Last Resort
The schools that take Colorado’s “most vulnerable” students are disappearing. Can they be saved? Should they?
- Gretel Daugherty, Special to the Colorado Sun
About the Project
“Last Resort “is a Colorado News Collaborative-led four-part investigation by Chalkbeat Colorado, The Colorado Sun and KFF Health News into the collapsing system of schools that serve some of Colorado’s most vulnerable students.
The state is now scrambling to shore up what are known as facility schools, which enroll thousands of students a year with intense mental and behavioral health needs. Where there were once 80 schools offering a combination of therapy and academics, only 30 remain, All but one are located in the Front Range, leaving rural Coloradans desperate for options.
A cross-newsroom team of reporters filed open records requests, sifted through state documents, visited facility and non-facility schools, and interviewed dozens of people, including family members, students, special education specialists, disability rights advocates, educators, and lawmakers to tell the story of system hobbled by a chronic lack of staff, anemic funding and the unintended consequences of a federal law seeking to prevent the warehousing of children. It is also a system in which oversight is fragmented and opaque, leaving parents and the public with no easy way to determine whether children are learning and safe. Even as the state seeks to beef up the existing system, school districts and others are finding their own ways to help these students succeed.
The Stories
How Colorado Is Filling Gaps for Its ‘Most Vulnerable’ Children As Last-Resort Schools Dwindle
The Learning Zone is a small school in Littleton that teaches nonverbal students to use devices thatallow them to communicate by pushing buttons that convey words or phrases. But to become a state-approved facility school in hopes of getting more school districts to pay for theirspecialized services, The Learning Zone first had to become a state-licensed day treatment program.When the licensing specialist from the state human services department showed up, she brought achecklist. Did the school have all sharp objects locked up? Were the cleaning chemicals, hand sanitizerand Lysol wipes out...
Colorado Is Pouring More Money Into Schools for Kids With Behavioral Health Issues and Disabilities, but Are They Helping?
Colorado is doubling the funding next year for schools that enroll students whose mental health ormedical needs are too intense for regular schools to handle, calling for 12 new schools to open within thenext three years. The number of these specialized schools, which operate as day centers or are part of residentialtreatment facilities or hospitals, has fallen over the past two decades to 30 from 80. They offer acombination of therapy and academics in an effort to stabilize thousands of students a year so they canreturn to their home schools. But...
Students in Rural Colorado Are Left Without Options as Specialized Schools Close
Riley George, a 12-year-old with autism and disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, has had to cross a mountain range to get an education. That’s because all but one of the state’s 30 facility schools, those rapidly disappearing schools of last resort for students with severe behavioral, mental health, or special education needs, are located on the Front Range. In rural Colorado, the lack of facility schools, combined with overwhelmed public schools, can mean students end up learning online, languishing in mental health facilities, or attending a residential school far from home. For...
The Schools That Take Colorado’s ‘Most Vulnerable’ Children Are Disappearing
For Erin Schneiderman, the summer between her son’s third and fourth grade year was “one of the worst periods of our lives for sure.” Denver Public Schools had decided that her son should go to a specialized school. He has autism and was overwhelmed by the noise, the crowds, and the unpredictable transitions in a traditional elementary school. He had meltdowns that lasted for hours, and Schneiderman often had to leave work in the middle of the day to pick him up. But when the first day of fourth grade arrived,...
Reporting Team
Melanie Asmar
Chalkbeat Coloardo
Melanie Asmar is an education reporter at Chalkbeat Colorado, where she has covered Denver Public Schools since 2015. Before Chalkbeat, she worked for six years at Denver’s alternative weekly newspaper, Westword, writing longform stories. Melanie grew up in New Hampshire, and her first journalism job was at her hometown newspaper, the Concord Monitor. She now lives in Colorado with her husband and two kids.
Rae Ellen Bichell
KFF Health News
Rae Ellen Bichell, Colorado Correspondent for KFF Health News, is based in Longmont. Previously, she was a radio reporter covering the region for the Mountain West News Bureau and KUNC. Before moving to Colorado, Rae Ellen worked for NPR. She spent brief but formative times in the newsrooms of Nashville Public Radio and KNKX in Seattle and has filed stories from Australia, Finland, and Lithuania. She is a graduate of Yale University.
Helen Santoro
KFF Health News
Helen Santoro is a science journalist who covers the brain, health disparities and the LGBTQ+ community. She specializes in deep-dive and investigative pieces on health care discrimination against marginalized groups, including transgender and queer people. Her work has appeared in High Country News, The New York Times, Science Magazine, and more. Originally from New England, she now lives in Colorado with her wife, two dogs, two cats and many plants.
Jennifer Brown
The Colorado Sun
Jen is a co-founder and reporter at The Sun, where she writes about mental health, child welfare and social justice issues. Her first journalism job was at The Hungry Horse News in her home state of Montana, before moving on to reporting jobs in Texas and Oklahoma. She worked for 13 years at The Denver Post, including several years on the investigative projects team, before helping create The Sun in 2018.
Jen is a University of Montana graduate and loves hiking, skiing and watching her kids’ sports.
Editing Team
Erica Meltzer
Chalkbeat Coloardo
Erica Meltzer is Bureau Chief of Chalkbeat Colorado, where she also covers the legislature and statewide education issues. She joined Chalkbeat in 2018 after serving as one of the founding editors of the local news site Denverite. Before that, she spent 18 years working for newspapers in Colorado, Arizona and Illinois, where she covered everything from crime and courts to housing and energy policy. She has a passion for showing how complex policy issues affect ordinary people. She served in the Peace Corps as a health educator in a rural community in Paraguay.
