Denver Discovery School

HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE. Best thing would be to close the school.

Absolutely horrific. Only go here if you want to learn screwed up morals and other than that nothing else. Possibly Independence though because teachers were not there to support you and often there weren't even teachers in the classroom

Horrible, do not go to the school. Each year I thought I should pull my child from this school but I didn't because some of the teachers are good and he had good friends. Now I regret ever keeping him there for one year. Just this year they have had 3 principals, staff quitting as the Titanic, I mean school, starts to sink. The new principal is taking care of the teachers now but the kids are being left behind. DPS should be ashamed of themselves for letting this school get so far behind before stepping in and trying to help. The focus on the students is completely lost...

Denver Discovery is a troubled school and I would not recommend it at this time. Staff turnover is high which is disruptive to learning. So far this year, my child has lost 3 teachers and I am aware of 3 others that have left as well. In addition, the principal, vice principal, and interim principal left. Bullying is also a problem. Although my child has not been bullied, I know other families who are struggling to get the school to adequately address this. Large class sizes are also a problem and this is made worse by the significant behavioral issues within the school. My child comes home talking about out-of-control classrooms where teachers are in tears and kids are yelling obscenities and refusing to leave the classroom when asked. How can any child learn in this environment? It doesn't help that most of the teachers are quite young and likely lack experience to deal with this. The district sent some type of intervention team in to deal with these issues and others (including some racial tensions it sounded like) but it doesn't seem to have helped yet. We’ve never seen such poor grades from our child. I've reached out to teachers and one of the interim principals (2 since the start of the year) for help and to express my concerns and I am unhappy with the school's response. I've emailed my child's teachers and received no response multiple times. The 2nd interim principal (previous teacher and now assistant principal) made multiple requests to my child's teachers to email us to keep us updated on classroom progress. This has yet to happen. The lack of respect for school leadership this shows is a worrisome sign. Overall, I do not think this school is capable of providing a good learning environment at this time. They recently hired a new principal and perhaps eventually she can fix the problems but it's going to take time. I don't want my child's education to suffer while the school gets their act together. Like other families, I am hoping to get my child into another school next year.

Obviously, this school has not been rated recently. I have a sixth grader who started this school year (2017-2018). One week before school started, I received notice that the principal and over half of the teaching staff either left or were let go. They scrambled, and the interim principal seems wonderful. The staff is inexperienced, but enthusiastic and passionate, however discipline at the school is such a problem that my student feels it is difficult to learn with all the disruptions in classes. 3 of the sixth grade teachers and the special education teacher have quit, and the Assistant Principal was let go due to budget (all in the first 3 months of school!) There are currently ineffective substitute teachers in these classes causing a huge interruption to learning. While the administration figures out how to deal with all of these issues, the students are the losers. This school has not turned out to be the sweet, smaller school with a more individualized learning environment that it was made out to be.