Denver Public Schools looks to better integrate schoolsthrough "enrollment zones"

Five years ago, Denver Public Schools began blowing up the notion of the traditional neighborhoodschool boundary.

No longer would living at a certain address guarantee a seat at a particular school -- the selling pointof many home listings.

Beginning in new neighborhoods blooming in far northeast Denver, DPS introduced enrollmentzones with multiple, separate campus schools.

Families would get a seat at one of the schools in the broader boundaries but not necessarily the oneclosest to them or their top choice, depending on demand and other factors.

The idea is to make parents more engaged in the school-choice process, break down barriersbetween district-run and charter schools and -- in an ideal world -- create more integrated schools.

That last goal is a recent emphasis of DPS and remains a work in progress, according to datareviewed by The Denver Post.

Middle schools in the city's far northeast region that have been part of a shared enrollment zone forfour years still look largely homogeneous, with minorities representing more than 85 percent ofstudent populations at each school.

In another zone the district created more recently that bounds the growing Stapleton developmentwith historically low-income areas of Park Hill, traditional schools are inching their way towarddiversity while charter schools have easily taken on a larger share of minority students.

DPS's embrace of enrollment zones is facing its sternest test to date in northwest Denver, whereissues of race, gentrification, skyrocketing housing costs, a debate about the role of charter schoolsand distrust of the district are a volatile mix.

After weeks of community meetings, the DPS board of education will vote Thursday on establishingthe district's eighth enrollment zone taking in four middle schools in northwest Denver.

Some residents worry there won't be enough seats at Skinner Middle School, a traditional school onthe rebound, and don't want to send their kids to STRIVE Prep-Sunnyside, a college-prep charterschool in the zone that primarily serves low-income Latino students.

STRIVE families feel like their school is being unfairly attacked and mischaracterized by the samecrowd responsible for the gentrification that has driven their students' families out of theneighborhood.

New wrinkle

District staff is recommending a wrinkle to the enrollment zone -- that all students living in theexisting Skinner boundary who pick the school in the first round of the process be guaranteed a seatthere.

It's a change designed to ease anxiety. DPS officials believe that based on school choice trends andenrollment projections, anyone wanting to go to Skinner would get a seat even in a wide-open zone.

Others aren't so sure and say the move could further segregation by giving short shrift to theSunnyside neighborhood, which includes both the Quigg Newton housing project and more affluentnewer arrivals.

The two other schools in the proposed zone are Bryant-Webster -- a Spanish and English dual-language preschool through 8th grade school -- and Denver Montessori Junior Senior High School.

The district is proposing re-evaluating the enrollment zone after three years.

DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg said enrollment zones help expand school choice -- historicallythe province of the wealthy -- and satisfy desires for diverse, high-quality schools.

"The narrower you draw your boundary, the more likely in Denver and most other cities in thiscountry you will see housing patterns separated by economics and race," he said.

Boasberg said the zones are allowing DPS to "build and sustain more personalized, smaller middleschools," which he credits for rising enrollment and academic performance.

So far, families who choose their school within enrollment zones have largely won their top choices -- 84 percent in the new southwest middle school zone, 83 percent in Stapleton's elementary schoolzone, and 69 percent in the far northeast's middle school zone.

While the zone covering far northeast schools, founded in 2010, has seen school choice participationincrease, school diversity and school performance has barely budged.

By far the most popular option for middle schoolers in the area, which includes the Green ValleyRanch and Montbello neighborhoods, is the Denver School of Science and Technology, where about92 percent of the students are minorities.

Meanwhile, in the newer Greater Park Hill Stapleton middle school zone, DSST at Stapleton didimprove its diversity, drawing 10 percent more minority students over the last year.

Kurt Dennis, principal at the most popular option in that zone, McAuliffe International School, said it

has been a positive force for increasing enrollment and diversity at his school.

"Denver as a whole isn't very integrated when you look at the neighborhoods," Dennis said.

In northwest Denver, the boundary issue came to the fore with DPS's decision to close the middleschool portion of Trevista at Horace Mann.

DPS officials cited declining enrollment. Meanwhile, 20 blocks to the west, Skinner has grown inenrollment and diversity.

