Jeffco may be closing another school but it wants society to help design the replacement

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Jeffco School District is considering closing a school serving grades 7-12 and transforming it into a specialized high school where students would study for specific career paths.

The draft of Jefferson Jr./sr. High School in Edgewater was discussed by the Jeffco School Board on Wednesday after it was first presented to the community last month.

The district does not call the proposed changes a school closure. Rather, it calls it a transition, although the building would probably not serve any students for at least a year and could earn fewer qualities when it reopens. Unlike before, district leaders say they have time to work on the plan and want the input of society. No final decision has been made.

“If we find that there is support for this plan that we can build something with the community for which there is genuine excitement and momentum,” the district may present a final recommendation to the board of directors in June or August, Claire said Thank you, Jeffco’s director of strategic initiatives. A closure would not happen until the school year 2026-27.

The draft plan is the result of a school boundary study that the district ordered last year, which looked at the long -term viability of the district’s current school feed patterns. The study found that the Jefferson articulation area served the fewest students in the district and was expected to continue to see registration. If registration in the fall showed evidence that the estimates were on track, the district had to come up with a plan, district leaders said.

Right now Jefferson Jr./sr. High earns 629 students, slightly up from last year’s official count of 594 students. A little more than 78% of school students qualify for subsidized meals, a measure of poverty.

The district’s border survey made a few short -term recommendations to border changes in the district and some long -term recommendations that could result in more school consolidations in the future.

Currently, Jeffco -leaders said they are not considering changes in other schools.

Compared to the other short-term recommendations, the border study did not suggest a special change in the Jefferson articulation area, but concluded that the limit was unsustainable due to expected falling registration. The study considered that Jefferson Jr./SR. High would only earn approx. 372 students.

The district has since adjusted these numbers and told the school board on Wednesday that it expects the school to serve 447 students in four years, still well under the school’s capacity.

The study also looked at the opportunity to rearrange school boundaries to smooth out registration. But it found that due to school choice that allows so many students to choose a school outside their neighborhood, border changes have little influence on balancing registration.

In the school year 2023-24, the survey found 40% of all Jeffco students chose a school outside their designated limit.

In the border with Jefferson Jr./sr. High found the district that 47% of families choose other middle or colleges.

“Just moving boundary lines without closing a school and eliminating this option is unlikely to force a change in registration behavior for our families,” the report states.

“We look at an unfortunate victim of the chosen privilege for families,” said Jeffco -board member Erin Kenworthy. “My concern in particular is that we see another title in -school essentially be abandoned because of the choice of society. It’s a really tough reality. “

District staff pointed out that demographics also play a major role in the neighborhood’s subscription decline.

“Edgewater himself as a city is changing really quickly,” said Lisa Relou, the district’s chief of staff. “Gentrification is happening at a quick pace.”

Relou also pointed out that the Denver School District right on the other side of Edgewater had recommended closure of nearby Colfax elementary for low registration. This school has been spared for now.

The study also found that the district serves approx. 91% of the children in the county, which means that registration is not only attributed to students who choose opportunities outside the district, such as private schools or home school.

Even the creation of specialized programming “does not necessarily draw new families to Jeffco; Instead, these programs simply encouraged more movement in the district itself, ”the study said.

Still Wednesday, the district staff talked about doing just that with Jefferson Jr./SR. High. The draft plan from the district would close the school in the school year 2026-27 and potentially reopen it a year later as a new option school for high school students.

The plan would also move students in sixth grade out of primary schools in the area, so by 2026-27 Lumberg and Edgewater Elementary Schools would only serve preschool through fifth grade. For secondary qualities, the neighborhood would merge with the Wheat Ridge articulation area, so students would give birth into Everitt Middle School and then to Wheat Ridge High School.

Over the next few months, the district plans to host “Co-Design Sessions” with the community to explore the plan in more detail with a focus on what kind of school Jefferson Jr./SR. High would come into being.

Two initial opportunities include a focus on career education, but students would give students the opportunity to participate in the newly designed school part-time, similar to the district’s Warren Tech model. The second option would be a career -focused school full time.

A board member characterized the proposal as “ambiguous.”

Member Danielle Varda said “It sounds a lot like closing a school, consolidating and finding out what to do with the building, just said in different ways. I think people may feel the same way. “

Superintendent Tracy Dorland said that because the district allows society to help it plan, leaders have not yet answered all the questions asked by families and members of the community.

“I feel like there has been no experience, especially in this society, but I believe in many of our communities where district management sits at the table and says, ‘Let’s talk about this, we do not have all the answers, ‘And people who actually believe in us and understand that the other side of the coin in the district that does not have all the answers is ambiguity and a need from district management for people to bring solutions and ideas, ”said Dorland. “It’s really undamaged territory.”

Jeffco School District, who serves 75,495 students, the second largest district in the state this year, has already closed 21 schools since 2021 due to large drops in registration.

At the time of these school closures, the district committed not to close any colleges and issued a moratorium for such closures, but this moratorium has ended.

According to the border survey, Jeffco still has 18 schools that are below 60% capacity. The study expected the number to grow to 28 schools in 2027-28. At the same time, seven schools are over 100% capacity. By 2027-28, the study expected that six schools were above capacity.

District leaders said that while the decision to close or transfer Jefferson Jr./SR. High has not been made, fear is that if the school’s enrollment problem is not addressed, in a few years, the district will have to close it when registration becomes unsustainable.

The first co-design meeting is scheduled for February 11.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the name of the school’s board member Erin Kenworthy.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado that covers K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at [email protected].

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site that covers educational changes in public schools.