A plan to close eight Denver schools and redesign five others is drawing its second round of criticism in a week, this time from a group intending to stage a rally over the proposal on Wednesday.
Metro Organizations for People – a community advocacy group – on Friday issued a list of concerns about Denver Public Schools’ plan, including a set of ideas on how to improve the district’s plan that will be voted on by the school board on Nov. 19.
Mike Kromrey, executive director of the group, said the district’s plan that was unveiled Oct. 1 has problems “that we see as very serious.”
DPS wants to close eight elementary schools and redesign five other schools with the goal of reducing the amount of unused classroom space and improving academic achievement.
The group’s criticism comes a week after a select group of community members on the A-Plus Denver committee issued a final report on the district’s closure plan outlining a number of similar concerns.
District officials, who say the plan will save $3.5 million a year in operational costs, did not comment Friday.
Metro Organizations for People and Kromrey, who is also on the A-Plus Denver committee, were unrelenting in their critique.
The group is planning a rally Wednesday at the old Cole Middle School, where the district wants to open a new school serving students in preschool through eighth grade.
The rally will be a day before the board’s final public hearing before the vote.
Specifically, Metro Organizations for People’s note said the district should take its time rolling out new schools with new programs, that the plan was not sending students from closed schools to better ones and that the distribution of resources was inequitable.
The note cited national examples in which attempts to roll out all grades at once in a preschool through eighth-grade school have been unsuccessful.
“In near-northeast Denver we have a history of unsuccessful closures,” the note says. “We all have a responsibility to do it right this time.”
Instead, the group urged DPS to hire principals with proven track records, spend a year developing the new school plans and open in August 2009 with fewer grades.
The group also said the reassignment plan “does not appear to be well thought-out” and urged DPS to send students from Hallett Elementary to Teller and Wyman students to Moore – both of which have better accountability reports than the schools where DPS has proposed sending the students.
Also, the group said the DPS plan, which would have roughly $2.1 million every year for three years follow the students to their new schools, is not equitable, especially for Cole.
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
