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After a week of attending meetings and waiting to be called to speak, making impassioned pleas and dabbing their eyes with tissues provided by the school district, hundreds of Denver students tried a different way Friday to express their opposition to a plan to close their schools. schools.

Middle school and high school students from three of the 10 small schools facing closure marched to Denver Public Schools headquarters. They stood on the sidewalk with homemade signs and borrowed megaphones and told county officials how they felt.

“Hold their hands!” They shouted slogans. “Get out of our school!”

When three members of the Denver school board emerged from the locked front doors and offered to meet with a small group of students, a senior named Camila from the Denver Center for International Studies told the crowd they were making a difference.

“Our voices are heard!” two classmates said into the microphone while holding an amplifier above their heads. “Our stories leave a mark!”

All week long, students, parents and teachers from 10 schools tried to persuade school board members to reject it. Advice from Superintendent Alex Marrero It is aimed to solve the problem of decreasing schooling in the region. The board is preparing to vote on Thursday.

After agreeing on a tight timeline of just two weeks between recommendation and vote, board members spread out among the 10 schools. They held four meetings in each schoolTake time to listen to families and educators in the morning, lunch hour, afternoon, and evening. The intense schedule was an attempt to do a better job of community engagement than them The last time Marrero recommended closing schools.

Under Marrero’s current recommendation, Castro Elementary School, Columbian Elementary School, Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design, Denver International Academy at Harrington, Palmer Elementary School, Schmitt Elementary School and West Middle School would be closed.

Kunsmiller Academy for Creative Arts, Dora Moore ECE-8 School, and Denver International Studies Center will partially close, and each school will lose some grades.

“We haven’t decided how we’re going to vote yet,” Board President Carrie Olson told a packed room at West Middle School on Friday. “That’s why we’re here today, to hear from you.”

What the board heard was disappointment, anger and sadness.

“Somos familia,” Western mother Laura Reyes told board members in Spanish, pausing for the translator to say her words in English: “We are family.” He pointed to his little son next to him.

“He needs to come here,” he said.

‘We are dividing this society’

Students, parents and teachers had similar concerns in 10 schools. Students were worried about losing their trusted teachers and being separated from their good friends.

Parents worried their children would get lost or, worse, get bullied in larger schools.

Teachers are worried about their jobs. Many argued that their schools were close-knit communities where each educator knew each student and made sure their needs were met.

“We do not fit the distorted narrative about small schools, and we take it personally,” Schmitt Elementary School Principal Jennifer Nelson told board members Tuesday.

The story, district officials explained, is that because Denver funds its schools on a per-student basis, small schools don’t have enough money to offer solid programs. Schools with low enrollment may have to cut electives or combine classes.

Staff at Schmitt said that wasn’t the case. The school has a teacher and a paraprofessional in each classroom, bilingual programming, and a mental health team. But Schmitt received more than $430,000 in small school subsidies from the district this year, with 127 students. According to district dataThis accounted for approximately 12% of Schmitt’s budget.

Nelson said he wants the school to remain open but told board members, “The only way to get me out of this school is to kick me out because my heart lives here,” and said he believes in the district’s plan for Schmitt students. It was better two years ago, when the district proposed closing Schmitt and reassigning all students to a nearby school.

This time, families will be encouraged to choose between three schools.

“I want to acknowledge that the equality offered this time is better than in the past,” he told a room full of disappointed parents and teachers. “Two of the schools are very good schools. We are taking offers for transportation to any of the three schools. As someone who loves your children not just today but throughout their lives, I appreciate this.

At other schools, some teachers and parents acknowledged that declining enrollment has led to staff and program cuts. Still, they’re not happy with the district’s proposed solution.

For example, half the students at Castro Elementary School will be assigned to a nearby school and half will be assigned to another school. One of the nearby schools, CMS Community School, is a bilingual school that teaches students in both English and Spanish. Although nearly all of Castro’s students are Latino, not all of them speak Spanish.

“I think we’re tearing this community apart, which is one of the challenging parts here,” said Kaylee Keuthan, Castro’s social worker. “Separation creates more unpredictability and instability in kids who are already dealing with it.”

