who lives in Green Valley Ranch in far northeastern Denver, said a proposal to combine two charter schools on a campus serving grades ECE-12 is exciting.
“We believe co-locating schools is a more efficient use of land and energy,” he told board members.
DPS secondary schools are only about 60 percent full. Lake, for example, enrolls fewer than 600 kids in a building the district says can serve more than 1,000.
Moss, who represents southwest Denver, said she’s watched the co-location of West Denver Prep and the Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy in her area and “I don’t see either one of them suffering for it.”
She and other board members now a little more than a week to mull the district’s recommendations.
“For me, it’s got to be about what’s right for the kids in this district, not the adults,” Moss said. “And that’s what we have to weigh really carefully.”
Click here for Ed News’ story about the first public hearing.
Click here for Ed News’ story outlining the turnaround recommendations.
Nancy Mitchell can be reached at nmitchell@pebc.org or 303-478-4573.
It’s interesting that “parent organizing” groups like MOP and Padres had no parents from northwest Denver groups affected as part of their speaking groups. MOP had staff speak (and Padres one parent not from Lake). Parents from Lake and other northwest Denver schools affected by the proposed plan were overwhelmingly opposed to the turnaround plan last night. Makes you wonder exactly who these groups are organizing and towards what purpose.
This story, incredibly, gives undue weight to post-hoc DPS numbers, supporting the viability of the district’s plan for Lake, and little weight to the real facts– not to mention the “numbers” story given by the staff at Lake last night. A story which does not support the long-term sustainability of the administration’s federal dollar chasing proposal…
For in the numbers lie the future of any middle school feeder plan for North Denver. Here’s what the district’s director of community engagement, Benita Duran, emailed me earlier, verbatim:
“Ø According to other data sources, it is estimated that up to an additional 400-700 MS-age students live in the NW region who do not attend any DPS school (sources: DRCOG, DPS, and census data)”
This huge range (plus or minus more than 50%) is what the district’s recommendation is based upon. DRCOG has said repeatedly that its numbers are not suitable for the projection of middle school cohorts. Nancy reporting has ignored this. Census data are, by turns, a decade old for the full census, and four and a half years old for the supplemental. Nancy reporting has ignored this.
DPS does no primary research of its own. Nancy reporting ignores this.
Mobility in North Denver, in the early parts of this decade, was in excess of 14% annually– as determined by own research using voter file and assessor data. Since my own business is highly dependent upon this, I am rather confident in this core number. Since the mobility was a principal driver in changing demographics — fewer children per H/H in households with children, higher income, etc., there is good reason why DPS does has about half a middle school’s worth of uncertainty in the numbers. And since mobility is key problem in student achievement in the Lake feeder pattern, you have to throw up your hands when reading this report. No independent authority would look at this mythical range, and come to the same conclusion.
As speaker after speaker said last night, DPS’s numbers don’t add up when it comes to the Lake proposal. And those numbers should not be Nancy reported so credulously. Somebody needs some partially proficient math.
One other thing. “Similarly, 644 children live within Skinner’s boundaries and attend a district middle school program. Only 186 attend Skinner.”
Skinner has an attendance of about 330. This reporting seems to indicate that half the school choice in. That’s simply incorrect. It also omits how many of the 644 attend a K-8 program. This needs serious fact checking.
None of the numbers reported in the story are based on projections of any kind, by the Denver Regional Council of Governments – DRCOG – or otherwise.
Instead, the numbers – 950 students living near Lake, 644 students living near Skinner – are based on actual home addresses of students as reported to DPS, according to David Suppes, the district’s chief operating officer, and Will Lee-Ashley, the district’s director of planning.
Students enrolling in Denver schools report a home address. District staff input the addresses and then “geo-code” them, looking at where students live versus where they attend school. According to Suppes and Lee-Ashley, 950 students currently living within Lake’s boundaries attend a middle school grade – 6, 7 and 8 – somewhere in DPS. Of those, 430 attend Lake. And 644 middle school students in DPS have home addresses placing them near Skinner but only 186 attend the school. Both schools also have students who live outside the area who choice into them.
DPS does use DRCOG and census data, among other sources, in making projections. Those projections for northwest Denver do seem to indicate several hundred more middle school students living in the area who are not enrolled in a DPS school. But they are not included in the story for obvious reasons. Projections are estimates at best.