Author: Melanie Asmar Chalkbeat Colorado

A small alternative high school in far northeast Denver could close if the school board follows a recommendation from district leaders. Denver Public Schools leaders are recommending that Montbello Career and Technical High School shutter at the end of this school year, partly to make room for another school. Montbello Career and Technical, which serves…

A year into his tenure, Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero is rolling out a new strategic plan to guide Colorado’s largest school district. The plan, which Marrero calls a road map, focuses on three broad goals: improving the student experience, improving the adult experience for educators and families, and replacing “ineffective, destructive systems” with…

At Evelyn Gonzalez’s Denver high school, the Italian teacher, who luckily speaks Spanish, filled in recently for the Spanish teacher, who was out sick for two days. So many students were absent from Haven Coleman’s history class at another high school that the teacher held off on teaching the day’s lesson rather than have to…

Denver Public Schools planned to use new funding to put at least a part-time nurse in every school building, but instead, 61 schools started the year last week without one. To fill the gaps, the district asked nurses to volunteer to cover multiple schools. The lack of school nurses is more severe than usual because…

About half of Denver students in grades three through eight opted out of state math and literacy tests last spring, far more opt-outs than in normal years.  As Denver Public Schools attempts to recover from a disrupted learning year, the low participation makes it hard to draw firm conclusions from the scores, which were much…

Virtual public comment at Denver school board meetings may be here to stay, even as board members consider resuming in-person meetings and students head back to school buildings. In a discussion Thursday, board members cited numerous advantages of allowing the public to weigh in on district business via Zoom and expressed support for continuing the…

In the midst of an ongoing pandemic, many sizable Colorado school districts are offering online learning programs this fall. But data shows very few students are choosing that option.  In 10 districts surveyed by Chalkbeat, only between 1% and 2% of students chose the fully remote option for the 2021-22 school year. That’s a dramatic…

Denver charter schools that received federal COVID-related small business loans last spring won’t need to forgo any future funding to make up for the $16 million in forgivable loans they received, district and charter officials said. An earlier agreement implied such a reconciliation would happen. It was never clear how the arrangement would work, only…