I believe in supporting my local community but I bitterly regret the choice I made to send my two children to this school last year. A modernization of this school was completed in Summer 2012 and a whole new building was added. In addition to the regular local attendees, children from several surrounding schools were relocated to Denver and the school also plays host to some specialist Functional Skills classes for special needs children. The average household for this area is low income and the number of single parents are above average. These are not bad kids but kids who face more challenges than others. Excellence starts from the administration and should cascade downwards...and this is perhaps why Denver is such a miserable place for the children to attend and a hellaciously frustrating and ineffective establishment for a parent to have to deal with. The Principal spent an entire year trying her best to be invisible. Phone calls and voicemail messages were consistently ignored, she was never once visible to parents dropping off or collecting their children during the year and on the occasions where she was cornered proved about as effective as a pair of flip flops in a rainstorm. Communication was atrocious. Control over her staff was non existent. Sincerity, interest and common sense appear to have disappeared some time ago. In life you come across people professionally who seem more interested in their title, office space and power than they are in trying to make a difference in their job. This was one of those situations. Day one of school started with a huge drive to sign parents up to the PTA - fantastic. A school like this desperately needs parents who care. After signing up on day one, I spent the rest of the year asking for a receipt which never materialized. The PTA (which incidentally was still not formally 'registered' six months into he school year and should therefore not have been called a PTA) never held an inaugural meeting until three months after school started and then proceeded to hold one minor event a few weeks before school finished. Not sure where the monies went or how the finds were used to benefit the kids. All I know is that I never received a receipt for my donation and I never saw any interest whatsoever on the part of the school in making the PTA a success. In terms of the school staff, I can obviously only comment on those who I dealt with personally. There are two specific teachers who made the effort every single day to stand outside and welcome the children into school. They should be commended and if there was an ounce of justice should be invited to give the Principal lessons in how to talk to parents. If only the guidance counselors, teachers and faculty members who took an entire year to organize my child's special needs assessment and IEP were half as interested.... We had several interesting run ins with staff over the year. the first was with a maintenance man who walked the corridors talking loudly about 'White boys' and 'Muslim terrorists' into his cellphone whilst my two children and I stared at him in disbelief. I gave up on trying to talk to the Principal over this (she did not return messages and claimed that she had not received the voicemails I sent) but when it was finally addressed she stated that she had 'no control over her staffs personal opinions' but that the issue of 'using a cellphone during school hours' would be addressed. The first amendment is a wonderful thing and I gives me the right to proclaim it to be my opinion that divisive racist behavior such as this has no place in a school and ineffective lying Principals should probably find alternative employment. Another interesting run in with the staff happened a couple of weeks before the end of the year and involved a bus of special needs children being dropped off to the school. I witnessed a teachers assistant grab a non verbal special needs child by the wrist and tell him he was a nasty thief who would end up in jail ( loudly and in front of both his classmates and other assistants). she then proceeded to push him backwards against the bus by twisting his arm and then using her other hand to search his pockets. This stinks of child abuse and assault. I reported this incident immediately to the Principal who verbally advised the person responsible that she needed to be more aware of her actions and that her actions could be 'perceived wrongly'. I would like to think that this child's parents were informed so that they had the option of escalating the issue...........I doubt this was the case though. Denver has a reputation of a failing, ghetto school that should be seen and not heard. There are a lot of great kids here who need help, role models and people who are going to try and change things. As it stands, Denver Elementary will just continue to perpetuate this image and these problems. Rot starts at the top and works it's way downwards. read more