Thursday night the Jeffco School Board will finalize their budget for 2014-2015. One of the big fights is over whether to equalize funding for charter schools. Though charter schools are public schools, there is unfortunately a growing rift between charter and traditional public school parents.

The Denver Post Editorial Board published an article this morning titled “DPS Could Teach Jeffco a Lesson on Charter Schools.” They make the point that Denver Public Schools has found success providing high quality charter schools options for struggling populations. I have toured one of these high performing charter schools, Strive Prep, in northwest Denver. The population of the school mirrors the demographics of our schools in the Jefferson Articulation Area. Strive Prep schools have great success with lower-income, Latino students.

The Editorial Board finishes the article with these statements:

Instead of fighting about charters or their funding, Jeffco should look at Denver and how the district places charters with targeted programs in areas with low-performing schools.

Several struggling Jeffco schools are located near Denver’s border, serving the same populations. But on one side of the border, Denver students are given a choice of high-performing charter schools with targeted programs. On the other, Jeffco students are left with failing neighborhood schools.

The fight in Jeffco should be over how to help those kids, not over stopping charters from getting their rightful share of the pie.

What is the most important fight for Jeffco Schools?

Since the struggling Jeffco schools located near Denver’s border that are being referenced above are our Jefferson Articulation schools, I thought I would respond. (The Jefferson Articulation Area includes Molholm Elementary, Edgewater Elementary, Lumberg Elementary, Stevens Elementary, Wheat Ridge 5-8 and Jefferson High School.)

Our schools are facing an uphill battle against the effects of poverty

The average free/reduced lunch rate for the six schools in the Jefferson Articulation Area is 90.6%. This means that 9 out of 10 children in our area are growing up in a home where money is tight. The effects of poverty on childhood development are well documented.

Confront the brutal facts

Test scores in our area schools are low compared to test scores in suburban Jeffco schools. It is easy to notice the achievement gap. The average graduation rate at Jefferson High School over the last few years is 60% compared to the district average of 85%.  This means that if things don’t change, 12 of the students in my daughter’s 3rd grade class of 30 won’t graduate high school. Our schools are struggling.

Work together instead of pointing fingers

Yet we have great staff members, teachers and principals. With some new hires in the area, we have principals who can lead well and bring about change. Instead of pointing fingers at teachers and staff for low test scores, let’s work together to face the challenges of poverty that our children face. Let’s bring parents along as partners in their child’s education. Let’s give principals the freedom to innovate and learn from the best practices of Denver charter schools. A key DPS innovation leader told me, “Great schools have great principals.” This is true in charter schools AND traditional neighborhood schools. Let our principals lead!

Recognize what is already working

One of the main ideas of our developing cradle to career pathway is making data driven decisions. It is important to take a look at what is working in our area to raise student achievement. Whether it is the Summer of Early Literacy program or Open World Learning’s computer coding program, we are seeing initiatives that work. We just need to find the funds to bring them to all our Jefferson Articulation Area schools. We need to track the data showing the success of these programs. We also need to look at best practices of schools in DPS that serve populations like ours. Neighborhood schools can learn from the innovation practices in charter schools.

So do we need a charter school? 

I don’t know yet. First we need to look at the assets we already have in six schools and give principals and teachers room to innovate. We need to bring all community stakeholders to the table and work together to address the challenges of poverty.

Let’s rally together and fight for our children and families in northeast Lakewood, Edgewater and east Wheat Ridge who are struggling to overcome the challenges of poverty!

Let’s work together so our area can be a model community for students succeeding from cradle to career!

That’s a fight worth fighting!