Denver African-American and Latino church leaders called Monday on Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet and the school board to reverse the decision to close the Manual High Education Complex at the end of this school year.
“We are drawing a line in the sand,” the Rev. Paul Burleson, president of the Greater Denver Ministerial Alliance, said at a news briefing. “We will not tolerate the insensitive mores of the superintendent and the school board.”
The DPS board voted last month to shutter Manual High for a year and reopen it with a new program to serve only ninth-graders in the first year. Each year, a class will be added.
District officials cite plummeting enrollment – the school has lost 47 percent of its students in four years – and low student achievement as reasons to start over at the school.
Originally, Manual was to gradually phase out and reopen in two years as a new program. But board members abruptly decided in a 6-1 vote to close it this spring.
The district has intentionally had a blank slate for what Manual will look like in 2007, said Happy Haynes, assistant to the superintendent.
“We’re going with the notion that we want the community to be involved in that process,” she said.
The 600 or so teenagers displaced next year are guaranteed a spot at one of the district’s higher-performing high schools: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, East, South or John F. Kennedy.
Brad Jupp, DPS senior policy adviser, went over plans for current Manual students with board members late Monday.
Among the support systems DPS hopes to put in place: mentors for every student, summer school and an “academic support center” housed in the Manual building next year, Jupp said.
At their press conference, clergy members acknowledged the school needed improvement but said that district leaders should devote more resources to the school and work with current students to improve the academic offerings without closing it.
The Rev. Acen Phillips, vice president of the Ministerial Alliance, said a decision to close the school should never have been made without the community’s involvement.
“They just walked into the meeting and decided to close it,” Phillips said. “And then they said the decision was final.”
Burleson said that his group, along with Confianza Ministerial Coaliton and the Hispanic Ministerial Alliance of Greater Denver, was concerned about the “lasting scars of betrayal” after the students were promised that the school would not close at the end of the year.
The church leaders are set to meet with Bennet this week.
Burleson said they were not adversaries, but he did not rule out exercising legal options if the school board does not reconsider its decision.
“We’ve had constructive dialogue,” Burleson said.
Staff writer Allison Sherry can be reached at 303-820-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com.
