More than 350 new Spanish-speaking students enrolled in Denver Public Schools within the first weeks after an influx of immigrants from South and Central American arrived in the Mile High City, school district data shows.

The Denver Gazette requested, under the Colorado Open Records Act, the number of newly enrolled Spanish-speaking students from Nov. 5, 2022 through Jan. 12, 2023.

The public information request also sought the number of enrollees during the same period for the two previous school years.

“We’ve seen an increase of our Spanish speakers who are new to the district,” Adrienne Endres, Denver Public Schools executive director multi-lingual education. “It’s been an uptick, but we’ve been prepared for it with the system that we have.”

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Endres added: “We’re pretty well positioned to support these students.”

The number of new enrollments in bilingual programs for Spanish-speaking students swelled from 251 last school year to 361 since the beginning of November – a 44% increase, enrollment data shows.

Despite the influx, the district actually experienced a greater enrollment surge last school year when DPS saw the number of Spanish speakers jump 89% from 133 in the 2020-2021 school year.

Support for these students includes programs that allow non-native speakers to read and write in Spanish while they learn English.

The district serves roughly 30,000 multi-lingual learners, 80% of whom are Spanish speakers.

It is difficult to know how many of the 361 newly enrolled Spanish-speaking students are among those who recently arrived in Denver from South and Central America because neither the Colorado Department of Education nor the school district tracks immigration status.

A U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1982 guarantees a public education to all children, regardless of their immigration status.

Colorado officials did not notify other cities before sending immigrants their way, emails show

To date, more than 4,500 immigrants – the majority from Venezuela – have come to Denver since Dec. 9. While state and city officials estimate the majority have stopped in Denver on their way to somewhere else, about 30% will stay.

The City and County of Denver’s Joint Information Center was not able to provide the number of school-age immigrant children among the new arrivals by press time.

A number of these newly arrived children are still living in Denver shelters. As of Feb. 8, 148 minors aged 3 to 16 were staying in shelters, city data shows.

“I think it’s important that they have the same opportunities as everyone else,” said Yoli Casas, an immigration advocate working to place school-age immigrants in school. “This is going to be their home.”

“We’ve got to get these kids in school. That’s a priority for me,” Casas said.

With more than 34,000 students who speak nearly 200 languages, Denver Public Schools serves the largest number of multi-lingual learners in the state, according to the district.

Roughly one in three district students speak Spanish at home, state data shows.

The district today has a number of programs to aid non-English speakers as they learn the language.

This wasn’t always the case, though.

In 1969, West High students walked out of class to protest discriminatory practices that included Spanish shaming. Four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Denver’s public schools were unconstitutionally segregated by race.

The district is under a consent decree that requires the school district to provide language services to its English Language Learners.