Denver Public Schools superintendent proposes closing these schools at the end of the school year

Ten Denver Public Schools could close their doors at the end of the school year or narrow the number of grades they serve as the district grapples with declining enrollment, largely due to birth rate drops and changes in housing in the metro area.

Superintendent Alex Marrero proposed closing the schools during a school board work session Tuesday evening at district administrative offices in downtown Denver, presenting a plan that would remove about 4,000 vacant seats from DPS, which is the state’s largest school district.

The schools on his list include five elementary schools, one middle school and one high school. Additionally, Marrero wants to restructure three DPS schools to educate fewer grades in each building.

He proposes closing Columbian Elementary School, Castro Elementary School, Schmitt Elementary School, International Academy of Denver at Harrington, Palmer Elementary, West Middle School and Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design. Marrero also aims to limit Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy to a 6th-12th grade school, axing grades 1-5; change Dora Moore ECE-8 School to serve preschool through 5th grade, cutting grades 6-8; and scale down Denver Center for International Studies to 6th-8th grades, removing grades 9-12.

Shuttering and altering grades at the 10 schools would allow the district to save an estimated $30 million — as officials project DPS will net $70 million less in annual revenue by 2028 than it did in 2019-20, its peak year of enrollment. Of the $30 million saved, the district would plan to reinvest about $24 million into schools and reinvest $6.6 million through the 2025-26 budget process.

“This has been an incredibly daunting task for obvious reasons,” Marrero said at the outset of the board work session. “Sometimes the easiest thing to do is to do nothing, but that’s not the best thing to do.”

Fifteen schools have closed across the district since the 2018-19 school year — three district-run schools and 12 charter schools. The district has stumbled through considerations of school closures in recent years, with the board voting down recommendations from Marrero, according to reporting from Denverite. The last time board members approved the closure of schools was in March 2023, when they voted to close and consolidate three schools: Fairview Elementary School, Denver Discovery School and Math and Science Leadership Academy.

District enrollment has been trending downward since 2019-20, though DPS saw a bump to its student count last year with the arrival of migrant students, Chalkbeat Colorado reported.

Marrero noted that the district cannot continue to rely on migrant students to boost student enrollment.

“This (proposal) is to address our current status to make sure we have a healthy system for the forseeable future,” he said, adding that last year showed how much student populations can fluctuate unexpectedly.

The latest enrollment count this year is about 85,000 students, according to district spokesperson Scott Pribble. That’s down from more than 92,100 kids during the 2019-20 school year.

In deciding which schools to pitch for closure, the district targeted regions more impacted by declining enrollment — Near Northeast, Southwest, Northwest and central Denver.

DPS looked at schools using less than two-thirds of their building space and located in an area impacted by chronic declining enrollment, according to Andrew Huber, executive director of enrollment and campus planning for the district. 

Then, the district clustered schools together, analyzing pockets of schools with a lot of empty room and smaller student counts. District officials also considered factors such as facility quality and choice patterns — where families have been opting to send their kids to school and schools they have bypassed. They also considered academic performance at schools, though that was not a top piece of criteria that played into their decisions, Huber said.

The district chose schools facing the biggest challenges with those factors to add to the list of potential closures.

All students attending closing schools will have priority in enrolling in another school of their choice in any school in the district, district officials said. Those students will receive assistance from district staff on its choice and enrollment team. Students learning English and those who have a disability will be guaranteed enrollment at a nearby school with programs that can accommodate their specific needs, Huber said.

Board members echoed one another in describing the grueling, emotion-filled process of shutting down schools. Board member Scott Esserman called it “a difficult and painful time.” He also praised the district for approaching the process with “a high degree of compassion” and “a high degree of listening.

The board will vote on Marrero’s proposal Nov. 21. Before then, both board members and Marrero will spend time at each school to talk to students, parents and staff about why their school is being considered for closure and what kind of support DPS will offer them as they move to another school.

“This is also a difficult time for us,” Board President Carrie Olson said. “None of us want to close schools and we recognize how difficult this is.”