"We're working hard to give all of our families one great system of schools and a simple path to access all of them."
Dear Team DPS,
Supt. Tom Boasberg
This is National School Choice Week, and we're proud to be recognized as a leader in increasing the number of quality schools our families have to choose from and in empowering them to find the right school for their child. A critical component of this is ensuring that there is equity and collaboration among the public schools serving our children, regardless of whether those public schools are district-run or charter.
During our choice period (which ends Jan. 31), we urge parents to start first with looking at their neighborhood schools. Our central goal of our strategic Denver Plan is to have Great Schools in Every Neighborhood. Through a combination of talented teachers and school leaders, school supports and, where necessary, school turnaround efforts, we are seeing significantly improved schools in all neighborhoods in the city, which has caused Denver over the last decade to experience the most rapid enrollment and academic growth of any major city school district.
A key element of improving school choice has been making the system easier and more efficient for our parents. We were one of the country's first districts to go to a single streamlined choice system in which all schools play by the same enrollment rules and parents use a single form to choose among any school -- district-run or charter -- in Denver. That has made the school choice system more equitable and accessible for families.
We also have high expectations of service for all our public schools. In many school districts, charter schools are not held to the same enrollment expectations as district-run schools. In Denver, that is not the case.
Learn three easy steps for navigating SchoolChoice in this video.
All our district-run and charter schools enroll students who move in the middle of the school year; they are expected to serve students with severe disabilities; they provide necessary supports to English-language learners; they follow the same practices with regard to expulsions and transfers. We require all of our schools to provide equitable service in all of these areas. And our service commitment means providing district facilities and equitable funding to all of our schools and looking for innovative ways to extend transportation service to put more schools within our families' reach.
School choice should not be a choice between two different school systems operating under two different sets of expectations. That's not healthy for the community. It's not equitable. And it's not putting the needs of students first. We're working hard to give all of our families one great system of schools and a simple path to access all of them.
Best,
Tom
Pictured above: Families explore great schools in the Far Northeast during a recent DPS regional expo.
Graduation Rates Double for Latino Students
As graduation rates continue to increase across the district -- with DPS boasting the greatest on-time graduation growth of anywhere in Colorado -- more of our Latino students than ever before are walking across the graduation stage, ready for college and career. With a steady increase, Latino graduation rates have grown from 30% in 2007 to 63.3% in 2015-16, an impressive gain of 33 points.
More students are also graduating in Southwest Denver than in the past. Since 2011-12, the number of on-time high school graduates in the region has improved by more than 200 students -- from 562 students to 781 in the spring of 2016. Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy (KCAA) is one of the schools to see these improvements. Last school year, KCAA ushered 100% of its graduating seniors across the commencement stage.
Watch this DPS Features video to learn more about the positive graduation trends happening at KCAA and around DPS.
What's Happening with the 2016 Mill Levy? Read All About It!
Thanks to Denver voters, $56.6 million in mill levy funding was approved in November that will benefit our kids, our educators and our schools. Learn more about how these funds will be invested to support our students in these one-page handouts:
Overview: Why we're targeting some funds to our neediest students, though all schools will benefit.
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