Students ask: ‘Please don’t close us down’

For some students, this is their second time facing school closures. A teenager named Joy said she came to the Denver International Studies Center after her charter school. Denver American Indian Academy closes in spring 2023. Indigenous students have found a new home at DCIS, which hosts cultural events and teaches indigenous languages, he said.

“DCIS welcomed me with open arms as I searched for another school,” he told board members Thursday. “I wish you all were really interested.”

DCIS students proposed a plan for their 210-student high school to share space with the Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design, an even smaller high school with only 60 students, making it a safe space for LGBTQ and neurodiverse students.

Primary and secondary school students also opposed possible closures. On Wednesday, fifth-grade students at Castro Elementary School took turns addressing the board.

“Castro is the only school I can walk to from home,” said a fifth-grader named Angelina. “Castro is a really great school. Please don’t close us down.”

“Not many schools have therapy dogs, and that means Castro is a school that puts a lot of emphasis on students’ mental health,” fifth-grader Elyssa said about Castro’s new therapy dog ​​named Silver. “If you shut down Castro, where does it go?”

“We’re just kids,” said fifth-grader Analyzeth. “We don’t need to worry about these things.”

Castro’s parent, Ana Mejia, said her children had been crying for days.

“My daughter cried herself to sleep,” Mejia said. “We live in an ugly world. There is bullying in every school. How will he make new friends? Have a heart. Think of the children.”

Dalia Miranda, who has three children at Schmitt, was also concerned about bullying. Closing trusted schools and sending children to unfamiliar environments is like “sending new victims into schools where bullying exists,” he told board members Tuesday.

Miranda also asked why the district recently upgraded the Schmitt building, pouring more than $1 million into a new elevator, new paint, furniture and other projects last summer if the superintendent was going to recommend closing the school. Where did the money come from $795 million bond measure approved by Denver voters in 2020.

“We are all committed to stepping in and giving a building what it needs as long as it is open,” said board member Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán. “If the school closes, it will not be empty.”

Parents question district data

While some parents tried to appeal to school board members’ hearts, others tried to sway their minds with data, questioning the district’s enrollment numbers and accusing officials of misrepresenting the data or being short-sighted in their predictions.

Parents pointed to new housing projects, some of which have five-bedroom apartments for families. But those new families aren’t enough to make up for enrollment losses due to falling birth rates and rising housing costs that have priced many families out of the city, district officials said.

A neighbor in Castro said he saw school buses stop in front of nearby homes and pick up children and take them to other schools. Why couldn’t the kids come to the Castro instead? he asked.

Gaytán told him that the children could come to Castro. However, their families choose other schools as allowed by state law. Data shows About 42% of the district’s 90,000 students attend a school that is not a neighborhood boundary school.

“We can’t control them and force them to come here,” Gaytán said. “They choose other schools.”

Gaytán was outspoken this week in expressing his opinion that part of the problem is that the district is “siphoning away our kids” by allowing too many charter schools to open in southwest Denver. After saying this, parents and teachers often applauded.

“My district — southwest Denver — has been overprivileged, and I don’t appreciate that at all because look where we are right now,” Gaytán told teachers in the Castro on Wednesday.

Other board members pointed out that although many charter schools have opened in Denver over the past few decades, many have also closed. Twelve Denver charter schools have closed since 2019, including in southwest Denver, often due to declining enrollment.

School choice was on the agenda again Thursday night at Palmer Elementary School in northeast Denver. Palmer was previously on the 2022 shut down list. school was savedParents said the near closure of schools caused many families in the neighborhood to choose other schools. Region data shows He said 146 students “chose” Palmer in 2021. This year that number increased to 180.

Preschool teacher Emily Bovard tearfully asked the board to help Palmer reverse the trend.

“Help us get rid of that scarlet letter stuck in our school,” he said. “Help us stay special.”

At a meeting in Palmer earlier that day, a teacher asked what would happen to the building if the school were to close, a common question from parents and educators alike.

Board President Olson gave the same answer he’s been giving all week, which is a response he’s written into the board’s policy: that the superintendent “will come back to you and talk to you about the things you want to see, and talk to you about the things he wants to see happen to the community.” Palmer building.”

“A school,” someone muttered.

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