A Denver charter school broke a new state law by offering families $400 worth of gift cards if they brought new students to the school before the day the state takes a student census.
A Northeast Academy official said he did not realize a law passed in 2009 forbids public schools from offering “an item of value prior to, upon, or after enrolling in or attending an educational program operated by the local education provider.”
“I guess ignorance is not a defense, but we didn’t know,” said George Sanker, who is leading the turnaround effort at the school in far northeast Denver. “If we had known that there was a law, we wouldn’t have offered the cards.”
The school got about 10 new students with the incentive that has been part of a marketing campaign over the past few weeks, Sanker said.
Those students will probably not be counted as part of the school’s enrollment, said Mark Stevens, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Education.
Friday was the annual pupil count day for Colorado’s schools, in which the Colorado Department of Education tallies how many students are in each school.
The figures are used in a formula to calculate how much money per student the school receives. State money follows students into the classroom — an average of about $6,600 per pupil across Colorado, according to the Colorado Department of Education.
House Bill 1175 was passed in 2009 after Cesar Chavez Academy, and its high school, Dolores Huerta Academy, offered $100 gift certificates for students who enrolled in their charter school.
Officials from Northeast Academy are aggressively marketing their school, trying to increase its declining enrollment, which had dropped from 461 students in 2009-10.
Fliers were posted at area stores and throughout the neighborhood, urging families to come back to the school that in November was placed on probation by Denver Public Schools because of its poor performance.
The school now has a new principal, and 80 percent of the staff also is new, said Sanker, who works for Ridgeview Classical Institute and was hired to lead the school through its turnaround effort.
“The message I tried to convey is when you are a school in a turnaround, you’re selling a new vision,” said Sanker. “We are trying to recover that vision and regain trust.”
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
