Some Denver schools are taking many more new students in the middle of the year than others, challenging the district’s years-long effort to create greater equity among its mix of schools.
Numbers provided by Denver Public Schools show disparities across the city and within neighborhoods. The schools that take on more new students midyear are also largely the lower-performing schools.
Last year in southwest Denver, KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy, a high-achieving charter middle school, took in one student midyear. Less than 2 miles away at Kepner Middle School, a low-performing district-run school slated for closure, more than 100 students — or 12.8 percent of the student population — trickled in throughout the year.
“It is tough educating students when there’s that much mobility and level of disruption,” said Brian Eschbacher, the district’s director of planning and enrollment.
But in the past few years are helping, he said.
“I don’t know if everything we’re doing now is enough,” Eschbacher said, “but every year we get better.”
Enrolling new students in the middle of the year — often because they’ve moved into the district or neighborhood — is a legal responsibility for public schools, but it can create issues for teachers managing classrooms and for leaders trying to create school communities and stick to a budget.
Lisa Mahannah, principal of Oakland Elementary in Montbello, said it takes time to help students. Oakland is one of the elementary schools with the highest number of midyear enrollments in DPS.
In the 2014-15 school year, Oakland had 104 midyear entries. In the first half of this year, 101 kids have enrolled after the start of school; that is 17.1 percent of its current students.
“When you don’t have as much background, it’s going to take time to understand where that student is,” Mahannah said. “We need to diagnose what do we know about this kid, especially if there hasn’t been that emphasis before. Why do they struggle, or why do they excel? It does make it hard.”
At Oakland, each time new students enroll midyear, they are tested within their first week by staff members.
They use the results to place kids in the right classes and inform the teachers of any needs.
Mahannah pairs each new student with a buddy — another student — for a week to help them learn the school’s rules. Getting students to feel like they are part of the school is important to creating a school culture, principals say.
DSST charter schools, among the district’s highest-performing schools, all have fewer midyear enrollments than the district’s average of about 8 percent of student population — including their schools in far northeast, a high-mobility region.
Bill Kurtz, CEO of the charter network, said some of the characteristics focusing on culture and relationships help prompt high achievement but also promote stability.
“One of the key pieces is to create a culture of high achievement. That’s why we build small schools. That’s why we have very strong teacher-and-student relationships,” Kurtz said. “We truly believe in creating schools that are the right size.”
The gaps between schools aren’t strictly pitting charters against district-run schools. Charters and district-run schools follow the same district policies for enrolling midyear students.
Another popular charter network, STRIVE, has some schools with high midyear enrollments, including the middle school in Montbello, where 11.6 percent of students this year have started school midyear.
In north Denver, one STRIVE school shares a campus with district-run Lake International School. In that case, both schools have had almost an equal number of midyear enrollments.
District officials , such as the grouped zone the Lake schools are in, eventually will help create a more even distribution of the students.
“The zones definitely help; that’s definitely an intentional move,” Eschbacher said. “If a family walks into Kepner today, Kepner doesn’t have to enroll them. My staff can take a look at the schools in the zone and say, you have choices.”
In enrollment zones, when a student moves into a neighborhood and tries to enroll midyear, the district’s choice department gets involved. Each week the office tracks how many students have left each school, how many students remain, how large class sizes are in each grade and how many students the school was funded to serve based on an Oct. 1 count.
The data help the district decide if a school has room for new kids.
Eschbacher says schools that have fewer midyear enrollments have stable student populations and often don’t have space for new kids. Schools with more new students usually have a higher number of students who leave.
Often, the neighborhoods play a role, especially for schools near rental properties or affordable housing.
If the district knows a new housing project will open in the middle of the year, the district will plan for a flood of new students at neighborhood schools and hold seats vacant for them.
Despite the challenges, principals say it’s harder for the kids, so helping them is a priority, they say.
“It’s a challenge for any student to go to two, three schools in a year,” Mahannah said. “For me, and for any principal, my goal is to keep that kid for as long as I possibly can. We work very hard not to let any kids go unnoticed.”
Yesenia Robles: 303-954-1372, yrobles@denverpost.com or @yeseniarobles
