A controversial Afrocentric charter school for Black students was approved by the Denver school boardhttps://www.denverpost.com/2022/09/23/5280-freedom-schoool-denver-dps-charter/, after initially rejecting the proposal. The board worried that the charter would not attract enough students to be viable. Other charters in Denver have closed because of declining enrollment. If you read the comments that follow the article, the main theme of writers is shock that the Denver school board would open a racially segregated school.
The Denver Post reported:
After the state ordered Denver Public Schools to reconsider a charter school centering Black students and culture, the school board Thursday approved the school to open next fall.
But the approval comes with conditions, including that 5280 Freedom School must fill all of its open seats in its first year. The school plans to open with 52 students in kindergarten and first grade, and add grades each year up to fifth grade.
Denver schools are funded per pupil, and other new charter schools have had to delay opening because they didn’t enroll enough students. Existing charter schools have closed because their enrollment declined, and the district is considering closing some of its own schools due to low student counts.
The school board initially rejected the 5280 Freedom School for fear it would struggle to attract enough students to be financially viable….Last month, the State Board of Education ordered Denver to reconsider its decision. State Board members said it was unfair to assume that 5280 Freedom School would face the same challenges as other charters.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Schools that are funded with public money shouldn’t focus on one element of the population based on ethnicity or religion. Publicly funded schools should not be encouraging tribalism.
What are the negative effects of tribalism (us vs them affiliations)?
“These negative aspects of tribalism are often fueled by competition and the perception of a common threat. They promote fear, anxiety, and prejudice, all of which make us more susceptible to fake news, propaganda, and conflict. Tribalism can take many forms in our modern society.”
Click to access Why-We-Hate-Tribalism-Classroom-Activity.pdf
Oakland tried this. It crashed and burned after 18 months. An interesting concept, but not clear that it was even legal to only admit boys. What our local families don’t understand about market-based education is that when you keep churning schools and opening new ones, it’s a zero sum game. Every school that opens sucks enrollment from another school, which causes more damage to those families. That’s particularly true of charters and they have no idea of the risk they take at a new underenrolled charter school. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Oakland-school-serving-black-boys-to-shut-down-5080082.php?cmpid=twitter
Well said! These charter operators get to gamble with public money and little to no accountability while the public schools often cut services to pay for charter drain. It’s a downward spiral for public schools when states fail to consider the impact of all the loses from “fly by night” charter schools.
They aren’t “gambling” with public money.
They are stealing it.
I got a little background on the proposed school from a Chalkbeat article, which led me to other articles. 5280 Freedom School has been a 2-week summer camp for the last 5 yrs, founded by a former DPS teacher. It started as a half-day with 14 kids, and grew to a full-day camp with 60+ and a waiting list (still only 2 summer weeks), campers ranging from 5-14 y.o. They have a FB page. Videos and photos show the camp program to be more of a school than what I think of a summer camp.
It appears to be popular with families, who were quoted as wishing they had it all year round, i.e., as a school. A counselor says many of their campers are the only or one of very few blacks in their pubschs, and the founder mentions being the only black teacher at her DPS school. Denver has about 9% Afro-American population. I calculated that to get 26 students each for K and 1st, they would need to attract 4% of the total black pubsch enrollment for those grade levels.
I kind of get it– but have to think it makes more sense to do fund-raising & grant applications– grow camp size & sessions. Bet they could get guidance on that from the local BLM chapter (the school is named after it).
An Afrocentric school with a mostly white staff, what could possibly go wrong?
I must have missed that, rt. Saw only black staff in pix/ articles. Or do you mean, that’s what it would end up being, once a school?
Racism, sexism, ableism, nationalism, religious fundamentalism (any religious beliefs). . . not good to base public schools on those concepts.
In other words, not a good idea to base public schools on Trumpism or DeSantism.
I have no problem with language-immersion schools, but cultural immersion is at the very least worrying. The solution is obvious. A well-rounded curriculum for all students that acknowledges and recognizes the multiplicity of Black experience in and influence on American history. That should be in all schools. But this CRT mythology/ideology gets in the way.
Some of the dual-language bilingual programs have been very successful, but those are programs in which English dominant and non-English students work together to learn content in both languages. These programs are fairly rare. Many bilingual programs that isolate students from the mainstream have been criticized when they fail to integrate students into the school at large. Students should be expected to transition into the regular academic programs at some point, or students become more segregated.
Completely agree.