Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet said Sunday that while parents should have the right to choose schools, he wants public schools to be the most viable choice.
“We need to provide choice and at the same time do a better job of improving neighborhood schools,” Bennet said at a fundraiser Sunday at Escuela Tlatelolco in northwest Denver.
Escuela, an alternative, private dual-language school that serves mostly low-income and at-risk Latino children, recently became a DPS contract school and receives funding from the district for its seventh- through 12th-graders.
The experimental school was founded 35 years ago by Chicano-rights activist Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, who died this summer.
“We are at a time that I don’t think we are going to go backward from choice,” Bennet said.
Faced with that, Bennet said, the challenge for DPS is to better market Denver’s good neighborhood schools.
Several of the $50-plate brunch attendees voiced concerns over school choice and the quality of education available for all children in Denver.
Bennet acknowledged that not all Denver schools are equal in the quality of education they offer, but he said he is optimistic that student achievement scores will improve, boosting neighborhood schools.
“We need to be completely focused relentlessly on student achievement,” he said.
Nita Gonzales, president of Escuela and daughter of its founder, said the school, which has a 90 percent graduation rate, achieves academic success outside the confines of a traditional curriculum using Montessori teaching principles.
The average graduation rate for DPS is 70 percent.
Gonzales suggested to Bennet that more Montessori schools, which have multi-age classrooms and start instruction at age 3, would benefit the public system.
And with more than 20 percent of DPS students learning to speak English, Gonzales said, Escuela’s dual-language program also offers a good model.
“It helps students who have language problems to grasp a concept in their own language and then translate it,” Gonzales said.
Martha Urioste, who instituted a Montessori program at Denver’s Mitchell Elementary School when it was ordered to desegregate in 1985, echoed Gonzales.
“It gives children the opportunity to nurture their cultural identity,” Urioste said. “I am a huge proponent of second languages.”
When the desegregation court order ended, Urioste said, the Montessori program she built was moved to another school.
“It drained the quality we had in the neighborhood and brought it to another neighborhood,” she said.
Bennet praised Escuela’s ability to keep parents active in students’ lives and vowed to increase parental involvement at other DPS schools.
Staff writer Abbe Smith can be reached at 303-820-1201 or at asmith@denverpost.com.
