JOHNSON: Escuela de Guadalupe finds funds to stay open

By Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

I would not have bet five pennies that David Carr could pull it off.

"The last time I was sitting here talking with you," the 38-year-old man said, looking exhausted, leaning back hard in his chair and running his fingers through his hair, "I didn't really think I would, either."

All that he had to do that day in mid-October was to somehow come up with about $250,000 over the next four weeks to keep academically outstanding but financially strapped Escuela de Guadalupe elementary school on Denver's northwest side from shutting its doors.

Desperate parents that week were planning garage and bake sales. Maybe they could cobble together some tamales, cakes and the like and sell them door to door. The effort seemed as sad as it was doomed to failure.

And then, Christmas arrived a month early.

Word of the school's plight in this space and elsewhere triggered a flood of unexpected cash, including four separate gifts of $50,000 each.

"Three of the four had never given to the school before, and I'm pretty sure none of them had known virtually anything about us," David Carr, the school's president, said.

The school tried everything, and as of Halloween, had raised about $20,000. Its "SOS" entertainment event Nov. 19 at the Museo de las Americas was attended by about 150 people and raised another $18,000.

Remember the parents?

"Our parents set the tone," David Carr said. "They engaged at a much higher level than ever before, higher than even I expected they would."

People he had never heard of began dropping off money.

He tells of a group of parents, all of them housekeepers, who for the first time approached their employers. Could they help?

"That, alone," David Carr said, "resulted in over $7,000 of donations."

The sale of tamales and menudo at nearby Our Lady of Guadalupe Church raised $1,200. A parent-organized garage sale at the school took in another $1,400.

"The parents knew we were exploring charter school plans, and it just horrified them," he said. "They knew they had to face up to the fact that this school may not be in existence next year. They went to work."

It was a good move. Denver Public Schools on Nov. 19 denied Escuela de Guadalupe's charter application because of legal concerns.

The school's board of trustees on Friday agreed after a five-hour meeting to keep the school open another year.

The school, after all, in just over one month, had raised slightly more than $320,000.

The faculty and staff were notified of the decision on Monday, David Carr said. There were tears.

"In a lot of ways, I still can't believe it," he said. "Everything happened so fast. Each of our major donors told us separately, 'Here is a school that works, and those that work ought to stay around.' "

The school at 34th Avenue and Pecos Street, a tiny, two-story brick structure, was created 10 years ago to serve children of the poorest in the neighborhood, the idea being to get them out of the circle of poverty by directing them away from the educational and social pitfalls that lurk in many urban schools.

Today, 71 percent of those enrolled qualify for the free or highly subsidized school lunch program. Only a handful pay full tuition.

Each of the 103 students is taught in English and Spanish. Thanks to a withering academic workload, most students test well beyond grade level.

It is, in short, a marvelous school. For it to have been shuttered, well, that would have been tragic.

Yet, what of next year?

The board of trustees, David Carr said, agreed Friday to three steps aimed at avoiding the need for another miracle. It would expand the board from 12 to 20, increasing the number of people doing fundraising work.

The school will hire a staff member whose sole job will be coordinating fundraising. And it will open a few more spaces for families whose children can afford full tuition.

Yes, there is a waiting list at Escuela de Guadalupe.

"In the past," David Carr said, "we turned some of those families away as part of our mission to be in service to those with financial difficulty."

Yet the board, he added, is committed to its core of low-income families. In other words, Escuela de Guadalupe will never become an elitist school.

"No, when our donors stepped forward, they liked our commitment. And they put the ball back into our court. We never want to go through this again. We think our plan commits us to succeeding."

As we say our goodbyes, David Carr stops me and tells me how the kids all went to church on Thursday, just to pray that the board on Friday would make the right decision, whatever that might be.

"And on Monday when the announcement that we were staying open was made, for our kids who had put so much into this, the day was, well, just school.

"The focus has never gotten off that."