The library at Del Pueblo Elementary School is perfect.
Natural light bathes the study tables that are just the right height for little readers. More than $17,000 worth of new books fill the shelves, and stuffed animals are tucked alongside, inviting chubby hands to reach for them.
Principal Dan Villescas turned off the lights and closed the door behind us.
It will be dismantled soon, probably this week.
Down the hall, Charlene Hastings spent another day delivering bad news. On Friday a young woman and her daughter dropped by to register for school, which was scheduled to start Monday.
“I’m sorry, but we’re closing this school,” the secretary said. “Let me give you the addresses for other nearby schools.”
I watched them walk down the gleaming, polished floors past the plaque that commemorates the bright hopes on which the city’s first Chicano school was built. “This school is named Del Pueblo, which means ‘of the people,”‘ it says.
Residents of the surrounding Baker and La Alma Park neighborhoods selected the name in 1973 and celebrated the new building, which featured a gym, auditorium, library and tidy classrooms. Thirty-four years later, it’s just as nice.
Except now, hope is lost.
Classes were suspended at Del Pueblo just days before the new school year was to start. Not enough students were enrolled and there were too few teachers to justify another year of scrambling to get CSAP scores out of the cellar.
Officially, the decision to close Del Pueblo is yet to come, but everybody knows the final bell has rung.
“Del Pueblo has been on the unofficial closure list for several years,” Villescas said. Rumors that a decision was imminent began circulating in January, which accelerated the departure of teachers and pupils. By June, only about 80 pupils remained, and recruiting new teachers to fill vacancies had become all but impossible.
Villescas took a vacation with his family, and when he returned, he made the call to Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet.
“I was painfully aware that closing the school was the best thing,” he said.
Then he printed a list of names of the kids left at Del Pueblo and set out to look every one of them in the eyes.
He knocked on the doors of the little houses, stopped at the barbershop, went to the Boys and Girls Club and tracked down all but five of them to deliver the news personally.
“It’s one of the most painful things I’ve ever done,” he said. “It’s not within my educational training to ever have the discussions I’ve been having, to tell parents, ‘You need to pick a better school than mine.”‘
Villescas said he’s not one to make excuses, but there are a lot of reasons why his kids weren’t performing.
“My kids don’t go to Sylvan Learning Center after school when they have problems,” he said. “They don’t go home to laptops. Some of them don’t even have books at home.”
Even when enrollment was spiraling down and the rumors were impossible to ignore, Villescas said he never gave up on a single child.
“I don’t think I could have worked any harder,” he said.
One thing Del Pueblo achieved, he said, was to build a community. “We taught the kids respect, to be good to each other and to try hard.”
By shuttering the school, he also taught them a hard lesson about expectations and the consequences of not meeting them.
“My kids, especially my Latino kids, need to have a better school and they need to do better in school,” he said. “The graduation rate is too low. They have to perform.”
Villescas doesn’t know what will be next for him.
The phone rings incessantly in his office, where the walls are covered with student artwork that triggers fond memories of his eager young charges over the years.
“You want reality? I don’t know,” he said, and then he smiled broadly. “In my fantasies, joining the PGA tour is my next goal in life.”
But before he hits the links he has one job left.
On Monday morning he’ll board the bus with some of his kids to ride with them to their new school.
“They’re still my kids,” he said. “I’m having a tough time letting go.”
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
