DPS brain drain

Burt Hubbard and Nancy Mitchell, Rocky Mountain News

Friday, April 13, 2007

About a fourth of school-age children ages 5 to 17 in Denver don't attend the city's public schools, according to a first-ever analysis of data by the Rocky Mountain News and the nonprofit Piton Foundation.

An estimated 15,700 students bypassed Denver Public Schools last year in favor of private or suburban schools they see as safer or academically superior.

In addition, about 4,600 Denver kids up to age 17 didn't go to school at all, for reasons as varied as home-schooling, dropping out or incarceration, the analysis found. School and city officials project that the number of Denver families abandoning public schools will grow through 2016, exacting a social and financial toll for the district and, some argue, the city itself.

The 20,300 potential students streaming away from DPS already cost the district more than $135 million a year in lost local and state funding.

Overall enrollment in DPS increased by more than 2,000 students from 2000 to 2006, mainly because of growth in preschool, kindergarten and charter schools, all of which bring less funding to DPS than do neighborhood schools.

But with a loss of more than 4,800 students in neighborhood schools during that period, DPS is filling, on average, only 68 percent of its space. The district has 31,000 empty seats out of 98,000.

This declining neighborhood school enrollment, which isn't keeping up with population growth, is forcing the district to confront one of the toughest, most divisive experiences a community can go through — closing some of its schools. A citizens group is meeting to consider that painful task.

The stakes are huge.

The city's health depends on a strong public school system to attract business and families. And Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper argues that the entire metro area benefits if DPS succeeds.

"The stark reality is if we ... take our school district back where every school has a quality education where we want to send our kids, it will have a dramatic (positive) effect on property values on every person's home," he said. "Not just in the city of Denver but in the metro area."

New state and federal laws in the past decade have mandated that public schools offer parents more choices for their children's education. The study by the Rocky, in partnership with the district and the Piton Foundation, is the first detailed investigation into the impact of choice on DPS.

The district has 63,300 Denver students age 5 to 17 enrolled, with the total growing to 73,000 when preschoolers, students who live in the suburbs and those 18 or older are included.

To track Denver's estimated 83,600 school-age children, the study analyzed data from DPS, suburban school districts, private schools and the U.S. Census Bureau. The study found:

• More than half the children in parts of affluent central and southeast Denver are not enrolled in DPS schools. In some of those neighborhoods, such as Belcaro, Country Club and Hilltop, more than half the children attend private schools.

That contrasts with northeast and west Denver, where incomes tend to be lower and 85 percent or more of all children are DPS students.

• The city's private school enrollment has remained relatively static for the past decade. That indicates the exodus of students from traditional neighborhood DPS schools appears aimed toward suburban districts, DPS' independently run charter schools and DPS magnet schools offering special programs to students districtwide.

• Almost half of the Denver students going to suburban schools come from southwest Denver. One neighborhood, Fort Logan, has more children enrolled in Jefferson County and other suburban districts than in Denver schools.

• Charter school enrollment has increased 300 percent in five years, with growth especially strong in northeast Denver and among black families. One in eight DPS students in northeast Denver attended a charter school in 2005-2006, compared with one in 10 students districtwide.

While opening doors for students, charter schools bring DPS only a fraction of the money it receives in state funding for students at traditional neighborhood schools. Independent groups operate charters under contract with DPS. By law, the district passes along to charters an average of 95 percent of the per-pupil funding for their students. DPS receives $6,794 per student in state and local money this year.

• In northwest Denver, many schools are half empty. Young professionals without kids and affluent families with preschoolers are gentrifying the area and aren't yet adding to public school enrollment. At the same time, the blue-collar Hispanic families living there are taking greater advantage of school choice for their children.

North High School and the three middle schools feeding into it are less than 60 percent full. One of the three — Horace Mann — is only 34 percent full.

