Can you imagine...

going to a school with only 20 kids?

Recess would be boring.

You couldn't cheat off of others without being noticed.

School board to explore options of dying school

'DENVER - Since last spring, the principal at Del Pueblo Elementary has been asking district leaders to close his school. He feared he would not have enough students to fill his classrooms this fall and now he may be right.

Sources tell 9NEWS the official enrollment at Del Pueblo is only 20 students, but no one is expected to show up at school for the first day of classes on August 20 at the school located on the corner of 8th and Galepago in central Denver.

At first, the school was planning to open with only two teachers. One teaching students in grades kindergarten through 2nd grade; the other working with kids in 3rd grade through 5th grade.

However, District Spokesperson Alex Sanchez confirms that over the past few weeks, Principal Dan Villescas and his staff have been telling parents that Del Pueblo could not provide full services for their kids because of the low enrollment and they should start looking at other programs.

Thursday, the school board will look at what to do with a program with little or no enrollment. One option is to suspend operations of the school and send staff members to other buildings. If this happens, Del Pueblo would be the first among a list of possibly 20 schools or more that need to close within the Denver School District.

An independent citizens panel, the A+ Committee, is studying the issue of unused building space in the district. The committee has found that 30 percent of the classroom space is being unused because Denver has lost thousands of students in the past few years to charter programs, private schools and neighboring districts. For the past year, Del Pueblo has been mentioned as an example of programs having trouble keeping students.

The A+ Committee will send a list of schools which should be closed to the school board on October 2. After six weeks of public input, the board will then vote on the final list of closures on November 19. Technically, if operations at Del Pueblo are suspended, the school would not officially close until the school board vote in November.'