DPS superintendent offers scant details on Denver school closures as release of list nears

Denver Public Schools leaders offered a peek Monday into their thinking about potential school closures, but kept most details vague so as to not identify any schools that might be on the chopping block before the district’s plan is publicly revealed next week.

District staff looked at a range of data as part of their decision on which schools to possibly close, including building utilization rates, student demographics, enrollment trends and academic performance, according to a presentation Superintendent Alex Marrero gave the Board of Education on Monday evening.

On Nov. 7, Marrero is set to release a list of schools that the Board of Education will consider for possible closure due to falling enrollment in the district. Neither he nor district staff have said how many schools will be on that list or where in Denver they might be located.

“It’s been incredibly thought-out,” Marrero said of the process, adding that, by closing schools, the district will prevent a “full-blown crisis.”

Unlike in previous years, DPS is not solely relying on an enrollment threshold to create a school-closure plan, officials said.

To narrow down the list of schools, district staff looked at a building’s utilization rate — how much of its space is in use — and whether the school was located in a region where enrollment has fallen since 2019 and is projected to continue decreasing through 2028. Schools that met the criteria were then grouped into clusters based on their proximity to one another before a decision was made about whether to include them on the list of potential closures, according to the presentation.

In doing so, the district didn’t just look at whether a school was using less space in its building, but, rather, whether there are multiple schools close to each other that were underutilized, said Andrew Huber, DPS’s executive director of enrollment, in an interview.

DPS also looked at where enrollment zones could be expanded or created, he said. (Enrollment zones are often made up of multiple schools, and students are guaranteed a seat if they live within in the boundary, rather than having a single neighborhood school.)

Huber declined to say what DPS considered to be a low school utilization rate and whether the plan would include a change to enrollment zones. A “healthy” building utilization rate is between 85% and 100%, he said.

“There’s nothing set in stone,” Huber said.

Marrero is expected to present a closure plan to the school board on Nov. 7 and the school board will vote on the recommendation on Nov. 21. The district just finished hosting community meetings about the closures.

DPS is preparing to close schools because enrollment is falling as fewer babies are being born and gentrification pushed families from the city. The district projects that, even though K-12 enrollment grew 2% to 85,313 this year, overall enrollment is expected to fall through 2028, according to preliminary data presented earlier this month.

The district has the capacity to serve 57,390 elementary students, but only an estimated 39,787 pupils are enrolled — meaning the utilization rate for elementary schools is only 69% overall. The regions with the lowest utilization rates are in the southwest, northwest and central regions, according to the preliminary data presented on Oct. 7.

Declining enrollment doesn’t just mean fewer students in Denver classrooms, it also means less per-pupil funding from the state. DPS officials in June forecasted a $2.6 million budget deficit for the 2024-25 fiscal year. (The district’s budget, which is $1.4 billion, can change depending on what happens with student enrollment.)

“None of us take closing schools lightly,” board President Carrie Olson said. “This is weighing heavily on us as a board.”

DPS isn’t the only Colorado school district struggling with falling enrollment and school closures. Jeffco Public Schools closed more than a dozen schools in 2023. Douglas County School District is also weighing closures.

Marrero recommended closing 10 Denver schools in October 2022, but the board was reluctant to do so, and voted to only shut down three schools the following year: Denver Discovery, Mathematics and Science Leadership Academy, and Fairview Elementary.

The board passed a policy earlier this year that reignited the school closure discussion before setting the November deadline for such a proposal.

By looking at schools located in regions where enrollment is declining, district officials are adhering to the board’s call to “consider schools of all sizes,” Huber said.

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