The divided Jeffco school board came together on March 4th to approve unanimously a package of far-reaching changes to the neighborhood schools that serve downtown Lakewood.
O'Connell Middle School, located at 1275 S. Teller St., is to close at the end of this school year. With a population of just over 500 students, O'Connell is a fairly small middle school by Jeffco standards. While I don't have any hard numbers, the word on the street is that many Lakewood families open enroll their children to other district middle schools over concerns about O'Connell's low test scores.
Going forward, 7th-12th graders in most of downtown Lakewood will attend Alameda International High School as their neighborhood secondary campus. (I say most of downtown Lakewood, because students in the northwest quadrant of downtown will still attend Lakewood High School.) Alameda International has around 800 students on a campus originally designed for 1500 or so, and district officials say it can easily accommodate O'Connell's 500 or so 7th and 8th graders.
The second big change is that Stein Elementary, a neighborhood school located just north of Belmar at 80 S. Teller St., will be moving to the former O'Connell campus. Stein is seriously overcrowded, and in theory this will allow students and teachers some much needed elbow room. The current Stein campus will then close for a year for renovations before reopening as a new elementary school.
What's unknown is how parents and downtown Lakewood residents truly feel about these changes-- I can vouch for the fact the school district informational meetings that I went to were sparsely attended. When schools open and close, enrollment boundaries change as well, and that can sometimes lead to acrimonious debate. Which neighborhoods will fall into the enrollment boundaries of the freshly remodeled Stein campus? Which neighborhoods will be drawn into the borders of the re-purposed middle school building? The Jeffco school district is currently short on answers.
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