30 Stories for 30 Years

What a way to celebrate!

Thirty stories for thirty years—while of course not all encompassing—shares some of our favorite highlights. I hope this 30-year history brings back fond memories for many and provides some insight for those who joined the DPS Foundation family in more recent years. 

This 30-year report comes at a particularly significant period in the DPS Foundation’s work, having just launched our CLASS framework. This new framework—Community Leads and Students Succeed—is a collaborative and innovative approach to bringing private sector, philanthropy, community, and DPS schools together to address the comprehensive challenges our public schools face by serving all constituencies: students, educators, and families.

We have come to a way of working after three decades of evolution as a school district foundation. Here are a few highlights of the incredible work the DPS Foundation has done over the past 30 years. The first decade (1990s) of our work saw us investing in classrooms primarily through teacher mini-grants, the aim of which is to help educators have the materials they need to improve the teaching and learning process in classrooms.

The second decade (2000s) saw the DPS Foundation supporting key district initiatives to innovate and reform. The mini-grants transformed into A to Z Fund, an initiative that provides funding directly to the classroom. We also invested in academics, athletics, and afterschool enrichment thus expanding our impact beyond the classroom and into the out-of-school time arena.

The third decade (2010s) had the DPS Foundation delving into school-wide initiatives, paving the way for the $1 Million Fund and into initiatives that serve a broader school population beyond educators and students. During this time the district experienced a steady increase of enrollment, from 78,000 students to more than 90,000 students, a notable jump. Our investment in FACE Centers involved lifting families that needed social services support, mental health programs, and other necessities. The pandemic also had our team working to address emerging needs that impacted the way students engaged in learning.

The beginning of the fourth decade of our work should see the DPS Foundation having elevated its visibility, relevance, and impact not just within DPS as a system but also throughout Denver as a community. We need to lift the role of public education in making Denver a world-class community with public systems like education truly serving the needs of children and families, and all sectors of the community coming together to ensure that our public systems are indeed the best that the Denver community can offer.

We hope you’ll enjoy walking down memory lane with us! Within you will see some big wins, great partnerships, and inspiring stories we’d like to share from the past thirty years. We can’t wait to see what’s to come in the next thirty! Thank you for continuing to give our students voices to be heard so they can thrive today, in the next thirty years, and beyond.