It’s eight schools, not 30 as some had speculated. One – Del Pueblo – already has closed, and another – Mitchell – has been on various closure lists for a good 15 years.
After all the anxiety, the public hearings, the drama and the petulance, Denver Public Schools’ long-awaited proposal for dealing with declining enrollment and mushrooming budget deficits is stunning in its moderation.
Prepare for it to be savaged anyway.
Never does the bizarre ambivalence that characterizes a community’s attitude about its schools scream louder than when a district on the brink of insolvency considers closing schools.
It’s crazy.
If any other public agency operated high-dollar facilities at less than half their capacity, taxpayers would go berserk. Schools are the grand NIMBY exception.
Taxpayers only want fiscal accountability when it’s somebody else’s kid’s school that’s bottom-lined into oblivion.
No wonder administrators all over the country shield themselves from the predictable public battering by appointing citizen committees.
Even that doesn’t always work.
Last year in Seattle, where a committee worked for months to develop criteria and produce a list of 12 schools to be closed, the process degenerated into political mud-wrestling.
Before it was all over, the superintendent had quit, people were talking about recalling the school board, and a lawsuit had been filed by two board members who disagreed with the majority on the final decision.
This is not exactly conducive to enlightened decision-making.
Sure, I realize it’s hard to shutter neighborhood schools.
My kids were reorganized right out of their wonderful magnet school during a desegregation upheaval in Ohio in the ’80s, and I admit I hated to see it happen.
But it’s hard to find any kid who hasn’t had to adapt to a move or a change during his school experience. That’s life.
The bigger issue for parents, teachers, administrators and the community is to make sure the change is for the better.
This is the hard part.
Too many times schools close and nothing really changes. Public confidence wanes and critics are empowered.
DPS has seen plenty of that.
In the late 1960s, it was one of the first northern districts ordered to desegregate after a federal judge ruled that the school board had intentionally fostered segregation.
The judge said school attendance boundaries had been manipulated to funnel students to predominantly black or white schools, and that the black schools received the oldest books and the most inexperienced teachers.
It was appalling, but the solution proved just as destructive.
While busing put an end to the blatant separate and unequal education policies in Denver, it failed in creating vibrant, diverse, color-blind education in the district.
White families fled the city in droves. In the first few years after busing began, the district reported losing an average of 100 students a week.
The number of white students in DPS dropped from 63,398 in 1968 to 18,000 in 1994.
In the end, one of the most compelling arguments for abandoning court-ordered busing in 1995 was that there weren’t enough white kids left for it to have much impact.
The district by then was 70 percent minority.
In the post-busing era, one of the first proposals for improving the district was to close underenrolled schools and pump more resources into instruction and early intervention for struggling students.
Sound familiar?
It wasn’t easy back then either.
Del Pueblo Elementary was among the schools considered for closure, but it wasn’t until August, when only 80 kids were registered for fall, that the district finally pulled the plug on it.
Essentially, it closed itself.
Now as the din of public complaints over school closures reaches a full-throated whine, the challenge will be not only to stop burning money on half-empty schools, but to do better by the kids.
School Superintendent Michael Bennet has promised a revolution. Brace yourself.
This is just a baby step.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
