Sharing the Pain
Park Hill and Stapleton Frustrated Over Middle School Options
Park Hill families feel they are being pushed out of the only middle school in the neighborhood, while Stapleton parents feel McAuliffe has been hijacked from them.
McAuliffe, which moved from Stapleton to the Smiley Campus in Park Hill this year, is the only traditional and comprehensive middle school in the Park Hill Stapleton enrollment zone. What is the solution?
A tale of two neighborhoods
On April 8, Denver Public Schools Superintendent Tom Boasberg and DPS staff hosted a meeting at Stedman Elementary School for a select group representing both communities.
For Park Hill families, 50 percent of whom chose McAuliffe as their top choice, the fact that only one of the five schools in the middle school enrollment zone is situated in the neighborhood is a problem.
As detailed in the April issue of the Greater Park Hill News, given the popularity of McAuliffe, many families have not been able to access it for their rising 6th graders. That means they will be sending their children on a bus to a middle school in Stapleton.
For Stapleton families, McAuliffe is also the number one choice. 57 percent of Stapleton families requested McAuliffe as their first choice this year. The next highest demand was DSST Stapleton with 13 percent. Stapleton families often drive or bus their children into Park Hill. An additional hardship for some Stapleton families is that even though DPS promised transportation to all schools in the zone, some areas of Stapleton are not serviced.
Capacity is already an issue
In community meetings leading up to the vote for the enrollment zone, questions about capacity had been raised.
On April 16, 2013, one Stapleton resident, frustrated with the elementary choice process in the neighborhood, said, “We are concerned that in middle school we’ll be dealing with choice all over again, separating our kids, opening to another neighborhood, when we already have capacity issues.”
Will Lee-Ashley, now DPS chief of staff, responded, “Staying ahead of the capacity issue is the key and there will be enough capacity.”
On May 7, 2013, at another such meeting, Superintendent Boasberg stated, “I expect those who want to go to McAuliffe will be able to go to McAuliffe.”
Now, not even one full year in, capacity is indeed an issue.
If there is one thing both Park Hill and Stapleton parents agreed on at the meeting at Stedman: they share a similar problem.
A contentious process
Boasberg opened the conversation by lauding the community engagement process that led to the closing of Smiley Middle School and the subsequent move of McAuliffe into the building. He said the current situation “was the result of a two-year community conversation that generated a tremendous amount of support from Stapleton and Park Hill.”
Boasberg may feel the results of the community meetings were successful, but others have described the process as an unmitigated disaster.
In November 2012, Park Hill parent Doug Laird vented in a letter to the superintendent:
“It is truly a rare event in my 27 years of professional life that I’ve witnessed a comparable level of incompetence augmented by condescending delivery. The meeting realistically had 20 minutes of content but was scheduled for an hour, yet dragged on for 1-½ hours … In the end it left the audience more confused and frustrated, all the while breeding more distrust of the DPS administration.”
Frustration on both sides of Quebec
Looking back at the events of the last four years, from a top-down perspective, the reorganization of schools may be seen as a success. Looking at it from the bottom-up, from the communities’ perspectives, there is a lot of frustration on both sides of the Quebec Street boundary that separates Park Hill from Stapleton.
It the April 8 meeting, Boasberg said he does not want to see Park Hill students taking a bus for as long as 90 minutes a day to attend DSST Conservatory Green in Stapleton. But he offered no potential solutions to the neighborhood versus transportation issue.
During the meeting, Park Hill parent Leanne Kolman Weinshenker voiced disappointment that her daughter had not gotten her first choice of attending McAuliffe. Her daughter, she stated, will have to walk to McAuliffe with her friends, wave goodbye to them as they enter the school, and from there, hop on a bus to attend another school where she knows no one.
Following the meeting, Weinshenker commented, “While Boasberg stressed that increasing the size of McAuliffe any further would compromise quality for students, I feel that taking students out of their community and their peer group could impact their quality to a greater degree.”
Boasberg’s solution is to create a new middle school in Park Hill, to open in 2016. But he did not elaborate any concrete plans, including a location for such a school. He said once a new principal was selected, he/she could work with the community to design the school from the bottom up, a process that should begin as soon as next month.
At the meeting one Stapleton parent observed that students in both communities are upset and want a school within walking or biking distance. “Stapleton needs a large comprehensive middle school to serve its population,” the parent said. Opening up another small middle school in Stapleton, she said, would not alleviate the pressure on McAuliffe.
Several parents agreed. A comprehensive middle school in Stapleton could solve the problem for both communities, giving Park Hill residents more access at McAuliffe while at the same time creating a school Stapleton residents want. The superintendent, however, was adamant that the new middle school would be in Park Hill.
Is there space within Park Hill to build a large-capacity middle school? Probably not. DPS sold Gove Middle School, at Colorado Boulevard and 14th Avenue in 2011. The building, which has since been torn down, included a gym, a beautiful auditorium, everything a middle school needs.
Today’s reality is that a new school could likely be another boutique middle school with a specialized program and/or an existing building will need to be re-purposed.
Fearing the Choice process
In a letter to DPS Board president Happy Haynes, Park Hill parent Lucy Dwight weighed in with frustration over the current process of how students choose – and are selected to attend middle schools within the Stapleton/Park Hill Zone.
“There was confusion among many families about whether we would lose our guarantee to one of the boundary schools if we put down any out-of-boundary schools,” Dwight wrote.
In addition to confusion, this year some parents did not receive a letter from the Choice Office about their school assignment, a problem that has been recurring over the years.
Dwight also underlined the lack of equity for parents who must participate in the Round 2 Choice process: “The Round 2 choice process requires that parents go to prospective schools in person, first come/first serve. For working parents, single parents, and those without transportation, this is far too burdensome.
“I know the logistics of this are complicated, but this is a major issue for access to schools of choice for low-income families, in my view, and should be a very high priority for DPS.”
Show of force is critical
Currently, more Stapleton families are getting into McAuliffe than Park Hill families. In addition, Stapleton has a preferred access to Bill Roberts (a K-8 school in the zone), as the school’s elementary students are given priority when accessing the middle school.
At the April 8 meeting Park Hill parent Tammi Holloway reminded the group that, “In the first community meetings about this issue Park Hill families dropped off for whatever reason as the process continued. Their attendance dwindled from the initial or early meetings to the subsequent meetings a year later.”
If Park Hill residents want a voice in the schools that their children will attend – or not – they need to show up at the meetings and state clearly what they want. If Park Hill is not vocal as a community and a group, it could lose more than seats at McAuliffe.
Lynn Kalinauskas is chair of the education committee for Greater Park Hill Community, Inc.
Boasberg: East High School Boundaries ‘Will Not Change’
Throughout the process of creating the middle school enrollment zone and the boundary for the new high school in Stapleton, Park Hill families have raised concerns about the boundary for East High School.
The question was brought up again at the April 8 meeting.
Denver Public Schools Superintendent Tom Boasberg stated clearly, “East boundary has been there for 20 years, has not changed, and will not change.”