DENVER — Denver Public Schools (DPS) says they’re now averaging about 200 new-to-country students each week, as the district continues to deal with influx of migrants to Colorado.
Since the start of the year, DPS says just over 3,000 new students have enrolled in the district. The district says the majority have come in after the annual October pupil count, which determines how much money the district receives from the state.
“Because of that, we are missing out on some money that we would have received from the state had these students arrived before then,” Communications Director Scott Pribble said. “And that’s about $17.5 million that we’ve been missing out on.”
That number equates to just over 1% of the district’s $1.3 billion budget, but Pribble says the district is handling the situation surprisingly well.
“Obviously, this was not something we anticipated when we did our budget cycle last year at this time, but it’s something we’ve been able to adapt with.” Pribble said. “We were fortunate in that our numbers of students who were new to our school district actually were higher than we expected before the October count, and so the amount of money we received was higher than expected.”
Pribble says at this point, the district is nowhere near a point where they’d have to pull from reserves.
He says the influx of students has made it difficult to plan for the future as the district begins its yearly budget process.
“We don’t know exactly what the future will hold.” Pribble said.
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