Denver’s school board voted Thursday to close three schools at the end of the academic year because of critically low enrollment, including two that members had decided against shuttering nearly four months ago.
The Board of Education was unanimous in its decision to close Denver Discovery and Mathematics and Science Leadership Academy. All but one member — Vice President Auon’tai Anderson — voted to close the third, Fairview Elementary.
All three votes were emotional for the school board, which has been reluctant to close schools. At least four members were brought to tears.
“Closing a school can be a painful and emotional process, but it’s important to remember the decision is made with the best interest of students,” board member Michelle Quattlebaum said, adding, “This is hard for me. I do not like closing schools.”
The decision to close the schools comes as overall enrollment in Denver Public Schools has fallen for three consecutive years. The problem is starting to affect the district’s budget, with DPS facing a potential $9 million budget shortfall at the end of the year.
Superintendent Alex Marrero has identified 12 additional schools that also have low enrollment, but he doesn’t plan to make a final recommendation on their fate until September.
The three schools that will close were among the 10 schools Marrero recommended shutting in the fall. The earlier plan was rejected by the Board of Education in November even after it was revised to only include two schools: Denver Discovery and Mathematics and Science Leadership Academy.
In the fall, all but one school board member — Scott Baldermann — voted against closing both schools.
Board member Scott Esserman said his daughter was among the first students to attend Denver Discovery.
“It is at this time the right thing to do,” he said. “It doesn’t make it less painful. It’s not going to make people less angry and it’s not going to produce a tremendous amount of trust.”
All three schools that will close have fewer than 120 students. Denver Discovery, a middle school, is the smallest with only 62 students projected to enroll if it remained open next year.
The board’s vote means that students at Mathematics and Science Leadership Academy will merge with those at Valverde Elementary School and those attending Fairview will go to Cheltenham Elementary School during the 2023-24 academic year. Families with students at Fairview or Mathematics and Science Leadership Academy can also choose to send their child to another school in the district.
Denver Discovery families will get to choose what schools their kids attend in the fall, instead of students merging with another school.
Employees at the three schools have guaranteed jobs in the district despite the closures, according to Marrero’s presentation to the board.
School board members questioned Marrero about the district’s plans for Fairview, which has faced push-back from Sun Valley residents and the Denver Housing Authority.
“Really, this is unfair,” said Najah Abu Serryeh, whose youngest daughter is a first-grader at Fairview. Her eldest also attended the school.
“I don’t know anything about Cheltenham,” she said.
Serryeh was the only known parent to attend the meeting in person and said she wasn’t reassured by the district’s plan to provide transportation to Fairview students who attend Cheltenham in the fall.
“I will never send her by school bus,” she said of her youngest child.
The Denver Housing Authority declined to comment Thursday on the school board’s decision to close the school. But in the past, the housing authority has said it believes redevelopment in the Sun Valley neighborhood will bring enough children into the area to keep Fairview open.
But DPS officials have said their projections show fewer students will come back to the neighborhood, and that some of them are likely to “choice” into another school. District staff, including Marrero, said Thursday there was also a possibility Fairview could reopen in the coming years if more children than expected end up residing in the neighborhood.
“We’re not taking any wrecking ball to our school,” Marrero said. “That school will remain there.”
But Anderson, who voted against closing Fairview, said he wanted more clarity on why DPS and the Denver Housing Authority have different enrollment projections.
“I’m struggling with the Fairview (vote) for a magnitude of reasons,” said Anderson, who is running for reelection. “I’m trying to understand a little bit about this conflicting information we are getting from Denver Housing Authority.”
Directors who voted for closing Fairview, including board President Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán and Esserman, said they hoped the projections from the housing authority are correct and that in a couple of years, they will be revisiting the school’s fate.
“Hopefully we are wrong and five years from now we see Black and brown families coming back,” Gaytán said. “But if we are right, we need to do better as a community and we need to protect our most vulnerable.”
DPS is just the latest district to close schools because of falling enrollment. School districts across the U.S. are finding there are fewer students in their classrooms. Last year, Jeffco Public Schools’ board voted to close 16 elementary schools.
At DPS, overall enrollment began falling three years ago, but fewer elementary-aged students have been attending Denver schools since 2014. The district has attributed the decline to fewer babies being born, gentrification and rising housing costs.
Falling enrollment hits school budgets because they receive less funding when there are fewer students. Marrero has previously said small schools have larger class sizes and fewer resources, such as electives, for students.
District officials also have said they are subsidizing schools with low enrollment to keep them operational. DPS is providing the three schools that will close with supplemental funding that ranges from $680,139 to $1.05 million.
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