March 18th, 2024
Since the start of the 2023-24 school year, Denver Public Schools has welcomed over 3,500 migrant students. The DPS Foundation team, led by a mission to ensure all students have what they need to succeed, saw this influx of families as a critical circumstance to build extra support for our schools. The team embarked on a listening tour, visiting highly impacted schools in our district that have welcomed 50 or more new-to-country students. This meant that we had an opportunity to have calls or visits with over 25 schools. We learned that considering many of these new arrivals came after the October Count, the schools weren’t provided funding for these students, and many schools are overwhelmed by the need for additional support, staffing and resources. With that, the DPS Foundation galvanized our unique role to assist these schools directly by launching the New Arrivals, Student and Family Fund.
Thanks to generous support from The Denver Foundation, The Rose Community Foundation, and our mobilized Denver community, we were able to act quickly and robustly. We are thrilled to announce since launching this fund and as of early March, we raised over $250,000 in support of welcoming our new to country students and supporting our schools, educators and families. These funds are being used for school supplies, additional curriculum, basic student needs, and translation services. Most of these funds are distributed through direct individual grants to DPS schools and departments so that they can apply the funds exactly how they most need them.
We believe that providing support for families and communities enhances school learning and youth well-being. We recognize that our schools are community centers for our city and in this initiative, we see that taking a holistic approach to student and family wellness is an important role. One of our grantees in the last cycle, Jessica Krichbaum from Denver Green School SE said, “We are so grateful to receive funding from the last review cycle of the New Arrivals Fund. We had an AMAZING new arrival event recently, where parents have requested more. We were able to buy dinner for all families that participated and were shocked at the turn out. They are interested in English classes, math classes, etc and would love to use a small amount of funds to compensate educators for teaching our adult population and also be able to provide them dinner!”
The DPS Foundation supports spaces where families and communities are provided wrap-around service to increase their economic self-sufficiency and children’s academic success. The New Arrivals, Student and Family Fund is a powerful example of how our direct access and visibility into district trends, and the rapidly evolving needs of our students, families, and educators, allows us to leverage our funding for the greatest impact with both flexibility and confidence. Though this new initiative has gone great lengths in its short commencement, DPS schools continue to need help from the community to support their new families and students. Your partnership with the DPS Foundation has an enormous reach, and an enormous impact. To learn more about the DPS Foundation’s New Arrivals, Student and Family Fund or to make a donation today, please visit https://dpsfoundation.org/dps-foundations-new-arrivals-student-family-fund/.
Maia Parkin
Communications Intern