Editor’s note: This manifesto was submitted by FaithBridge Colorado, an “impact and advocacy nonprofit beloved-community that is building trusted relationships with system leaders, parents, educators, advocates, and kids (students) to implement Justice By Design that will ensure that all students thrive, learn in great schools, and achieve their hopes.”
By design, the system has denied justice
The inequities in Colorado’s public education system are not accidental. They are the predictable result of a system designed and governed in ways that have failed to uphold fundamental principles of justice — including procedural fairness, due process, equal protection, and equal rights under the law.
When two children can live a mile apart and experience vastly different access to quality education, services, and outcomes, that disparity is not merely unfortunate. It reflects a system that has failed — by design — to equitably provide the benefits and protections it is obligated to deliver to all students and families.
Justice requires more than access to options. It requires public systems that operate equitably, fairly, transparently, and consistently — especially for those who, by design, have the least agency to navigate complexity.
Freedom without fair process is not justice
A system that depends on families’ ability to discover, interpret, and act on information — while failing to ensure equal access to transportation, outreach, language support, and stability — privileges some families over others.
When critical decisions about school quality, enrollment boundaries, closures, or program placement are made without meaningful notice, explanation, or opportunity for participation, families are denied due process. When those decisions disproportionately burden low-income families, students of color, multi-language learners, and students with disabilities, equal protection is compromised.
A just public education system does not require families to compete for quality.
It guarantees it.
Gains achieved without justice are fragile and incomplete
There is evidence of academic improvement during periods of reform. But progress that is not grounded in fairness, legitimacy, and shared governance cannot be sustained.
Innovation pursued without transparency, community consent, and meaningful participation (co-creation) erodes trust — particularly in communities that have historically borne the costs of experimentation. School closures, boundary changes, and program redesigns have too often occurred without equitable engagement or accountability for harm.
A system that moves quickly while leaving families uninformed, unheard, or displaced is not innovative.
It is unjust.
Justice is not families navigating mediocrity
When tens of thousands of families leave their neighborhoods — fleeing mediocrity or worse — to find quality schools, this is not evidence of success. It is evidence that the system has failed, by design, to equitably deliver high-quality education where families live.
Look at the data. Listen to the lived experiences.
Look at the communities that have demanded better schools for generations — not choice, but justice.
A system that guarantees transportation to underperforming schools while denying transportation to other options that families choose does not operate neutrally. It allocates benefits inequitably and treats innovation and excellence as privileges rather than rights.
Justice demands truth
Even where graduation rates have improved in Denver Public Schools — with an 81.9% four‑year rate for the Class of 2025 — that headline figure masks persistent disparities in readiness and postsecondary preparation.
Growth among Black and Hispanic students is meaningful, yet inequities in proficiency and preparedness remain substantial. For example, state assessment data show some of the largest achievement gaps in Colorado, with white students far more likely to score at grade level in literacy and math than Black and Hispanic students.
In past assessments, white students scored proficient at nearly three times the rate of Black and Hispanic peers, highlighting persistent racial disparities in core academic outcomes.
Moreover, recovery from pandemic learning loss has been inequitable: Students from low‑income families in DPS are still less likely to meet grade‑level expectations in reading compared with peers statewide, and achievement gaps based on income remain wide.
While district reporting shows gains in participation in dual and concurrent enrollment (a proxy for advanced coursework access), significant gaps in advanced course access and college readiness continue to correlate with students’ backgrounds, with students from historically marginalized communities underrepresented in many of these opportunities.
Student stability and attendance further complicate the picture. DPS has among the highest chronic absenteeism rates in the state, with roughly 37–38% of students missing 10% or more of school days, far above statewide averages — a known early‑warning indicator tied to lower achievement and higher dropout risk
Denver’s overall “Accredited (Green)” rating suggests the district meets state expectations. But beneath that aggregate score, nearly 40% of schools continue to require improvement under the state accountability framework, meaning many families’ lived experiences diverge sharply from district averages.
When accountability masks internal variation, it obscures the lived reality of families navigating underfunded classrooms and unmet needs — conditions incompatible with equal protection in a public system meant to serve all children.
These outcomes are not anomalies. They correlate with systemic factors — under‑resourced schools, segregation by race and income, and uneven access to opportunity — that persist despite decades of work and struggles by many justice warriors.
The system is not broken.
It is doing what it was designed to do.
Justice warns, gradualism is tranquilizing
Incremental progress does not erase systemic injustice when:
- Families and students are not equally informed or recognized as essential decision-makers.
- Procedural fairness is absent from decisions about closures, boundaries, resources, and supports.
- Equal protection is compromised by vast disparities in outcomes, access to advanced coursework, experienced teachers, and student supports.
- Equal rights to high-quality education remain aspirational rather than guaranteed.
Justice does not ask for patience in the face of predictable harm.
Justice demands a new design
A just public education system is one intentionally designed so all children thrive, learn in great schools, and achieve their hopes — not by chance, but by right.
To thrive, students must be healthy, housed, and safe. These are not peripheral concerns; they are foundational conditions the system must coordinate and deliver equitably. This responsibility belongs to the whole — not schools or districts alone.
To learn in great schools means every child is held to high expectations and receives high-quality instruction every day, supported by excellent educators and enriched by strong before-school, after-school, and out-of-school learning opportunities.
To achieve their hopes means every student has a supported pathway to college readiness, career preparedness, and experiential learning that expands opportunity beyond neighborhood and ZIP code.
Justice requires co-creation, not consultation
True engagement is not outreach after decisions are made. Justice requires proactive, transparent, and inclusive processes that allow parents and guardians, students, and educators to meaningfully participate in shaping the structures and systems themselves.
Families must be informed clearly, early, often, and in their own languages. They must be treated not as stakeholders to be managed, but as rights-holders and partners in co-creating solutions that serve the whole community.
Without shared power, engagement becomes performative.
Without transparency, trust cannot exist.
From justice named to justice built
Naming injustice is necessary — but it is not sufficient. Justice must be built, governed, and sustained through intentional design. Justice By Design is our hope for Colorado and beyond.
The path forward is not abstract. It begins by recognizing families, students, and educators as rights-holders — not passive recipients of policy — and by embedding procedural fairness, transparency, and shared decision-making into every level of public education governance.
Governing for justice means committing to equitable guarantees, not optional pathways:
- Guaranteeing that every child can thrive, by coordinating education with health, housing, safety, and mental-health systems as a matter of public responsibility.
- Guaranteeing that every child can learn in a great school, with high expectations, high-quality instruction every day, strong leadership, and consistent access to enriching learning opportunities.
- Guaranteeing that every child can achieve their hopes, through clear pathways to college readiness, career preparedness, and experiential learning that expands their world.
Justice-driven systems do not rely on families to escape harm. They eliminate harm at its source. They do not measure success by averages or exceptions, but by whether the most marginalized students and their families experience stability, excellence, and opportunity — where they live and where they choose to learn.
Building such a system requires courage — to redesign funding, preparation, partnerships, accountability, transportation, enrollment, and engagement so they serve equity rather than convenience. It requires humility — to listen, to share power, and to change course when communities say that the system is failing them.
And it requires resolve — to move beyond incrementalism and act with urgency proportional to the harm.
The measure of this work will not be whether it feels comfortable.
It will be whether justice becomes visible in classrooms, neighborhoods, and outcomes — for every child, without exception.
Justice is not an aspiration.
It is a responsibility.
Opportunity is not enough.
Fairness is not optional.
Justice must be the design principle.
And the time to design for it — and deliver it — is now.
Let justice roll down like waters.
