As Denver students get ready for school this month, officials are preparing to spend more than $7 million on new career-education classes to benefit about 1,000 students in the first year.
Denver Public Schools will be introducing, and expanding, classes geared toward science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. The new classes include manufacturing, pre-engineering, health biotechnology and game-design coding and will be distributed among eight DPS high schools this fall.
“It’s about bringing really rigorous STEM classes to parts of the city that did not previously have these opportunities,” said Joe Saboe, director of pathways for DPS. “They’re primarily low-income parts of the city.”
The new course work is being funded through a Youth Career Connect grant from the Department of Labor and the Department of Education. The funding already has helped hire five new teachers for the new classes and a part-time assistant principal at three schools.
The grant, as well as the work the district promised it would fund, has attracted more than $2 million in donations from local companies, including Campos EPC, founded by a DPS graduate; QEP Resources, a Fortune 500 energy company; and RK Mechanical.
Those donations will allow the district to plan for job-shadowing field trips and to increase a partnership with the Colorado School of Mines.
Currently, DPS and the School of Mines partner at four elementary and middle schools, where interested teachers apply to work with a School of Mines graduate student.
This is the first time grad students will be working with teachers at elementary, middle and high school levels in the same year.
Grad students, known as program fellows, research science topics, often in greater depth than teachers would have time for, and design activities to help engage students.
The donation dollars will pay for one fellow who will divide 20 hours per week between Kennedy High School and Martin Luther King Jr. Early College to help implement pre-engineering classes.
“Traditionally, career and tech has partnered with two-year colleges and trade schools, and we’re still going to do that, but we want to expand our partnership with four-year colleges,” said Scott Springer, principal of CEC Middle College and director of career technical education for the district. “School of Mines is really going to help us build out the curriculum and heat the rigor. They’re also going to expose the kids to the School of Mines.”
In the 2013-14 school year, only 12 DPS graduates went on to enroll at the School of Mines.
The university has seen a record number of applicants, and many with record high test scores, according to officials. But the number of minority students who apply and enroll has remained low for years.
In 2012, the university had 66 African-American students and 381 Latino students out of 5,550 enrolled.
Springer said officials are trying to develop a pathway that might allow future DPS students who complete a prescribed set of course work to get either guaranteed or preferential admission into the university.
The point is for students to see the connection between what they learn and what they want to do in the future.
“Those types of courses keep them interested and keep them learning,” Saboe said. “This is about students pursuing their interests. We believe there’s value and dignity in all pathways.”
Yesenia Robles: 303-954-1372, yrobles@denverpost.com or twitter.com/yeseniarobles
Stem stuff
A look at the new science, technology, engineering and math courses that Denver high schools are getting starting this fall:
• Abraham Lincoln High School: Internet technology
• CEC Middle College: Manufacturing, health biotechnology
• East High School: Health
• Martin Luther King, Jr. Early College: Manufacturing and engineering
• George Washington High School: Finance
• West High School: Internet technology
• High Tech Early College: Internet technology
• John F. Kennedy High School: Engineering and energy
