The independent panel who wrote the criteria Denver Public Schools used for its school-closure plan grilled district officials this morning on whether the roughly 2,300 displaced students will go to better places.
Some members of the panel, composed primarily of business and community leaders and advocates, said that simply putting more money to the schools taking in new students was insufficient in promising they were going to get a better education.
DPS Superintendent Michael Bennet announced Monday plans to close eight half-empty, low-performing schools at the end of this school year. The students in those buildings would go to other schools nearby.
Some of those schools, like Place Middle School, receiving students will be “reprogrammed” — with a new principal and a new academic plan. But others, like Smith Elementary, will largely keep the same structure.
The independent committee, called the A+ Citizens committee, has been meeting for six months to develop criteria to close buildings. One of their requirements was that students go to a better place, should their schools be shuttered.
“This seems like the same work, the same schedule, the same faculty,” said Zach Neumeyer, the chief of Sage Hospitality and committee member after hearing a presentation about the new Horace Mann kindergarten through eighth-grade school.
Neumeyer said schools that make dramatic improvements “have been schools that have radical departures from the norm … These (new) schools … are within the norm.”
DPS senior academic adviser Brad Jupp said that if they can stabilize enrollment and fix the district’s costly teacher pension program, they can put more resources directly to the schools and boost student achievement.
“When you add up the sum of all of these,” Jupp said. “We’re doing exactly what we said we were going to do.”
Denise Maes, a committee member, said the district didn’t have all the plans together yet.
“We don’t know if the district is meeting the overarching criteria,” she said. “There is a great deal of hope and prayer.”
A final decision on the school closure plan is expected in November.
