A plan to create a new high school in northeast Denver, craft autonomy agreements for three schools, and change budgeting to give more money to poorer students and English-language learners is being proposed by a Denver community group.
Leaders with Metro Organizations for People are seeking changes for northeast Denver schools that have struggled with low achievement, poor students and more English-language learners.
“We want to level the playing field,” said Jessica Buckley, a teacher at Harrington Elementary School and a member of Metro Organizations for People — a 29-year-old community advocacy group composed of 28 churches, schools and youth and neighborhood associations that was a vocal critic of the district’s recent reform plan.
“We want our students to be successful, and in order for them to be as successful as students in other parts of the city, they need these supports,” she said.
Tuesday, Buckley and other members of her group will meet with district administrators and board members at Manual High School with a plan they hope will improve the schools.
It includes a new high school program for about 120 students who attended Manual before it closed and either dropped out or go to schools in other parts of the city.
It also calls for an autonomy agreement similar to one being discussed at Bruce Randolph Middle School that would give principals of Manual High, Cole and Gilpin Montessori schools control over their budgets, hiring and curricula.
A key part of the group’s proposal is to provide poorer students and English- language learners with more money under a weighted budget system.
The district already is considering going toward a student-based budget system, in which money would follow the kids and not the staff members.
Metro Organizations for People says poor and non-English-speaking students cost more to educate so they should get more money from the district — specifically 25 percent more for English-language learners and 20 percent more for students who qualify for federally funded free and reduced-price lunch benefits — a measure of poverty.
“Student-based budgeting is different; if you are going to weight it, it’s a whole different ballgame,” said Jeannie Kaplan, a school board member, who has raised the concern that a weighted system could upset middle-class families.
“The real problem, as everyone will concede, is we don’t have enough money,” she said. ” If you are going to take the little bit that we have and put it other places, I can’t imagine what it will do to our other schools.”
Whenever districts begin to consider giving more money to poorer students, a conversation begins to focus on what that means for other students, said Van Schoales of the Piton Foundation.
“People say, ‘What do you mean shifting resources?’ ” Schoales said. “While, literally, Rome is burning, there are people who are worried about piano tuners at their schools.”
Providing more funding to struggling learners is critical to the district’s overall success, he said.
“The district will have to carefully manage all of these different interests,” he said. “There is a limited pot, and they will have to do it in a way to shift the resources to those who need it and do it in a way that doesn’t negatively impact terribly the schools that have benefited from an unequal distribution of resources.”
Marguerite Roza, a University of Washington professor, five years ago examined the budget at Denver Public Schools and found vast inequities, but over the years massive funding cuts have pared down those inequities, she said.
“You are not going to have the big cash transfer because Denver is already a lean, mean budget,” said Roza, who recently examined the budget.
Superintendent Michael Bennet said a plan to refinance the pension will provide the district more money that can help it provide “incremental amounts to kids based on particular needs,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s helpful for anybody to engage in a conversation or think about this (as) taking money from one set of kids and giving it to another,” he said. “It gives us the opportunity to increase the pie.”
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
