Author: Melanie Asmar

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.Jefferson County voters will decide in November whether to approve $133 million in tax increases to boost teacher salaries, fund more career and technical education classes, repair school buildings, and improve security systems.The Jeffco school board voted unanimously Thursday to put two measures on the Nov. 3 ballot. If passed, the measures would increase property taxes by about $42 per year on every $100,000 of a home’s value, according to a district spokesperson. For a…

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.Denver Public Schools’ standardized test scores have gone up under the watch of Superintendent Alex Marrero, but not enough to meet all of his goals.In 2022, a year into his tenure as superintendent, Marrero released his first-ever strategic plan. Among the plan’s academic goals: to increase the number of students scoring at grade level on math and literacy tests by 10 percentage points by 2026.None of Denver’s overall scores improved by 10 percentage points, data…

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.The Trump administration on Friday gave Jeffco Public Schools 10 days to change its policies on transgender students’ rights or risk losing federal funding.The federal Office for Civil Rights previously found that Jeffco’s policies on bathroom use, sports participation, and overnight accommodations violated Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination. Investigators said they found 61 boys’ names on Jeffco girls’ sports rosters. The district said the names belonged to managers, trainers, and mascots…

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.An all-gender bathroom in a Denver high school was at the center of the first sex discrimination investigation of the second Trump administration. A year and a half later, the federal Office for Civil Rights has taken no enforcement action. Neighboring Jeffco Public Schools, meanwhile, has been threatened with the loss of federal funds after investigators said they found boys’ names on girls’ sports rosters. Citing policies on locker room access and overnight field trips,…

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.When the federal education department announced in March that Jeffco Public Schools had in its view run afoul of anti-discrimination law, it cited one key piece of evidence: rosters indicating 61 boys were on girls’ sports teams. In a letter to the community this week, Colorado’s second largest school district said no boys were competing on those teams — and offered an explanation.“Some teams had male managers, trainers, or mascots — not athletes,” the letter…

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.Before a ban on cellphones, Jill Haffley said her classroom “was like Vegas.”“The cellphones were lighting up all the time,” said Haffley, who was a teacher for 30 years before being elected to the Colorado Springs School District 11 school board.Weary of the distractions, Haffley ran for office in 2023 on a platform of banning cellphones, and the 23,000-student District 11 did it starting in the fall of 2024. Haffley said that if you ask…

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.A growing number of Colorado colleges and universities are making pacts with school districts to offer their high school graduates automatic admission. At more selective colleges, eligibility is based on high schoolers’ grades. Less selective colleges may send all seniors a letter that says, “Congratulations! You’ve been accepted!”Direct admissions agreements, as they’re sometimes called, are meant to reduce the stress of applying to college, encourage students to stay in state, and help those who come…

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.Denver school board member Amy Klein Molk said she visited two schools recently. At one, she saw students working in small groups on lessons that align with the science of reading, which calls for phonics instruction and sounding out words. At the other, she didn’t. The difference between the two schools? The first served more affluent students.Klein Molk told that anecdote at a board meeting Thursday night during a discussion of a new policy that…

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.Despite pushback from parents, students, and teachers at a district-run elementary school that’s more than 100 years old, the Denver school board voted Thursday to allow a charter elementary school to move in next door.KIPP Sunshine Peak Elementary will relocate this fall from a cramped rented church building to a newer, more spacious building that already houses KIPP’s southwest Denver middle school. The middle school building is so close to district-run Valverde Elementary that the…

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero has long been critical of semi-autonomous innovation zones, and he doubled down this week by recommending that an elementary school not be allowed to join the district’s last remaining zone, the Luminary Learning Network.The students at Willow Elementary School are whiter and wealthier than the district as a whole, as is the case at half of the schools in the zone. Marrero said Willow’s request to join the zone was “privilege…