Denver’s school board voted 5-2 tonight to begin phasing out a 50-year-old middle school in southwest Denver that has struggled with achievement and has seen dwindling enrollment.
Rishel Middle School will eliminate one class per year, beginning with the sixth grade, until current students have graduated in 2011.
In the school’s building, the board agreed to place a high school run by the successful KIPP charter school organization and a science and technology elementary school run by Denver’s teacher union.
The decisions were part of a lengthy board meeting that culminated more than a month of discussion over creating shared campuses as a way to bring in quality programs and fill unused space in the district that is only two-thirds full.
The board approved shared campuses at Smiley Middle School, West High School and for two new programs to start at Kunsmiller Middle School. A proposal to add an alternative school to Manual High School was removed.
The most dramatic decision was closing Rishel — a school that teachers say had been improving, yet that had been continually losing students.
On a recent day this week at Rishel, teenagers bolted into hallways, giddy with end-of-the-day excitement and eager to charge into the unseasonably warm November afternoon.
Yet amid the typical adolescent euphoria, teachers have sensed a change in the mood at the school.
More conflicts occur between students, teachers are on edge and a certain disappointment fills the air, said Allen Potter, a student adviser and the heart and soul of the southwest Denver school.
“Why is this a solution?” Potter asked. “We didn’t have any clue that closing the school was in the plans.”
Rishel teachers say the district is ignoring recent gains and a positive culture in the building that once had one of the highest expulsion and suspension rates in Denver.
The three-story Rishel building for 1,000 students was named after longtime DPS principal John B. Rishel and built 50 years ago in the fast-growing suburbs of southwest Denver.
Students were kids of employees of nearby Gates Rubber Factory and even sang Christmas carols to the school’s builders when it was being constructed.
Over the years the school and the neighborhood changed.
Nearly 91 percent of the 500 students last year qualified for federal lunch benefits, a measure of poverty. Ninety-four percent were minorities and about a quarter were English language learners.
At an event last year held to break down social barriers, students revealed their troubled lives — many coming from broken homes and violent pasts. One boy cried while telling how his family abandoned him and how his nights were filled with gunshots.
Rishel’s academic growth ranked at the bottom of the district’s middle schools on DPS’s new School Performance Framework. And the school received a “low” score on the state School Accountability Report for each of the last four years.
Enrollment has declined by nearly 400 students, or 45 percent since 2003. Only 43 percent of the building is being used, and an increasing number of kids in the neighborhood choose to attend school elsewhere.
But staff members say those numbers mostly reflect a bad year the school experienced in 2006-07 when two teaching positions went unfilled and were covered by substitutes, and two teachers quit in the middle of the year.
“We had classrooms in crisis,” Potter said. “Kids were breaking things and lighting fires. We had to let students know that this was going to be a school, not a crazy place.”
The school expelled troublemakers and cut its disciplinary numbers in half. A program was brought in to build empathy and connections with students.
The school started daily 20-minute meetings where kids gather in small groups with an adult and talk about their lives. The meetings have taken the edge off of the day for many kids who are dealing with strife, Potter said.
Teachers becamecertified in English Language Acquisition training. Data teams met regularly to parse student progress, and teachers formed learning labs where peers could critique a teacher’s lesson.
“We have had a great year,” said social studies teacher Jose Piza. “I can’t wait for this year’s CSAP scores to come out.”
The 2008 CSAP scores saw Rishel students gain in all but three of the 10 tests they had taken.
Sixth graders saw a 15-point gain in reading, a 12-point gain in writing, and a 12-point improvement in math.
Last year, Rishel was on the verge of being shut down under the district’s reform effort that closed eight buildings. But Rishel survived. Potter was certain that it wouldn’t occur.
“Rishel has been under the gun for years,” Potter said. “We’ve lived under this fear for a long time. We felt we had turned the corner.”
When he heard the news at an after-school meeting, Potter left early, went to his home two blocks away and turned off the lights.
“I have a knife in my heart,” he said that day.
“Rishel students and staff have poured their hearts into making Rishel into a great school,” Potter told board members at a meeting Monday. “We are proud of our progress. What concerns me is facing our students after you have made your vote. What will I say to them?”
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
