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Denver is set to announce this fall which schools are at risk of closure or replacement because of low test scores. And there won’t be any charter schools waiting in the wings to take over.
Denver Public Schools solicited applications from charter schools to serve as replacements but none applied, district officials said.
A few charter schools asked about the process, said Paige Neuharth, the district’s director of authorizing and accountability. But it’s likely that the high level of uncertainty, coupled with the hard task of reversing a school’s academic trajectory, meant that charter schools decided not to raise their hands this time, she said.
“We anticipate there might be more interest in the future,” Neuharth said.
Denver has long been friendly to charters, encouraging high performers to add more schools as districtwide enrollment grew. But now that enrollment is shrinking and the political winds have shifted away from education reform, more charters have closed recently than opened.
Superintendent Alex Marrero unveiled a new policy last spring that calls for “reimagining” charter and district-run schools that have four years of low state ratings.
Persistently low-scoring charter schools could be closed. Persistently low-scoring district-run schools could be closed or replaced, meaning the school would get a new staff, programming, and curriculum, and potentially a new name or operator, which could be a charter school.
Four schools could be at risk under the policy, called the School Transformation Process, when a new round of state ratings are released this fall. They are:
- Rocky Mountain Prep Noel, a charter school
- Academy 360, a charter school
- Oakland Elementary, a district-run school
- John F. Kennedy High, a district-run school
To prepare for the possibility of replacing the district-run schools, DPS put out a call for charter schools interested in serving that role. The district also submitted applications for a new district-run elementary school and a new district-run high school.
The school board was supposed to vote in June on the applications that met its bar for quality, pre-approving them to serve as potential replacements. But since no charter schools applied, the district withdrew its own applications.
“Once there was no competition, it seemed unnecessary for the district to have a standalone application in a competitive process against nobody,” said Joe Amundsen, the district’s executive director of school transformation.
If the school board votes to replace a district-run school, Amundsen said the district would bring its application back and work with that school community on a redesign.
“It felt premature for us to say we have a fully baked plan to replace those schools when we’re doing everything we can to improve those schools so they don’t get there,” he added.
Separate from the School Transformation Process, homegrown charter network DSST Public Schools submitted applications to open three new schools: a DSST College View Elementary, a DSST Elevate Elementary, and a DSST Gateway Elementary, according to emails obtained by Chalkbeat in a public records request.
But the emails revealed that DSST notified DPS it was withdrawing the applications this spring, before the school board could vote.
“After careful consideration, we determined that withdrawing the applications was the best decision to support our strategic priorities and ongoing commitment to students and families,” DSST spokesperson Daniela Di Napoli said in a statement.
The three schools would have been the first elementary schools for DSST, which has seven middle schools and seven high schools in Denver and one of each in neighboring Aurora.
DSST has a College View middle and high school in southwest Denver and an Elevate middle and high school in northeast Denver. Gateway is a northeast Denver neighborhood, and it’s an outlier. While lower birth rates and high housing prices are causing student enrollment to decline in most other parts of the city, Gateway is the only neighborhood where the student count is expected to grow as new houses are built.
DPS is predicting that it will need a new elementary school in Gateway by 2028. When DSST withdrew its Gateway Elementary application, the network’s head of growth confirmed that DPS would solicit applications for a new elementary school in that neighborhood next year.
Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.
