Denver Public Schools will start looking this winter for principals for a new Montbello high school and feeder middle school. The schools are set to open in the fall of 2022.
The announcement Tuesday is the latest step as Denver moves ahead with reopening a comprehensive high school to serve far northeast Denver. The district closed the former Montbello High School in 2010 and replaced it with three smaller schools.
The decision was controversial. Many residents felt the district ignored their pleas to improve Montbello High rather than shut it down. Its closure left a hole in the community, they said.
A community committee convened by the district in 2017 recommended bringing back a comprehensive high school. The idea met with pushback from some of the small schools that opened in the wake of Montbello High’s closure. But after a representative survey showed 85% of 472 Montbello residents supported a comprehensive high school, Superintendent Susana Cordova pledged earlier this year to make it happen.
However, some parents in the neighborhood say their voices haven’t been heard.
Angela Tzul’s children attend one of the small schools on the Montbello campus. She and other Spanish-speaking parents said they feel left out of the decision-making process. Some didn’t learn about the plan until recently, even though meetings have been taking place for years.
“There is always another person making decisions about our children,” Tzul said.
The district has included $130 million for the project in a $795 million bond it will ask Denver voters to approve in November. Depending on what voters decide, the district could renovate the existing 1980 building or build one — or possibly two — new buildings.
Many details are still undecided, including what will happen to the three schools that are currently on the Montbello campus: STRIVE Prep Montbello middle school, Noel Community Arts School, and DCIS Montbello. Noel and DCIS serve grades 6 through 12. Whereas STRIVE Prep is an autonomous charter school, Noel and DCIS are run by the district.
On Tuesday, the district said the schools on the Montbello campus would continue to operate this school year and next. Planning for the design of the new comprehensive school and “overall vision” will begin this spring and continue through spring 2022, the district said.
Cordova said the district is also working on plans to identify a middle school that would feed students to the new comprehensive high school. It was unclear Tuesday whether the feeder middle school would be a brand new school or an existing one.
