Denver students will have new schools to choose from after a school-board vote Thursday to approve 10 new schools, nine of which are charter schools.
In a five-hour meeting, the seven-member Denver Public Schools board heard public comment, held discussion and then voted on 11 applications that would have meant 15 new schools in the district. Board member Jeannie Kaplan said the entire board had also had time to “extensively review each application” prior to the meeting.
Eleven of the schools were recommended by DPS, and the board followed those recommendations on all but one school, the Global Village Academy, a K-6 charter school that would have offered language immersion in Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.
The other schools, which propose to serve 5,800 students, approved by the board were:
• Four new charter schools run by Denver School of Science and Technology, which already has one campus in Denver. The new sixth-through-12th-grade schools will open in the next four years, beginning in 2010, and could serve more than 3,400 students.
The board also approved placing the first in a building in Green Valley Ranch.
• One new charter school run by the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, a national charter company funded by the founders of Gap. KIPP has one campus in Denver and is opening another this fall. The newly approved middle school will open in 2011 and will likely be placed in northeast Denver.
• Two new charter middle schools run by West Denver Preparatory Academy, which has one existing school in Denver and will open another this fall. The school organizers hope to place the new schools in northwest Denver next fall.
• One new K-8 charter school run by Denver Language School, a Spanish and Mandarin Chinese-immersion school. The school will likely open in 2010 in northeast Denver.
• One K-5 charter school run by SOAR, an academically rigorous charter program that will open in 2010 in far northeast Denver.
• The Denver Green School, a DPS school covering preschool to eighth grade, that will focus on training students for green jobs. The school will open in 2010 in southeast Denver.
The board’s approval votes were unanimous on each decision except for the approval of DSST. Board member Arturo Jimenez voted against the application because he said he was not comfortable approving schools that would not open for three or four years, and wanted to focus on the existing schools in his northwest district.
Five schools rejected
The board also voted to reject the applications for five new schools, despite pleas from many of the schools’ organizers during the public-comment session.
In addition to the Global Village Academy, the rejected schools were:
• Denver Standards and Challenges School, for gifted and talented students.
• Two middle schools run by Girls Athletic Leadership School.
• Global Outreach Charter Academy, a K-8 bilingual school for Russian and English.
More than 45 people made public comments at the meeting, with speakers landing on both sides of the charter-school fence.
At times, the statements made contradicted each other outright.
“There are reports about how northwest Denver does not support charter schools and that is false,” said Kerri Stroupe, a parent. “We are especially interested in DSST coming to northwest Denver.”
“My choice is our local school, and that was the overwhelming choice of all the parents in northwest Denver,” said Amber Tafoya, a parent. “I’d like my kids to go to the same school where all the neighborhood kids go.”
Claire Trageser: 303-954-1638 or ctrageser@denverpost.com
