McAuliffe To Expand At Smiley Campus
Middle School To Grow To 1,080 Students Over The Next Three Years
In December, Denver Public Schools held a series of meetings in Park Hill and Stapleton to discuss how the Smiley building at 26th and Holly could be used to address capacity issues in the middle school enrollment zone.
The Greater Park Hill Stapleton Enrollment Zone is comprised of five middle schools: Bill Roberts, Denver Discovery School, DSST Conservatory Green, DSST Stapleton and McAuliffe. As has been detailed in these pages over the past year, students living within the zone’s enrollment boundary are guaranteed a seat at one of the five schools – but not necessarily the one they prefer.
As schools were breaking up for the winter holiday, Denver Public Schools officials promised more meetings in January to hear what the community wanted. However, on Jan. 1, DPS released a letter stating it had decided to expand McAuliffe. A meeting was held five days later during which McAuliffe Principal Kurt Dennis explained how the school would grow from its current 832 students to a total of 1,080 over the next three years.
Introducing the “house” system
With such a huge number of students, Dennis plans to divide the school into six “houses” to create a small community feeling within a big school at the Smiley campus. There will be two houses of 180 students per grade. Each house will have eight teachers, an administrator and a counselor.
The house system is an established model at both Harvard and Yale, where residential colleges or houses divide the student body into smaller, manageable groups. The model has been replicated in secondary schools elsewhere, and Dennis mentioned the fabled Hogwarts from the Harry Potter series as an example.
House assignment will not be left to the machinations of a sorting hat, however. Dennis said McAuliffe staff would purposefully assign students to create houses that are balanced by academic achievement, socio-economic and ethic lines.
Parents in attendance asked a multitude of questions, ranging from the logistics of lunch lines, teacher-student ratios, athletics and bus schedules. Although challenges lay ahead, Dennis’ plan seemed to resonate positively with most.
Current McAuliffe students will not be divided in houses, said Dennis.
It’s a car culture
For Park Hill residents, two questions hit closer to home: traffic and access to the school.
An increase in the size of McAuliffe’s student body will result in an increase in car and school bus circulation near and around the school. Already plagued by poor circulation at the school’s start and end times, some people expressed concern for the area’s traffic congestion.
“I would love to make Holly a one-way street,” Dennis said, referencing the residential street that runs in front of the school. “We’ve proposed this to the city multiple times.” But, he noted, “We get lots of resistance.” That is perhaps because Holly is an important north-south artery within Park Hill, linking the neighborhood to the Hiawatha Davis Recreation Center, Boys & Girls Club, and public library.
Dennis agreed that some of the traffic problems might not go away: “When people built these schools, people didn’t drive. It’s a car culture now.”
But Park Hill residents have consistently asked for a middle school to which they can walk or bike. Indeed, it is heartening to see many students bike from both Stapleton and Park Hill to the school.
Denver has embraced biking through its many bike lanes, the B-cycle program, and many people commute to work on their bikes, even through the snow. It is not so much “car culture” that has pushed us to drive our children to school, however. Larger enrollment zones and choice force residents, for better or worse, to put their children on school buses or drive them to school.
Still no guaranteed access
Park Hill parents have continued to express frustration at not having guaranteed access to the only school in the enrollment zone that is located in the Park Hill neighborhood.
Although the decision to have an enrollment zone came from the top down, and three DPS Board members, Landri Taylor, Happy Haynes and Mike Johnson, were in attendance, none stepped up to address the issue during the January meeting. Neither did Alyssa Whitehead-Bust, who is the Chief Academic and Innovation Officer for DPS and also a Park Hill resident.
Dennis was left to defend the district’s decision. He said that he understood the frustration and repeated the district’s leitmotiv, or continuing theme: when Smiley Middle School was in operation at the facility up until two years ago, 80 percent of Park Hill students choiced out. So, in order to bring McAuliffe in the neighborhood, it needed to be a community school — not a neighborhood school.
“The only way to have diverse schools is to integrate Stapleton, North and South Park Hill,” said Dennis.
By the time a fourth parent and longtime Park Hill resident brought up her frustration, Dennis responded, “If you live in Park Hill, you’re in the Golden Triangle. Your property values are going through the roof and it’s tied to the schools. If you go to Park Hill Elementary, one of these middle schools and then East, you’re set.”
But Park Hill Elementary is not the only elementary school in the neighborhood. Stedman, Smith, Hallet and Roots are all part of the elementary network – and some are struggling and in need of better support and funding to help them provide for their students. Also, East is not the only assigned high school. Northfield High School in Stapleton is the boundary school for a section of East Park Hill.
Park Hill parent Anne Koshio was taken aback by Dennis’ brusque reply, and the applause it solicited. “I have never seen the issue of attendance at McAuliffe being Stapleton versus Park Hill,” Koshio said in an interview with Greater Park Hill News.
“I have taken issue with Smiley being converted from a neighborhood school into a school that is random lottery to attend,” said Koshio, who lives a block from the Smiley Campus. “But never has it been a competition or a reason to be upset with the Stapleton community. That’s not what this is about, and I am really disturbed and upset to find out that that is what it has become.”
The bigger property values picture
If property values have gone up because of the schools, a random survey of 20 properties for sales in the 80207 ZIP code does not show it. Although the DPS website correctly lists all assigned schools for any Denver address, realtors identify a variety of educational options available.
Of the 20 listings surveyed, only one listed East as the assigned high school. 12 listed Venture Prep and three listed Denver School of the Arts. For middle schools, only two out of 20 listed McAuliffe. However, that is also erroneous, as McAuliffe is not an assigned school. Listing the enrollment zone would be the appropriate entry.
Local realtors show a better understanding of the areas’ schools, although some list McAuliffe as the assigned middle school, perhaps giving false hope to prospective homebuyers.
Park Hill home values have gone up since the Stapleton airport moved and Denver International Airport was opened in 1995 as a result of four Park Hill residents who filed a lawsuit against the City and County of Denver in 1981. Values dipped during the recession, and now that the economy has picked up, home values have also rebounded.
It is fair to say that Park Hill’s classic architecture and proximity to downtown are part of what make it such an attractive neighborhood. Given that it has become difficult to predict a DPS school’s future beyond a two-year window, one should take heed before moving into any neighborhood “for its schools.”
Note: For a history of the Park Hill lawsuit in regards to the Stapleton airport, see http://greaterparkhill.org/2012/07/park-hill-airport-lawsuit-files-reach-the-denver-public-library-archives/
Lynn Kalinauskas is the Education Chair for Greater Park Hill Community, Inc.