Put aside, for the moment, the grumbling you’ve been hearing about school reform in far Northeast Denver, and consider the numbers.
Denver Public Schools reports 92 percent of sixth-graders and ninth- graders who live in the city’s far Northeast area — the families of some 1,500 kids — have requested one of the many new school options in that area for the 2011-12 school year.
This despite calls to boycott the choice process.
These numbers show an encouraging interest in the school overhaul and the options DPS has crafted for children in Montbello and Green Valley Ranch.
And it undercuts arguments from what we believe is a noisy but small group of protesters who say the community is not supportive of the proposed changes.
Families are voting with their participation, and are doing so in big numbers. It hasn’t always been that way in the far Northeast.
Currently, just 57 percent of DPS high school students who live in the far Northeast area go to school there. The rest get on buses for perhaps an hour a day to attend better schools elsewhere in the city.
In recent months, the district has engaged in a monumental effort to contact families who live in the area to let them know about the programs and schools available to students this fall.
And the choices are good ones. They include another Denver School of Science and Technology, which has proven to be a highly successful charter, and another Denver Center for International Studies, which has been a popular choice for college- bound students with an interest in other languages and cultures.
Along with these schools and others, the turnaround plan will revamp existing schools by bringing in new principals who have the power to hire their own teachers.
It’s a strong plan, and it’s clear that parents are enthused by it, despite the efforts of some rabble rousers who seem to have their own agenda.
It’s not unlike what happened with the turnaround plan for Lake Middle School in northwest Denver.
Objectors threw everything they could think of at the plan. Despite the wailing and gnashing, the Denver school board approved it in 2009. And just as they are in the far Northeast, families are staying in their neighborhood for school.
In one year, DPS doubled the number of sixth-graders who chose to go to school in the Lake boundary area instead of traveling to attend school elsewhere.
It makes us wonder just whose interests groups such as Democrats for Excellent School Education (DeFENSE) are representing. It doesn’t seem to be the families who evidently are pleased to send their children to the options that DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg has supported bringing to their underserved neighborhoods.
For their hard work, Boasberg and the slim majority on the school board have taken a lot of flak from DeFENSE and others, including other members of the board.
It’s unlikely opponents, whose motivations are inscrutable, will be mollified by the interest families have taken in the district’s reform plans. However, we hope such distractions will not deter the DPS administration and board from pursuing these long-needed changes.
