Denver’s school board voted 4-2 on Thursday to close Robert F. Smith STEAM Academy, the HBCU-style high school that Black parents and coaches in far northeast Denver pushed the district to create. It will shut at the end of this school year. It has 24 students.
The school exists because of a finding about Black children. Its founders pressed for it after a district report detailed how Denver Public Schools underserved Black students, and in 2019 the board directed the district to help strengthen the application for a school modeled on historically Black colleges. It opened in 2021, named for DPS alumnus Robert F. Smith.
Chalkbeat Colorado reports that the school started in a shared former office building with no kitchen, no auditorium and no sports fields. In late 2022 the district moved it about 10 miles away to the former Barrett Elementary building, out of the far northeast neighborhoods where its families lived. Enrollment fell to 44 in 2023. This year the district cut ninth grade after fewer than 20 freshmen applied.
Denver funds schools per student, and 24 students cannot carry a building. Superintendent Alex Marrero called the closure “precedent setting” and said, “potentially we have some more (school) consolidations coming.” That is the district’s case: a school this small cannot offer what students need.
Board Vice President Monica Hunter and member John Youngquist voted no. Youngquist called the situation “heartbreaking” and said the district should step in earlier “instead of what feels sometimes like allowing something to happen until there’s no other decision.”
That is the part the district has to answer for. The same district that cited Black students’ needs to justify the school then moved it away from the families who had asked for it, and now cites the enrollment drop that followed the move. Parent Chelsey Moore put the cost plainly: “They’re not just closing schools…They’re changing the trajectory and futures for students.”
Chalkbeat’s report on the vote did not say what happens to the current 24 students.
Marrero has warned that more consolidations are coming. Black families in Denver should ask the board now which schools are next, and whether the district will stop moving the schools they asked for away from them.
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