Karyl Vigil last year was told by Denver school administrators that underpopulated Del Pueblo Elementary School in the Baker neighborhood would remain open for at least one more school year.
Last week, staffers at Del Pueblo, across from her hair salon, told her to enroll her 7-year-old daughter elsewhere because the school may not open this year. They gave her a list of four elementary schools with bus service at which she could enroll her daughter into second grade.
“Now I’m scrambling, trying to figure out where to put her,” Vigil said Wednesday. “They do this two weeks before school is going to open. That’s what makes me mad. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
District spokesman Alex Sanchez said no decision has been made on closing Del Pueblo this school year, which begins Monday.
He said principal Dan Villescas and staff members have been going to parents’ homes and workplaces to explain the challenges Del Pueblo faces.
“What we are trying to do is be honest with the parents,” he said. “We felt the best way to reach the audience is knock on their door, tell them about the challenges and tell them what the options are.”
As of Wednesday, only a “handful” of students have enrolled in Del Pueblo, he said.
District officials tonight will update school board members on enrollment figures and discuss what needs to be done. Last year, the school had 154 kids enrolled.
“That’s when we will say, ‘What happens when you have just a handful of students? Will there be an academic program? What will be the status of this (school) for the future?”‘ Sanchez said.
The district is wrestling with declining enrollment.
DPS’s 68,000 students occupy 70 percent of the district’s capacity. About 16 of the district’s 151 schools were less than half full last year. Del Pueblo was the least- attended elementary school in the district last year.
Keeping under-enrolled schools open costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in building and salary costs.
A list of recommended school closings will be presented to the board Oct. 2, and the board will make its final decision Nov. 19.
In January, administrators feared Del Pueblo’s enrollment would fall so low that they would have to combine kindergartners through second-graders in the same classroom.
But board members at the time said they didn’t want to broadside the community with a top-down decision on a school closure, as was done with the February 2006 decision to close Manual High School.
Fidel “Butch” Montoya, a community activist, said the district did not learn its lesson, and he called the possible shuttering of Del Pueblo a “backroom deal.”
“They are saying we didn’t have enough kids in the school and we are being forced to close it,” he said. “When you have a principal standing at the door saying, ‘We’re closed,’ what do you expect?”
Kim Ursetta, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, said the school’s nine teachers are wondering about their fate. She doesn’t know what to tell them.
“They are saying, “Can I get out now, or do I have to wait?”‘ she said. “My building rep called yesterday and said, ‘We are not enrolling kids. Kids are being turned away.’ There are kids and parents crying who can’t send their kids there anymore.”
Staff writer Jeremy P. Meyer can be reached at 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
