DENVER — For many migrant families new to Colorado, settling in includes enrolling their kids in school.
Denver Public Schools has taken in many of these new-to-country students. Adrienne Endres, the district's Executive Director of Multilingual Education, said they’re happy to do so. But with new student enrollment surging after a key funding cutoff point from the state has passed, paying for it could get tricky.
The district welcomes new students every year, but this isn't just any year.
"This is unprecedented,” Endres said. "This year has been dramatically different in both the quantity and the rate at which they've arrived."
The majority of the district's new students are migrant children, coming to Denver for a new life.
"I really try not to call it a crisis,” Endres said. “We're talking about children in our schools and we want them there. And it is a crisis on a systems level and how do we adjust our systems to meet this need."
Last January, Endres said, they saw migrant children showing up to enroll at DPS schools here and there. Now, she said, they can get 60 kids in a week.
"We have more kids than we have space for. And so we are quickly trying to hire, adjust programming, get more resources into buildings to support all these kids. We want them in our schools,” Endres said.
Since the start of the school year, DPS has enrolled 2,435 students.
"And we do a lot of problem solving, especially with the current influx of new arrivals. Problem solving around having enough seats, having enough teachers, having enough materials,” Endres said.
They’re stretching funds thin, too.
Like other districts, DPS gets funding from the state on a per-student level. Student enrollment at schools is counted every year in October.
"So in a typical year, after October count, which the cutoff date this year is Oct. 2, we don't receive funding for students that come after that point. That's the same this year as far as we know. We have not received any additional funding. We have gotten about 1,200 new-to-country students since Oct. 2,” Endres said. “So we as a district are filling the gap."
Right now, DPS said they can and will be picking up the tab for the influx of migrant children joining the district.
Endres said they're happy to have them.
"Speaking for our educators and our teachers, kids have been welcomed with so much joy and love. And that doesn't make it less hard,” Endres said.
The district is hiring more staff, shifting resources, and doing anything they can to meet their new students' needs, Endres said.
"Are they going to stay? We don't know. But they're here now. And while they're here, they're ours,” Endres said. “And so we need to stand everything up to be able to meet their needs.”
9NEWS asked the Colorado Department of Education about funding concerns surrounding new student enrollment surges past the state funding cutoff point. They sent back this statement:
“We are committed to working with our district and school teams to serve our state's multilingual learners and are in the process of gathering data on newcomer student enrollment since October 2023. This information will help us ensure that districts have the support they need to effectively serve their new students. We recognize the urgency of the financial impact of the influx of students and are working to identify solutions given the constraints of the use of the October count for school funding. We have also convened a statewide professional learning cohort to foster the sharing of best practices for supporting multilingual students and families.”
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