Denver migrant crisis creates constraints, bilingual teacher needs with growing number of students

Within Denver Public Schools, teachers like Alex Nelson are feeling the impact of more and more migrant families arriving in the city.

"It's been difficult to plan or anticipate," said Nelson. "But we're doing the best that we can to make sure we welcome every new student that walks through the doors."

 Nelson is a 4th grade dual language teacher at Bryant Webster Dual Language School. Roughly 60 students who enrolled this year at the school were Venezuelan migrants.

"I think we've added three full time roles with the additional students that have arrived," said Nelson. "Some teachers had classroom sizes as large as 42 or 43, and so we've been able to split those classes so that they're a more manageable size of about 21, 20 students."

DPS data shows 1,500 students came from another country between July and September 2023, which more than double the number seen in the same time frame last year. The largest increase in arrivals were among the Venezuelan population.

"In the last couple of weeks, we've seen 150 new kids each week. They are spread across the city in different places but it is stretching capacity in a few places," said Adrienne Endres, Executive Director of Multilingual Education for DPS.

Endres says the influx has presented a need for more bilingual teachers and moving existing teaching resources around to manage classroom sizes.

"We were able to fund some additional positions last spring, [for] just a handful of schools that saw a significant increase...This fall it has scaled, so we have seen that in different parts of the city, the Monaco corridor, southeast Denver, [and] northwest Denver," said Endres. "We have a few places in which our classrooms are getting pretty full, so looking to add additional classroom support, additional teachers where we can and where there is a need."

Endres says the district is also in the process of opening up an additional newcomer centers for incoming migrant students, in which the district can help address immediate needs.

"We have one elementary, three middle and three high school centers currently, and we're seeing the biggest kind of bursting at the seams at elementary right now," said Endres. "So, we're working to open another center, just waiting on staffing for that, so we can have another place for those newcomer centers to get that focused attention when they've had a gap in education."

Last year, the DPS board voted to close several schools amid declining enrollment.

The district did not provide any indication whether this latest influx in migrant students could impact the reopening of schools across the district.

"We are experiencing now more classrooms that are full and needing to add staffing to buildings. We still have some really small schools too. So, I don't know it will solve the problem, it will certainly make the situation more complex," said Endres.

However, there are other issues that have become increasingly concerning for teachers as they work to navigate with families on some of the challenges they now face with access to housing.

"Often times, we're they're only point of contact with any sort of United States service and so, we really try to help connect them with the things they need," said Nelson. "So, we really try to help connect them with the things they need and help avoid the worst possible outcome in terms of their housing circumstance, but that doesn't always happen. So, we've had some families that have slept unsheltered some nights. That's something other schools have experienced."

DPS officials say they're in the process of planning hiring fairs for bilingual staff in the coming weeks.