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The vision for Robert F. Smith STEAM Academy was to provide as many as 500 Denver students with an education modeled after historically Black colleges. But five years after opening, the school has just 24 students and is set to close at the end of this school year.
Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero is recommending an operational closure, according to letters sent to families and staff this week. Denver schools are funded per student, and an operational closure is when a school’s enrollment is so low that it’s financially unsustainable. Unlike most school closures, operational closures do not require approval from the elected school board, a district spokesperson said.
Chelsey Moore’s son is a senior at Robert F. Smith. He enrolled there after the school board voted to close his previous school, the Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design, because of low enrollment. Moore said her son, who is not a student of color, found a “magical … standalone safe space” at Robert F. Smith.
Even though her son will graduate before the school closes, Moore is mourning the loss.
“They’re not just closing schools. They’re not just making economic choices,” Moore said. “They’re changing the trajectory and futures for students.”
In some ways, what happened at Robert F. Smith is emblematic of a bigger pattern. The number of small Denver schools is increasing as enrollment decreases. In line with a statewide trend, DPS’ student count dropped by 1,780 this fall, which was more than the district was expecting. Marrero has warned that more school closures are likely coming.
But Robert F. Smith also faced unique challenges.
The idea for the school came from a group of Black parents and sports coaches in far northeast Denver who were advocating for better schools in that region. Their advocacy followed a damning district-commissioned report that detailed the ways in which DPS was undeserving Black students and led the school board to pass a resolution pledging to do better.
In 2019, the board took the rare step of ordering the district to help the parent group strengthen an application it submitted to start a school modeled after historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. A few months later, the board greenlit the school to open, despite some members’ worries that district enrollment could soon decline.
Named for a DPS alumnus, Robert F. Smith struggled to enroll students. The school doesn’t have a boundary, so all of its students must proactively choose it. Before Robert F. Smith opened in the fall of 2021, DPS incorrectly listed its address on the district’s school choice website. Despite aiming to enroll 125 students that year, the school’s final count was 78, according to district data.
Enrollment increased to 135 students in 2022 but fell to just 44 in 2023 after the school moved to a new building 10 miles away. The school’s first location was a former office building that it shared with another school. That building didn’t have a kitchen, an auditorium, or sports fields — all of which students and the school’s founders said they’d been promised.
“The ninth grade biology classes have to come into the 10th grade chemistry room to do experiments because the biology class is the size of a prison cell,” former student Jessie Matthews told the school board in 2022.
But Robert F. Smith’s new location, a former elementary school, wasn’t ideal either, in part because it relocated the school out of far northeast Denver. The move was meant to give Robert F. Smith room to grow, but enrollment never got higher than about 90 students.
This year, the district cut ninth grade from Robert F. Smith after fewer than 20 freshmen applied, a district spokesperson said.
The school also endured a leadership change and friction between its founders and DPS. In 2022, the district banned founder Brandon Pryor, a parent and vocal district critic, from the grounds of Robert F. Smith and nearly all other DPS schools, citing Pryor’s treatment of district staff. Pryor sued DPS, and a judge ordered the district to lift the ban.
Pryor did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
In letters this week to Robert F. Smith families and staff, district officials promised to help students find new schools and teachers find new jobs. But Moore said she’s disappointed in how families found out about the closure. After receiving a vague message Tuesday about a meeting on Thursday to “discuss the future of the school” at which only a few parents showed up, families got another message Thursday announcing the operational closure.
“Most parents didn’t know until last night that the school was closing,” Moore said. “Our question was, ‘Why weren’t we informed?’ Why didn’t the district give us the opportunity to speak out for the school and help recruit? It’s a tight community and we would have stepped in to help.”
Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.