Not special treatment. Equal treatment.

Uni Hill families deserve the same clarity as every other affected family

BVSD has emphasized that families need timely information before making enrollment decisions. Families at other affected schools will know the proposed path forward before open enrollment, while Uni Hill families are being asked to wait for the bilingual-program review.

Insufficient family engagement should result in better engagement, not prolonged uncertainty

BVSD acknowledged that it did not receive enough feedback from Spanish-speaking families. Families support deeper and more accessible engagement. But the solution should be better outreach, not leaving bilingual families uncertain about their school for another enrollment cycle.

Do not create enrollment uncertainty and then use enrollment against Uni Hill

If families are told that Uni Hill's future is uncertain, some will understandably choose schools whose futures are already defined.

Uni Hill should have a fair opportunity to attract families affected by Boulder's school restructuring

Flatirons and Mesa are proposed to close, Community Montessori and High Peaks are relocating, and many Boulder families will be reconsidering their school choices. Uni Hill should be a viable option for those families, not a school they hesitate to consider because its future is unresolved.

Evaluate bilingual education, but do not put Uni Hill on trial during a closure process

Families support a thoughtful review of bilingual education. There are legitimate districtwide questions about middle-school continuation, staffing, program consistency, high-school pathways and student outcomes. Those are systemwide issues.

Use Uni Hill-specific evidence and fair measures of success

A change in Uni Hill's enrollment or demographic balance does not, by itself, establish that the school is educationally ineffective or “not robust.”

Do not hold bilingual education to a different standard than other educational models

Bilingual education appears to be the only educational model in this closure and reconfiguration process being asked to separately prove its effectiveness before families can have certainty about its future.

BVSD has said school performance is not a driver of this process. So why is the Seal of Biliteracy being used to evaluate bilingual education?

BVSD's own declining-enrollment FAQ states that school performance is not a driver of the Resilient Schools process because BVSD schools are performing at historically high levels, and that the challenge is enrollment, resources and programming, not school quality.

Yet bilingual education appears to be receiving a different type of scrutiny. In explaining why decisions about dual-language schools were being delayed, BVSD specifically cited student outcomes and the percentage of former dual-language elementary students who eventually earn the Seal of Biliteracy at high-school graduation.

That is a long-term high-school credential earned years after students leave elementary school. We do not appear to apply a comparable test to other specialized elementary programs. We would not judge an elementary STEM program by how many students eventually complete advanced science coursework in high school, or Whittier's elementary IB program by how many former students ultimately earn a full IB Diploma.