• School choice is not only draining students from DPS, it is redistributing them within the district. About 40 percent now skip their neighborhood schools in favor of other options, from dual-language programs to performing arts magnets to back-to-basics charter schools.

Statistics comparable to those compiled for the Rocky study could not be found for other urban school districts across the country. But rough estimates by the National Center for Education Statistics using enrollment and census data show some large urban districts, such as Phoenix’s, capture a higher percentage of potential students than DPS does. Others, such as Detroit and Baltimore, capture even fewer than Denver.

DPS has recognized that it faces a daunting challenge in improving its schools fast enough to lure families who have more and more alternatives.

If the trends continue, a public school population that is heavily weighted toward low-income students could lose even more middle- and upper-income students. DPS already is predominantly Hispanic, and those students are more likely than black or Anglo students to come from poor families, based on percentages receiving free- or reduced-price lunches.

Twenty-six percent of Anglo children in Denver go to private schools, and middle-income black families are the least likely to attend their neighborhood schools, the analysis found.

"We don't want 100 percent of the Anglo community checking out altogether. Then we are in a death spiral," said DPS Superintendent Michael Bennet. "We want middle-class African-Americans just as much. We want everyone."

Farther afield

Neighborhood schools, once seen as the building blocks of communities, are no longer the first choice for a growing number of parents willing to go farther for what they believe is a better education.

"I personally think the traditional neighborhood school has come and gone," said Rob Stein, who is leaving Graland Country Day School, one of Denver's largest private schools, to reopen Manual High School. The troubled public high school was closed last year so it could be reformed.

"In this climate, all schools are schools of choice," Stein said.

Alex and Michele Wiseman see that on their block in the Lowry development in east Denver. Almost all the families drive their children to school — in different directions.

The Wisemans moved their two sons from DPS to a private school this fall.

"On my street, there are one, two, three ... seven children in school," Michele Wiseman said. "There's only two kids that go to the same school.

"And of the other children around me, the kids all go to different schools. Kids don't run around in the neighborhood like we did."

Interest in school choice appears to be growing in all parts of the city.

In west Denver, about a dozen Spanish-speaking parents braved icy roads in February to attend an hourlong class on their rights as parents and how to choose a school. The Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options offers the classes throughout the city.

In northwest Denver, about 50 parents crowded into a church on a cold February night to hear pitches from five DPS schools. The newly renamed Brown International Academy passed out color brochures about its academically rigorous International Baccalaureate Program. All of the parents were at least a year away from enrolling their children in kindergarten.

And in central Denver, Robert Koopmeiners and his wife, Brigitte Baehre, attended an informational breakfast with their daughter, Sophie, a sixth-grader at the private Denver Waldorf School. They came to hear about the Center for International Studies, DPS' newest magnet program for grades 6-12.

The family lives in northwest Denver, and dad has deemed the area's high school, North, "unacceptable."

"It's sad," he said. "You should be able to send your kid to the neighborhood school. It's a shame in this community because Denver is an educated city."

For longtime northwest Denver resident Tina Bosse, the choice for her son, Gabriel, came down to music. Gabriel was accepted into programs for gifted students at Edison Elementary in Denver and Hackberry Hill in Jefferson County. But the Jeffco school had a more advanced music program.

She now drives Gabriel 20 to 30 minutes each way to the school on West 76th Avenue. But the time-consuming drive shouldn't last much longer.

"We have our house up for sale," Bosse said. "We're thinking of getting a little bit closer to the schools in Jeffco."

Even the mayor and his wife, Helen Thorpe, are studying school choices to decide where to send their 4-year-old son, Teddy.

"Let me guarantee that my wife, like every wife and every father, is all over that," Hickenlooper said. "To her whether a school is a charter school, a public school or a neighborhood private school, she's going to pick the school that's best. She doesn't care who the mayor is."

Contact Nancy Mitchell at mitchelln@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5245. Contact Burt Hubbard at hubbardb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5107. Contact Judy DeHaas at dehaasj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2916