Matt Volz
KFF Health News
Matt Volz, Mountain States Editor, coordinates KFF Health News coverage and partnerships in Montana and Colorado from his base in Helena, Montana. He joined KFF Health News in July 2020 after spending 18 years as a correspondent and editor for The Associated Press in Montana, New York, Alaska, and Mississippi. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer and worked for a humanitarian aid organization in Kosovo after NATO’s intervention in the Balkans in 1999. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Lance Benzel
The Colorado Sun
Lance Benzel is Team Editor for The Colorado Sun.
Lance has been a journalist for more than two decades, much of it at The Gazette in Colorado Springs, where he started in 2008. He wrote about the withdrawal of Fort Carson troops from Iraq, the 2015 Planned Parenthood attacks and their aftermath, and complaints about an El Paso County judge before his ouster by voters.
Before The Gazette, Lance worked for the Billings Gazette, the High Point Enterprise in North Carolina and New City News Service of Chicago.
Lance lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and son. He is an avid cyclist.
Tina Griego
Colorado News Collaborative
Tina Griego is a reporter, editor and coach with the Colorado News Collaborative. She has been a journalist for more than 30 years, working as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Albuquerque Tribune. She was a city columnist for both the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News for more than a decade. Tina has won national recognition for her reporting on immigration, education and urban poverty. She lives in Fort Collins with her husband and they have one more kid to get through college. She’s a native New Mexican and prefers red over green.
Reporting Team
Melanie Asmar
Chalkbeat Coloardo
Melanie Asmar is an education reporter at Chalkbeat Colorado, where she has covered Denver Public Schools since 2015. Before Chalkbeat, she worked for six years at Denver’s alternative weekly newspaper, Westword, writing longform stories. Melanie grew up in New Hampshire, and her first journalism job was at her hometown newspaper, the Concord Monitor. She now lives in Colorado with her husband and two kids.
Rae Ellen Bichell
KFF Health News
Rae Ellen Bichell, Colorado Correspondent for KFF Health News, is based in Longmont. Previously, she was a radio reporter covering the region for the Mountain West News Bureau and KUNC. Before moving to Colorado, Rae Ellen worked for NPR. She spent brief but formative times in the newsrooms of Nashville Public Radio and KNKX in Seattle and has filed stories from Australia, Finland, and Lithuania. She is a graduate of Yale University.
Helen Santoro
KFF Health News
Helen Santoro is a science journalist who covers the brain, health disparities and the LGBTQ+ community. She specializes in deep-dive and investigative pieces on health care discrimination against marginalized groups, including transgender and queer people. Her work has appeared in High Country News, The New York Times, Science Magazine, and more. Originally from New England, she now lives in Colorado with her wife, two dogs, two cats and many plants.
Jennifer Brown
The Colorado Sun
Jen is a co-founder and reporter at The Sun, where she writes about mental health, child welfare and social justice issues. Her first journalism job was at The Hungry Horse News in her home state of Montana, before moving on to reporting jobs in Texas and Oklahoma. She worked for 13 years at The Denver Post, including several years on the investigative projects team, before helping create The Sun in 2018.
Jen is a University of Montana graduate and loves hiking, skiing and watching her kids’ sports.
Editing Team
Erica Meltzer
Chalkbeat Coloardo
Erica Meltzer is Bureau Chief of Chalkbeat Colorado, where she also covers the legislature and statewide education issues. She joined Chalkbeat in 2018 after serving as one of the founding editors of the local news site Denverite. Before that, she spent 18 years working for newspapers in Colorado, Arizona and Illinois, where she covered everything from crime and courts to housing and energy policy. She has a passion for showing how complex policy issues affect ordinary people. She served in the Peace Corps as a health educator in a rural community in Paraguay.
Matt Volz
KFF Health News
Matt Volz, Mountain States Editor, coordinates KFF Health News coverage and partnerships in Montana and Colorado from his base in Helena, Montana. He joined KFF Health News in July 2020 after spending 18 years as a correspondent and editor for The Associated Press in Montana, New York, Alaska, and Mississippi. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer and worked for a humanitarian aid organization in Kosovo after NATO’s intervention in the Balkans in 1999. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Lance Benzel
The Colorado Sun
Lance Benzel is Team Editor for The Colorado Sun.
Lance has been a journalist for more than two decades, much of it at The Gazette in Colorado Springs, where he started in 2008. He wrote about the withdrawal of Fort Carson troops from Iraq, the 2015 Planned Parenthood attacks and their aftermath, and complaints about an El Paso County judge before his ouster by voters.
Before The Gazette, Lance worked for the Billings Gazette, the High Point Enterprise in North Carolina and New City News Service of Chicago.
Lance lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and son. He is an avid cyclist.
Tina Griego
Colorado News Collaborative
Tina Griego is a reporter, editor and coach with the Colorado News Collaborative. She has been a journalist for more than 30 years, working as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Albuquerque Tribune. She was a city columnist for both the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News for more than a decade. Tina has won national recognition for her reporting on immigration, education and urban poverty. She lives in Fort Collins with her husband and they have one more kid to get through college. She’s a native New Mexican and prefers red over green.
Reflections
Reporting on Colorado’s “Most Vulnerable” Students
Tina Griego - May 18, 2023By Tina Griego, Colorado News Collaborative
Our latest multi-newsroom reporting collaboration wrapped on Sunday. The four-part series, “Last Resort” examines the slow-motion collapse of specialized schools most Coloradans likely do not know exist. Thousands of Colorado…
This project was made possible through unprecedented collaboration between dozens of newsrooms and journalists across the state, who are active partners in the Colorado News Collaborative, or COLab.
To support the statewide effort, donate to the Colorado News Collaborative.