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1 week ago | 
rmpbs.org | Carly Rose |Melanie Asmar |Ziyi Xu
DENVER — Castro Elementary School, which has served generations of students in Denver’s Westwood neighborhood, will close at the end of the school year. The school is named after education and civil rights activist Richard T. Castro. The building will welcome a different cohort of students in August. Summit Academy is moving into the building this summer with plans to open in time for the 2025-26 school year. The academy is a Denver Public Schools-run “pathways school” for sixth through 12th graders.
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1 week ago | 
rmpbs.org | Melanie Asmar |Ziyi Xu |Carly Rose |Chase McCleary
DENVER — Colorado will refuse a demand from the Trump administration to certify that its schools have eliminated what the federal government says are illegal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, state Commissioner of Education Susana Córdova said Thursday. “I am not signing that,” Córdova said.
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2 weeks ago | 
rmpbs.org | Carly Rose |Chase McCleary |Peter D. Vo |Andrea Kramar
With rising child care costs and insufficient state funding to help cover costs, even more families may depend on these informal providers. Like Jazmine Juarez-Gonzalez, 18, who brings her almost 2-year-old daughter to a free child care center on her high school campus. Without this free early childhood education center, partially covered by the now-frozen Colorado Child Care Assistance Program, Juarez-Gonzalez said she’d rely on her mom to watch her daughter so she could go to school.
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3 weeks ago | 
rmpbs.org | Carly Rose |Peter D. Vo |Stephanie Wolf |Bente Birkeland
DENVER — Thousands of dancers in colorful dresses adorned with intricate beadwork, fringe and feathers, brought the Denver Coliseum to life. The bells on their skirts and ankles punctuated every movement as they danced to the drumbeat reverberating through the arena. About 100 tribes from across the continent gathered in Colorado for the Denver March Powwow, held from March 21 to 23.
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1 month ago | 
rmpbs.org | Ziyi Xu |Jenny Brundin |Alison Borden |Carly Rose
DURANGO, Colo. — Finding affordable and high-quality child care is a growing challenge for families in Durango. With a shortage of child care facilities, low wages for early childhood educators and financial constraints on nonprofit child care centers, the system is struggling to meet demand. Lack of sufficient child care is impacting economic growth in La Plata County.
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1 month ago | 
coloradosun.com | Jesse Paul |Andrea Kramar |Carly Rose
The state Capitol often feels like a dog-eat-dog pressure cooker. But it can also be a dog-meet-dog paradise. In true Colorado fashion, some lawmakers and even Gov. Jared Polis frequently bring their dogs to work at the seat of power in Denver. While the state Capitol isn’t officially a pet-friendly workplace, there’s an unspoken allowance for the dogs belonging to lawmakers and staff — so long as the four-legged friends don’t disrupt daily proceedings and keep to private offices.
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1 month ago | 
rmpbs.org | Chase McCleary |Cormac McCrimmon |Carly Rose |Alec Berg
KARVAL, Colo. –– Driving through the plains of eastern Colorado, you might notice a winding path of stones snaking through the grass, or a clump of rocks tucked in a dry riverbed resembling a small amphitheater. These are called Zeedyk structures. Stonehenge or Red Rocks they are not, but these skillfully sculpted stone formations play an impactful role in the hydrologic and ecological sustainability of natural areas, particularly in places with limited water flow, like Colorado’s eastern plains.
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1 month ago | 
rmpbs.org | Carly Rose |Melanie Asmar |Cormac McCrimmon
DENVER — Eighteen-year-old Jazmine Juarez-Gonzalez became a mom almost two years ago. Despite the challenges of being a teenage parent, she is on track to graduate from Florence Crittenton High School this semester. Juarez-Gonzalez comes to school every day and drops off her daughter, Eliana Isabella, at Florence Crittenton Services’ Early Childhood Education Center, which is on the same campus as the high school and free to student parents.
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1 month ago | 
rmpbs.org | Cormac McCrimmon |Carly Rose |Alec Berg |Kyle Cooke
GOLDEN, Colo. — The first time Maggie Martin pointed her camera towards the night sky, she captured a meteor. It was 2011, and Martin — a special education teacher at the time — had decided to take an astrophotography class at Rocky Mountain National Park. “My focus was off, but I had this blurry picture that I was infatuated with. It blew my mind,” said Martin. For the 25 seconds she exposed her camera, Martin felt fully present. “I was a school teacher doing 6,000 things a minute.
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1 month ago | 
rmpbs.org | Melanie Asmar |Carly Rose |Cormac McCrimmon |Joshua Vorse
DENVER — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Wednesday criticized the U.S. Department of Agriculture for eliminating more than $13.1 million in funding for programs that help Colorado schools and food banks buy food from local farmers. “By cutting this funding, the Trump Administration is taking away healthy meals from school children and slashing contracts Colorado farmers depend on to support their businesses and workers,” Polis, a Democrat, said in a statement.
