When Debbie Smith left her teaching position in southwest Denver for a job in a Cherry Creek district school, she anticipated a classroom filled with rich, white kids.
What she found at Eastridge Elementary in southwest Aurora were children of refugees and immigrants and a third-grade classroom even more diverse than the one she left in Denver.
“I had no idea Cherry Creek was like this,” said Smith, who has taught at Eastridge for seven years. “I’ve had students from every continent but Antarctica. I love this. I love all of the cultures.”
The face of Cherry Creek schools is changing along with the rest of the metro area’s districts, where nine out of every 10 new students this decade were minorities, according to an analysis by The Denver Post.
The 15 districts that make up the metro area — from Douglas County to St. Vrain — added 62,661 students between 2000 to 2008, and 55,950 of those were minorities. On average, about 81 percent were Latino, 8.6 percent African-American and nearly 11 percent Asian.
The trend throughout Colorado and the nation is because of immigration and babies born to minority populations that are younger and have higher birthrates than whites, said Elizabeth Garner, state demographer.
“A lot of it is due to the migration in the 1990s,” Garner said. “Those are basically folks who moved here and started having kids in 1995 through 2003. It’s like a second wave.”
At Eastridge, the change came early this decade when refugees from around the world began moving into apartments near the school.
In Smith’s current year-round classroom of 22 students, 11 languages are spoken. Students’ parents came from Congo, Morocco, Cuba, Korea, Lebanon and Sudan.
“These classrooms are so representative of our global society; they represent the world,” said Marquetta Thomas, Eastridge’s principal.
Cherry Creek’s overall enrollment this decade grew by 20 percent, and all of that growth was from minority students. The student population is now 37 percent minority and is expected to reach 50 percent by 2012.
Six metro-area school districts now have more minority students than white students: Denver, Aurora, Sheridan, Mapleton, Westminster 50 and Adams 14 in Commerce City.
Ten of the 15 districts posted a net loss of white students this decade, including Jefferson County Public Schools — the state’s largest district — which saw white enrollment decline by 9,000 students. Aurora lost almost 4,000 white students and Westminster lost almost 3,000 white students.
Take away the increase of white students in Douglas County — which added 16,941 white students this decade — and there would have been an overall decline in the number of white students in the metro area.
Adapting to the shift
“It’s been pretty dramatic,” said Roberta Selleck, superintendent in Westminster 50 — where 77 percent of students are minorities, an increase of 22 percentage points since 2000.
From Castle Rock to Longmont, the metro area’s districts are learning to adapt. The biggest challenge is how to teach students who are not fluent in English.
Westminster 50 has doubled its translation budget in the past six years.
Last year, the district added Spanish-language prompts to its phone messages and made sure front-office staff members at schools knew key Spanish phrases.
The district also has created an institutional equity officer to handle complaints about bias, racist remarks or discrimination. And the district has been holding cultural diversity training for teachers and staff.
In Cherry Creek, the number of English-language learners increased 200 percent in the past five years.
Jefferson County has spent about $1 million to improve its English-language acquisition strategies. And Adams 14 in Commerce City just scrapped its language program that previously taught students in Spanish and English.
“The idea was you were supposed to get students to fluency in their native language and then transfer that to English, but we found our kids weren’t reaching fluency in any language,” said John Albright, Adams 14 spokesman. “Instruction in our classrooms will be in English next year.”
Jefferson County schools recently conducted an audit of its organization to determine how well the district was addressing its changing population.
“The recommendations were to make sure we were infusing cultural proficiency across the organization and being more systemic — ensuring all curriculum has the cultural diversity piece,” said Jeffco Superintendent Cindy Stevenson.
Minding the gap
Districts also are paying greater attention to closing ever-present achievement gaps among the races, which are threatening to become more defined as minority students become the majority.
“Our standing as a school district is in peril if we don’t close this gap,” said Elliott Asp, Cherry Creek assistant superintendent. “We have two overarching goals: excellence and equity. That means raising the performance of all students and decreasing the gap. . . . Black and brown parents want the same things as everyone else. They move to a district where the outcomes are high. We want to deliver on that.”
The statistics suggest that some of the minority students in suburban districts might have left Denver to get there or chosen the suburb over Denver.
More white students are entering Denver schools, especially in the early grades, than at any time in the past decade.
First-grade enrollment, for example, was 25.5 percent white in 2008, compared with 18 percent five years before. Kindergarten was 27.3 percent white in 2008, compared with 18.7 percent in 2003.
Seven metro-area school districts added more minority students than Denver: Adams 12, Brighton, Cherry Creek, Aurora, St. Vrain, Douglas County and Jefferson County.
“It’s affordability. Folks have been pushed out from areas like northeast Denver, the Cole and Whittier neighborhoods,” said Matthew Barry of the Piton Foundation. “Northwest Denver, for sure, has changed.”
Denver’s trends
Bryant-Webster K-8 in northwest Denver has a student population that is 96 percent minority. The school has a successful mariachi band program and has a dual-language curriculum. Yet enrollment has been falling every year as Latino families have moved out of the neighborhood.
“Kids are leaving because (their families) can’t afford to be around here,” said Pam Linan, Bryant-Webster’s principal. “The neighborhood has become more expensive. It’s difficult to find rentals that people can afford.”
Denver’s black student population has fallen by 11 percent since 2000.
In-fill neighborhoods like Stapleton and Lowry are baby factories and largely white and middle class.
“It’s a lot of people who normally would have moved out of Denver for a larger home they could afford, but Stapleton provided bigger houses that were more affordable,” said Brian Weber, vice president of the Stapleton Foundation.
“It’s really great for the city. It helps the system mature,” Weber said. “Economic integration is good for the schools and good for the districts.”
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
