Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.
Colorado school districts should revise their school attendance zones at least every four years with a “civil rights focus.” State lawmakers should increase funding to transport students to and from school. And attorneys, advocates, and community organizations should embrace the right to sue over school assignments that increase racial segregation.
Those are among the recommendations in a new report from the Colorado Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “Examining the Racial Impact of Public School Attendance Zones in Colorado” concludes that the way Colorado draws school attendance boundaries and assigns students to schools mirrors segregated housing patterns and results in low-income families having less access to high-quality schools.
“This segregation fuels a widespread belief that schools serving predominantly white and affluent students are inherently better than those serving predominantly students of color or low-income families,” an accompanying policy brief said.
Other reports from local and national think tanks and advocacy organizations have reached similar conclusions. While some local school officials, such as the Denver school board, have talked about possible solutions, the federal Trump administration has framed efforts to increase racial diversity in schools as discrimination that could trigger civil rights investigations.
The Colorado Advisory Committee is a 10-person group of bipartisan appointed volunteers. Each state has an advisory committee that produces reports on civil rights issues ranging from housing discrimination to voting rights to the use of excessive force by police officers.
In its latest report, the Colorado committee found that “thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — of Colorado students are likely to be assigned to schools in violation” of a federal law that says assigning a student to a school outside their neighborhood is unlawful “if it has segregating effects.”
The committee’s recommended solutions attempt to balance strong support for neighborhood schools with allowing families to choose the best school for their child. School choice, or the ability for a student to apply to attend any public school, is enshrined in state law.
The committee advocated for what it called “controlled choice,” which it said could mean that popular schools reserve seats for students who live outside the neighborhood or that schools give priority admission to non-neighborhood students who live the closest.
To produce its report, the committee held hearings in 2023 to gather input from national experts including university professors, the author of a book on school attendance zones, and representatives from think tanks across the political spectrum.
The committee also convened a group of 10 local experts including Brenda Dickhoner from the conservative advocacy organization Ready Colorado; Kathy Gebhardt, who was then a member of the Boulder Valley school board and now sits on the State Board of Education; former Aurora Public Schools superintendent Rico Munn; and Nicholas Martinez, a former teacher who heads the education reform organization Transform Education Now.
The committee’s other recommendations include:
- The civil rights divisions of the federal education and justice departments should review options for enforcing “the permissible and impermissible use of race in drawing attendance boundaries and setting school assignment policies.”
- Colorado lawmakers should correct “the systemic racial and ethnic disparities” caused by the state’s school transportation system, which does not require school districts to provide transportation to students who use school choice.
- State lawmakers should improve Colorado’s school choice system, including by adopting a uniform school enrollment window statewide and providing families with more information about schools’ discipline policies, class sizes, and other factors.
- Colorado school districts should revise their school attendance zones and student assignment policies at least every four years and “consider racial and ethnic integration as part of the rezoning process.”
“Redrawing school boundaries every few years can help prevent segregation from becoming entrenched while still allowing students to maintain a sense of stability in their educational environment,” the committee’s policy brief said.
Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.
