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Our Journey

This specific set of work began in summer of 2021 with a request from Dr. Marrero:

How might we implement community schools at DPS?

This led to collaborative work that gave birth to the six regional community hubs that operate today and are funded out of the DPS operating budget, work many here today helped make happen.

Running notes on the development of the community hubs here.

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Community Hubs vs. Schools

We had hoped that a regional community hub would be able to integrate community resources into all schools in their region and support families broadly.

It quickly became clear that the hubs were most effective for those who attended the school in which they were placed and a much more limited set of regional needs.

We were still pretty far from the community schools vision

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Back to the Drawing Board

We began with a simple question:

Why is it so hard for a community partner to operate inside of a school?

We asked principals, students, teachers, district administrators, city staff, community leaders and orgs - in every forum where we could find them.

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Two Key Answers

Central office staff are hesitant to promote new programs due to concerns about program quality
Onboarding new partners is often too much work for overloaded school teams

Also - inertia. Status quo is path of least resistance

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Digging Deeper: A Challenging Problem

No Consensus on “Quality”

Should it be based on evidence?
Do we consider changing times, local needs, program type?
Who gets to decide?

Limited Capacity for Evaluations

Hundreds of programs
No one wants to harm youth, so unless we know a program is quality, we do not work with it

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Worth The Effort of Solving

If we knew what quality looked like and had capacity to evaluate, then we could:

Connect youth with quality programs using the systems and people power of the school district and city
Encourage the growth of local programs attuned to youth needs and provide them with funding
Coordinate program providers so that all youth needs are being met in all parts of the greater Denver area and we do not have gaps

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Iterative Design Process

We formed a hypothesis on how to solve the challenge and then formed an impact team to work on the design. Our thinking evolved.

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Original Agenda

Program Quality Evaluation & Accountability	Establish program areas that capture key aspects of the coalitions work. Create rubrics for each program area that would allow us to evaluate program quality. Create a peer-to-peer process for conducting evaluations.	Determine key areas of work where a formal, peer-driven process for evaluating program quality would make it a) easier to integrate those programs into city and school district systems and/or b) easier to secure funding for that work For the identified key areas of work, collectively come up with a rubric that identifies key elements of program quality and a scale for evaluation For the identified key areas of work, determine peers willing to play a role providing feedback on each others programming according to the rubric Work with city, school district and funders to gain buy-in for the validity of these evaluations so that it can support decision making in alignment with coalition goals

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Next Evolution Agenda 4/2025

Program Quality Evaluation & Accountability	Enable youth to determine what programs will serve them best, remove barriers that prevent those programs from working with schools, enable program quality evaluation and continuous improvement.	Develop youth leaders who can identify community programs to support youth needs. Develop a community partner certification program that will guide those partners through how to operate in DPS Provide coaching in partnership with researchers on how to define and measure success. Provide infrastructure for data collection and configure it in alignment with defined measures. Establish analysis support for program quality evaluation (leverage systems from resource mapping workstream).. Explore opportunities for extending proposed approach to cover greater Denver area and integration with city systems.

Running notes on the evolution of this impact team here

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Then: Shift In Context

Funding Cuts

DPS restructured; staff focused on this were reduced
City restructured; many staff focused on this were reduced
Grant funding earmarked for the work was repurposed
Community partners also lost resources

But the community needs and systemic challenges remained

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Focus to Enable Success

DRC leadership team has made this work its key priority for this year
Acknowledging limited capacity, we have split the effort into three related impact teams
We hope to engage more people through a liberatory design process

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Impact Teams - 2025-26

Youth Leadership	Connect youth with opportunities to earn credit towards graduation and monetary compensation for taking a leadership role in promoting the resiliency of youth and families in Denver both directly and through fundraising efforts
Certification Program	Design a community partner certification program that instructs CBOs on how to operate inside a school building and the court system, how to set appropriate success metrics, how to design internship programs, and how to gain access to data capture systems for progress monitoring & evaluation
Data Systems	Develop a unified case management system that can accept referrals from school and city staff, allows CBOs to capture their interactions with youth in alignment with their success measurement strategy, and provides other valuable technology tools to enhance member impact

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Next Phase: Liberatory Design

Because the “how” matters

We have worked hard to identify root cause systemic challenges
The problems are complex and would benefit from a more disciplined approach
An unstructured design process could lead us to replicating the systemic oppression we hope to address

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