The Walton Family Foundation gave out more money for education reform last year than any other year in its history, and a big chunk of it ended up in Denver.
Organizations here, from individual schools to influential nonprofits, got just shy of $8 million of the $159 million in education-reform dollars the foundation awarded in 2011 — more than many of the nation’s largest cities, including those that are home to some of the nation’s most troubled schools.
Only Los Angeles, with $9.6 million, and Washington, D.C., with $8.3 million, got more total grant money than did Denver groups.
The goal of the Arkansas-based is to increase “the quantity and quality of school choices available to parents, especially in low-income communities,” according to its website.
Denver got so much of the foundation’s largesse not because the city’s needs are greater but because of what it already has accomplished in school choice, said Jim Griffin, president of the Colorado League of Charter Schools. The league pulled in $738,826 from the foundation last year.
“We are notable here in Denver, in terms of both the size and strength and profile of the charter-school world. This is a healthy, strong, vibrant community” of charter schools, he said.
About 78,000 students, or just shy of 10 percent of the state’s students in kindergarten through 12 grade, attend the 174 public charter schools in Colorado, according to the league.
Not all the money awarded to organizations here will stay entirely within the state, however.
The biggest single local recipients, Teach for America and the Charter School Growth Fund, will use some of their grant on programs that extend across the country.
The Broomfield-based non-profit Charter School Growth Fund (CSGF), for example, invests in high-performing charter schools nationwide. Two of those high-performing charter schools are in Denver: West Denver Prep and the Denver School of Science and Technology.
“Denver is embracing the idea of trying to create more great schools, no matter who runs them,” said Kevin Hall, chief executive of the charter- school fund.
Hall credits Denver Public Schools Superintendent Tom Boasberg with spearheading much of that charter-school innovation. “Tom, I think, has been an early thinker on that. He’s nationally a very well-respected leader” in school districts championing, rather than competing with, charter schools, Hall said.
The Walton foundation was created by late Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and his wife but has no connection to the discount-store chain.
Karen Augé: 303-954-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com
Where grants went
Area groups gifted by Walton:
Charter Fund Inc. : $1,000,000
Charter School Growth Fund (CSGF): $738,826
Colorado Nonprofit Development Center: $687,000
Colorado Succeeds: $215,000
Denver Center for International Studies at Ford Elementary: $300,000
Denver Center for International Studies at Montbello: $300,000
Denver Public Schools: $376,182
Denver Scholarship Foundation: $219,382
Elements Academy: $2,374
Generation Schools Network: $20,000
Grant Beacon Middle School: $20,000
Green Valley Elementary: $300,000
Greenwood K-8: $20,000
High Tech Early College: $300,000
KIPP Foundation: $250,000
Lena Lovato Archuleta Elementary School: $20,000
McGlone Elementary: $300,000
Monarch Montessori of Denver: $30,000
Noel Community Arts School: $300,000
Public Education and Business Coalition: $100,000
Rocky Mountain Preparatory Charter School: $250,000
Sims-Fayola International Academy Denver: $30,000
Stand for Children Leadership Center: $184,505
Teach for America (National): $1,937,500
University of Southern California* : $41,130
West Leadership Academy: $20,000
Total: $7,961,899
Walton Family Foundation
*Colorado project
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, Charter School Growth Fund was misidentified as the Colorado League of Charter Schools. The organizations are separate.
