Melanie Asmar

Melanie Asmar covers Denver Public Schools. Asmar previously worked as a reporter for Westword newspaper in Denver and for a daily newspaper in her native New Hampshire. She joined Chalkbeat Colorado in 2015.

Police officers monitor the East High School campus in Denver on Wednesday, April 5, 2023. Officers were reinstated in April after a shooting at the school. The district's board had voted to remove them from campus in 2020. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)

Denver Public Schools has lacked a safety chief for 6 months amid rising gun violence

May 17, 2023 at 11:21 a.m.

The district attributed a delay in filling the position to several factors, including media coverage of the school board, whose infighting has been widely reported, and a desire to find...

Erin Schneiderman and her 13-year old son play with the family dog, Ernie, on May 3, 2023, at their home near City Park in Denver. (Olivia Sun/COLab/The Colorado Sun via Report for America)

The schools that take Colorado鈥檚 “most vulnerable” students are disappearing. Can they be saved? Should they?

May 15, 2023 at 6:00 a.m.

Meager state funding, dire staffing shortages and changes to federal law have pushed the system to the brink. Lawmakers hope a cash infusion and regulatory changes will spur the opening...

A school bus parked outside of Martin Luther King Jr. Early College High School and Middle School in this 2015 file photo.

DPS failed to provide speech therapy to more than 1,000 young students due to staff shortages, state says

March 30, 2023 at 11:05 a.m.

The problem is widespread. A state complaints officer found that 28 Denver elementary schools did not have speech language pathologists for some period of time between January 2022 and now.

Students in Michele Baer's fourth and fifth grade art class at Denver's Stedman Elementary School poses for a portrait on Jan. 11, 2023. This year marks the 50th anniversary since the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court order for Denver Public Schools to desegregate. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

A once-segregated Denver school fights to stay integrated 50 years after historic court order

January 22, 2023 at 6:00 a.m.

The segregation of the city's public school system spurred a group of families, led by Wilfred Keyes, a Black father and chiropractor, to sue Denver Public Schools in 1969. The...

Students Alana Mitchell, Jenelle Nangah, Dahni ...

Video sheds new light on “Know Justice, Know Peace” podcast dispute

October 5, 2022 at 2:38 p.m.

Three weeks before a group of current and former students聽sued Denver Public Schools聽over their racial justice podcast, they met with district officials in an eighth-floor conference room at Denver Public...

Alison Yocum Johanson, a fifth grade teacher at Trevista at Horace Mann elementary school in northwest Denver, said not offering fertility benefits 鈥渇eels a bit like a betrayal.鈥� (Melanie Asmar, Chalkbeat)

Despite new state law, Denver Public Schools is exempt from covering employees’ IVF procedures

September 26, 2022 at 3:34 p.m.

The new state mandate is a law passed by Colorado legislators in April. Starting Jan. 1, it requires large employer health benefit plans to cover the cost of fertility treatments,...

DENVER, CO - March 16: A Denver Public Schools emblem and sign on the Evie Garrett Dennis Campus that houses five separate schools with 1,600 students in Pre-K through 12th grade in Northeast Denver, Colorado on March 16, 2016.

Denver school board approves charter school centering Black students that was initially rejected

September 23, 2022 at 9:28 a.m.

After the state ordered Denver Public Schools to reconsider a charter school centering Black students and culture, the school board Thursday approved the school to open next fall.

Denver Public Schools violated the rights of Black boys with disabilities, state finds

September 15, 2022 at 5:56 p.m.

Denver Public Schools systematically violated the rights of Black boys with disabilities who attend specialized programs, state education officials found in a wide-ranging investigation.

Montbello Career and Technical High School shares a campus with the Robert F. Smith STEAM Academy. (Melanie Asmar, Chalkbeat)

Denver Public Schools recommends closing a far northeast alternative high school

September 2, 2022 at 12:49 p.m.

Denver Public Schools leaders are recommending that聽Montbello Career and Technical High School聽shutter at the end of this school year, partly to make room for another school.

Denver Public School脮s new superintendent Alex ...

Frustration with closed meetings, limited debate dog Denver Public Schools’ declining enrollment committee

April 8, 2022 at 8:55 a.m.

As Denver moves toward a fraught debate over closing schools with low enrollment, critics are assailing an advisory committee process they say has been marred by secrecy and frustration.

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