In 2010-11, 349 students attended Skinner -- 88 percent qualified for government-subsidizedlunches, 86 percent were Latino and 10 percent were white. This past school year, enrollment hadrisen to 509, 65 percent met the free-and-reduced lunch criteria, 66 percent of students were Latinoand 25 percent of students were white.

Jesus Rodriguez, the current assistant principal at Trevista who will be the elementary school'sprincipal next year, said the neighborhood around the school has changed, but Trevista'sdemographics have not.

"It feels like segregation is perpetuated by choicing out," Rodriguez said. "We want to create a moreinclusive community, and we recognize there are a lot of conversations and healing that need tohappen with the community of families who have been there for longer and the new families comingin."

Three principals from different corners of the neighborhood have worked together to find a solutionto the boundary conundrum -- Rodriguez, Skinner principal Michelle Koyama and STRIVE Sunnysideprincipal Betsy Peterson.

Peterson said the principals endorsed the enrollment zone after concluding traditional boundarieswould segregate the community.

"Choice could keep schools segregated or integrated, depending on what choice families makes," shesaid. "Just the notion of the boundary itself making that choice -- that is something that made us veryuncomfortable."

STRIVE Sunnyside was 92 percent Hispanic in 2014-15; about 84 percent of students qualify for freeand reduced-price meals.

Chris Gibbons, CEO of the STRIVE network, said STRIVE supports enrollment zones because itmeans district-run and charter schools abide by the same rules -- no student is placed anywhere, andevery family makes an affirmative choice.

Emotions high

Emotions are high in the northwest Denver debate.

At STRIVE Sunnyside, students have written poetry, produced videos and led walking toursexpressing how gentrification has uprooted their lives.

One student, Stephanie Nava-Moreno, describes growing up playing hide-and-seek and watching herfather talk to other neighboring Mexican families. Her mother washed dishes at a French bistroacross the street.

Then the rent nearly doubled. The family moved to the south suburbs and Stephanie and her siblingsrode an RTD bus to their old neighborhood to attend school.

"I didn't want to start over," Stephanie said. "This school, it will help me get my grades up and helpme get into a good college."

Kate Berger, principal at STRIVE Excel, a high school on the North High School campus, framed therole gentrification has played in the northwest middle school conversation in blunt terms: "Thesepeople took everything from our kids -- and now they don't want to go to school with them."

Not a choice

Lisa Meeks, a 16-year Sunnyside resident, considers STRIVE a charter school "with a very specific

program for kids that are struggling." That, she said, is not a good fit for her 11-year-old daughterwho tested into a gifted and talented program.

"I take great exception calling it a choice," Meeks said of the process. "It's a lottery. We are allgambling with our children's education."

Meeks' daughter did get a spot in Skinner, her first choice, next fall.

Some residents -- including members of a working group that tackled the boundary issue --challenged the district's initial projection of 1,054 middle school students in northwest Denver in2020, an increase of just 33 students. DPS has since revised its figures to a range -- from 1,054 to to1,182.

But Brian Eschbacher, the district's director of planning and enrollment, said growth will remainmodest, citing factors including flat elementary school enrollment and new building projectstargeting young professionals and empty-nesters.

Boasberg cited "dramatic improvement" in northwest Denver middle schools in the past six years,gains he noted came after predictions that opening STRIVE middle schools in the neighborhoodwould hurt Skinner.

Skinner tests scores have gone up -- to take one example, 61 percent of sixth-graders scoredproficient or advanced on state reading tests in spring 2014, up from about 42 percent in 2011.

But within those numbers lie more troubling statistics: 95.5 percent of white students scoredproficient or advanced, while only 47.4 percent of Hispanic students did -- a gap of 48 percentagepoints.

Brent Wambach, parent of a 5-year-old and member of the northwest Denver working group, echoedother Sunnyside parents' frustration with the staff recommendation that Skinner boundary familiesget a guaranteed spot at the school.

"I think it took way away that ability for desegregation," he said. "By giving priority to children inone boundary area versus another, it says students in the Trevista boundary are not as equal."

Yesenia Robles: 303-954-1372, yrobles@denverpost.com

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_28305017/dps-looks-better-integrate-schools-through-enrollmen

t-zones?source=rss