How Denver will decide which schools to close

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The number of seats filled and whether the area is seeing declining enrollment are the first two criteria Denver Public Schools officials will consider when deciding which schools should be recommended for closure.

That’s according to a methodology released Monday evening, a week and a half before Superintendent Alex Marrero is expected to issue school closure recommendations on Nov. 7. The school board is there intends to vote on these recommendations two weeks laterNovember 21.

District officials did not indicate how many schools would be closed or merged. The board ordered Marrero to close schools to address declining enrollment. Though Enrollment in DPS increased by 2% this year. officials decided that the increase would not be enough to offset the declining trends that had been persisting for years. This year, approximately 90,000 students are studying at DPS.

In an interview, officials declined to reveal details of the methodology out of concern that communities would try to guess which schools would be recommended for closure before the list was announced. Andrew Huber, the district’s executive director of enrollment and campus planning, did not say how low a school building’s occupancy would have to be to meet closure criteria, although he said a healthy rate would be between 85% and 100% of seats filled.

“The criteria we develop for schools to move forward (for a closure recommendation) are well below that level,” Huber said. “We plan to be proactive in being transparent about the data underlying each step of this methodology, providing recommendations so that people can follow our logic and our way of thinking.”

Officials say that when the district identifies schools with more seats than students that are in regions with declining enrollment, it will group those schools into clusters. Clusters will consist of schools located close to each other and not divided by “dangerous roads” on which students will have difficulty getting to and from school.

Within these clusters, officials say the district will consider several other factors to determine which schools should be recommended to close. The factors will include:

• Enrollment for each school.
• How many students who live within a given school’s boundaries “choose” to attend other schools as part of the district’s annual school selection process.
• How many students living in different boundaries “make a choice” for each school.
• What programs are available at each school, including for English language learners and students with disabilities.
• The quality of each school building, including whether it has air conditioning and whether there is enough space to accommodate larger numbers of students.
• Each school’s academic performance.

The methodology is an attempt to take a more holistic approach to school closure recommendations rather than basing them primarily on whether a school has low enrollment, said Laney Shaler, senior adviser in the district’s school office.

“This methodology allows us to collect… additional data points, drawing on lessons learned over recent years, to really build a data-driven set of recommendations,” she said.

Denver has had varying approaches to closing schools in the past

In the past, DPS has used various methodologies to close schools – and for various reasons.

In 2015, the school board adopted a policy called the School Performance Compact. This was not due to declining enrollment, but to improve student test scores. Policy called on DPS to close schools with a history of low grades, low scores in the latest state exams and low scores from a board that visited the school to check it was on the right track.

School board used this policy to close one schoolGilpin Montessori and “reboot” two others with new programming. But the process was rockyand, after significant community opposition, the board withdrew from this policy in 2018.

In 2021, declining enrollment led the school board to make this decision adopt a new resolution ordering the curator to take action with parents, teachers and neighbors to develop options to reduce the number of schools that children in the district do not attend.

The commission recommended several criteria be based primarily on enrollment, including consideration of closing schools with 215 or fewer students.

Fall 2022 Marrero recommended closing 10 schools that met those criteria. But the school board rejected his recommendationeven after Marrero reduced the list from 10 schools to two. The board complained about the rush in the process and rescinded a resolution ordering the superintendent to address the problem of declining admissions.

Spring 2023 Marrero returned to the board with another recommendation close the same two schools that children do not attend and one more. The board quickly agreed. Fairview Elementary, Math and Science Leadership Academy, and Denver Discovery School closed just a few months later at the end of the 2022-2023 school year.

In the 2023–24 school year, DPS admitted thousands of new immigrant students from Venezuela and other South American countries, increasing the number of admissions in the district.

While this increase has carried over into the current school year, the district projects that student enrollment will ultimately decline by 8% by 2028. Four months ago, in June, the board adopted a new school closure policy called Executive Restriction 18. Marrero will rely on this principle when making recommendations regarding school closures on November 7.

As is known, EL 18 considers decisions to close schools as financial decisions. Colorado schools are funded on a per-pupil basis, and schools with fewer students have less money to pay mental health staff, art and music teachers, and extracurricular activities.

Over the last month, the district six regional meetings were held to justify the need to close schools. Still, this year’s process was criticized by parents, interest groups and former school officials as rushed and lacking transparency – the same complaints that have dogged decisions to close Denver schools for years.

Melanie Asmar is the Chalkbeat Colorado bureau chief. Contact Melanie at [email protected] .