Applications were due yesterday for schools wishing to continue under the banner of the Charter School Institute, a quasi-state agency created in 2004 to approve charter schools rejected by districts with an ax to grind. The Ricardo Flores Magon Academy — the subject of our cover story, “A Hard Line”…
B-cycle wrapped up its second season last Friday, and the official numbers are in: 202,731 total rides from when B-cycle rolled out in March until 11 p.m. on December 9. That’s nearly double last year’s numbers, though a teeny bit short of the bike program’s goal of 206,000 rides –…
Earlier this fall, we told you about a parent-led crusade to delay the start of public school in Denver until September to avoid the heat that plagued August. This agitating led to the creation of a task force to survey the community about its start-date preferences. The results are in…
Adam Norrell likes the words “snazzy” and “sparky.” He says them more than you’d expect from a 34-year-old software nerd from Castle Rock, especially when he’s describing his new online dating site, the snazzily named Vlirty. Norrell came up with the idea for Vlirty, which allows users to video chat,…
The Denver Zoo’s two lady elephants, Mimi and Dolly, moved yesterday to their new home: the recently rechristened Toyota Elephant Passage exhibit. Formerly called Asian Tropics, the ten-acre, $50 million elephant exhibit was renamed thanks to a $5.4 million donation from the Denver Toyota Dealers Association. In the spirit of…
Update: Colorado Gives Day, the one-day online charity marathon that began at midnight on Tuesday but extended until noon today due to technical difficulties, raised $12 million for 932 local nonprofits, according to a preliminary count…
Enrollment in charter schools is growing nationwide, as well as here in Colorado. More than two million students now attend charter schools in the U.S., a 13 percent increase from last year, according to numbers released today by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Colorado contributed to that growth…
The Harm Reduction Action Center — whose very own Ruth Kanatser was honored recently with the inaugural Josephine Roche Award for direct service and advocacy — could soon be Denver’s second legal syringe exchange…
Update, 4:15 p.m.:. The Denver Zoo’s revealed how much money seven local Toyota dealerships donated to the newly christened Toyota Elephant Passage exhibit, slated to open in June 2012. The figure? $5.4 million, the zoo’s second-largest donation ever. Read on for more details…
In a small ceremony at a cozy coffee shop Friday night, Ruth Kanatser, the “mama bear” of the little red house on Lipan Street that’s home to the Harm Reduction Action Center, won the inaugural Josephine Roche Award, named for Denver’s first policewoman. Kanatser shares many of Roche’s best qualities,…
This week’s cover story, “A Hard Line,” looks deeper into complaints against a Westminster charter school called the Ricardo Flores Magon Academy. One former teacher is now suing the school, claiming she was discriminated against and then fired in 2009 after she called in sick with the swine flu, which…
This week’s cover story, “A Hard Line,” takes a look at the Ricardo Flores Magon Academy, a charter school in Westminster with both high test scores and a high number of former teachers, one of whom recently filed a discrimination lawsuit against the school. Among complaints voiced by some former…
The Ricardo Flores Magon Academy charter school in Westminster gets spectacular academic results and has won accolades for its tennis and chess programs. But former teachers and parents say not everything there is working — especially the administration. How much will the personality clashes, high teacher turnover and multiple lawsuits…
In 2009, Westword writer Joel Warner told the story of Colorado parkour pioneer Ryan Ford, who had recently opened the world’s largest parkour gym, APEX Movement. Since then, the sport — described on APEX’s website as “an art of movement in which you train the body and mind to overcome…
A local Latina advocacy group is asking women to call President Obama and give him an earful about birth control. The details are complicated: As explained in this Washington Post story, Catholic bishops are pressuring Obama to dilute a proposed rule that would allow women access to birth control without…
Claudia Mitchell couldn’t breathe. The usually bubbly schoolteacher had just visited her doctor, who tested her for swine flu. It was fall 2009, at the height of the H1N1 outbreak. Mitchell had a fever, a headache and a sore throat, and she felt so weak that four days earlier, she’d…
In June, we told you about an immigration raid on Morgan County’s Wildcat Dairy that led to the arrests of eleven workers and caused fear among many others. This week, the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition announced that while five of the workers have already been deported, the criminal charges –…
Cranbeary has been unlucky in love. Frosty, a 25-year-old male who was the last bear destined to mate with the Denver Zoo’s frisky female, died of liver cancer a month after Cranbeary arrived in Denver, making her the Anna Nicole Smith of polar bears. But the zoo is trying again…
News that reporter Deborah Sherman is out at 9News — and the dearth of details as to why — has dragged disgraced doctor Louis Hampers into the news again. Sherman claims former ER doc Hampers stalked her after she broke a second date with him. In a civil lawsuit she…
George the black rhino, who lived at the Denver Zoo since he was a baby, was euthanized last week. At 28, he was the ninth-oldest zoo rhino in the world. Given that, he suffered from a list of icky ailments, including diverticulitis, continued weight loss and… wait for it… chronic…
Local immigration advocates are cautiously optimistic about a pilot project to review open immigration cases in Denver and close those deemed to be of low priority. The program, described in this New York Times story, comes on the heels of a memo from the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement…
This year may be the last for the Life Skills Center, a last-chance high school that Westword profiled in 2007. Last night, the Denver Public Schools board voted to shutter the struggling alternative charter school, which had been given a second chance in 2008 after facing the same fate…
