In its 2022 Strategic Roadmap, Denver Public Schools leaders boast: “We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need in order to do this.”
The question we ask is: Are Black children not of interest to you?
We are volunteers with an emergent group of parents and allies in Denver, Parents Demand Justice, who believe Denver Public Schools (DPS) must become a much more educationally just system. In recent weeks, our volunteers have produced three reports, which show how unjust DPS’s academic outcomes have been for different student groups since the Roadmap’s release three years ago.
Today, our group is issuing a new report examining the commitments DPS made to Black students in 2019’s Black Excellence Resolution (BER).
Back in 2019, the two of us were not on the same “side” about much related to DPS, but the night the Board passed the BER, we stood side-by-side in the standing-room only gymnasium where the Board meeting was held. When the Board unanimously passed the BER, we turned and hugged each other: an activist Black parent and a white senior leader in the district.
We both saw a need for the BER and its fundamental promise: DPS will serve Black students much, much better. Our new report shows that DPS has not kept its commitments, on nearly every measure the BER centralized.
DPS still allows Black children to be overrepresented in out-of-school suspensions and in special education. The system still allows Black children to be underrepresented in many rigorous programs. DPS is still less likely to graduate Black students on time, compared to their white peers. DPS is still an environment where Black students are less likely to report feeling safe and supported at school than their white peers.
These findings tell us nothing about Black children who are, indeed, excellent. They do, however, tell us some things about the Denver Public Schools and which student groups it finds “of interest.”
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The Black-freedom struggle continues today, right here in Denver, in the classrooms of our public schools and in the lives of our city’s Black children. As the late civil rights leader Julian Bond once said, “Violence is Black children going to school for 12 years and receiving six years’ worth of education.”
We must all demand better from DPS.
Brandon Pryor is a DPS parent and community activist. Jennifer Holladay is a former DPS administrator and former DPS parent.
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