Denver Public Schools has had a problem for a long, long time in the southwest quadrant of the city, the location of some of the lowest-performing schools in the district.
Finally, the district says it is working on a list of recommendations to address the problem. The area has a higher concentration of low-performing schools than anywhere else in the district, a recent analysis showed.
But this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has followed education in Denver. The area has high poverty levels and many non-English speakers, and its schools have struggled to raise achievement levels.
Previous reform efforts have focused on other parts of Denver, most recently the controversial turnaround effort of low-performing schools in the Montbello area.
That initiative added a mix of charter and district-run schools and produced some of the highest-performing schools in DPS. District officials boast that more students now choose to attend schools in the neighborhood after the reforms.
At a recent forum, community members demanded the same thing in southwest Denver. But the area has challenges.
Political leaders like Mayor Michael Hancock and former Colorado House Speaker Terrance Carroll and deep-pocketed influencers like Oakwood Homes CEO Pat Hamill pushed for changes in northeast Denver.
Southwest Denver doesn’t have that type of clout, nor are there new housing developments to spur that kind of support.
The southwest community is disheartened that the only high-quality schools in the area have wait lists and plans for a new charter school from STRIVE Preparatory Schools were delayed a year.
Though the area may not have the political voice or funding of the far northeast, we echo the community’s cries for better schools.
It is understandable for DPS to take a methodical and strategic approach. But it shouldn’t have taken this long to address what has been a problem for years.
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