Denver students displaced by Manual High School’s closure in 2006 get their long-awaited diplomas — and an apology

Shanita Lewis always hoped to receive a diploma from Denver’s Manual High School and, on Monday evening, it finally happened — more than a decade after the school temporarily closed and displaced hundreds of students.

Lewis was one of 11 former Manual High students to receive honorary diplomas from Denver Public Schools during a meeting of the Board of Education.

“It mattered that our school closed,” said Lewis, who was a freshman when Manual closed in 2006. She graduated from George Washington High School in 2009. “All these years later, it still has shaped and affected the lives of so many young adults.”

The effort to have DPS award Manual High diplomas to any student affected by the closure has been underway at the district for at least a year. On Monday, DPS turned part of the evening’s school board meeting into a mini-graduation ceremony to honor former Manual students.

Former Manual students, dressed in graduation caps, “walked” across a room at DPS headquarters to accept their diplomas. They were greeted with cheers and whistles from their loved ones in the audience — cheers loud enough to drown out the song “Pomp and Circumstance” that played in the background.

Superintendent Alex Marrero, also dressed in graduation regalia, recalled during the ceremony learning about Manual’s closure and hearing that no one in the district had ever apologized for what happened.

He then turned to the former students seated to his right and said, “I apologize.”

In 2006, the DPS school board voted to shut down the school because of low academic performance and reopen it a year later with only freshmen with a plan to add a new grade each year. Students and parents criticized the decision, saying it was racist and that it disenfranchised the school’s Black and Latino students.

Students affected by the closure have said they were not welcomed in their new schools, their education was interrupted as they had to retake classes, and counselors didn’t want to accept their course credits.

Almost a third of the students affected by the closure withdrew from the district by 2009 as they either dropped out, moved or their whereabouts were unknown. The dropout rate for Manual students increased from 6% to 17% after they were displaced, according to a University of Colorado study.

When schools close, students don’t get class reunions or other memories, said Vanessa Quintana, who was a freshman when Manual closed.

“This is just beautiful because it’s been a long time coming,” Quintana said of Monday’s ceremony.

Quintana, who has advocated for DPS to give her classmates diplomas, said she was caught off guard by receiving one herself. She received her own honorary Manual High diploma in 2018 and now has two — one for each of her parents, Quintana said.

More than 500 students were affected by the closure of Manual High. While only a small portion of those students received diplomas Monday, the hope is that others will also be honored in the future, said school board Vice President Auon’tai Anderson.

The diplomas are “righting a wrong,” said Anderson, who led the district’s effort to award the honorary diplomas. He graduated from the school in 2017.

“It was wrong to close Manual High School in 2006,” Anderson said. “This is acknowledging that DPS got it wrong and DPS is willing to make it right.”

The school board on Monday also honored Otis Taylor, a blues musician who was expelled from Manual for having long hair in 1966, with a diploma.

Taylor was born in Chicago in 1948, raised in Denver, and has lived in Boulder since the ’60s. He was inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame in 2019, according to a proclamation issued by the school board.

Taylor, 74, called receiving a diploma on Monday “surrealistic,” adding that it was around this time 57 years ago that he was expelled. At the time, he was just a month or more shy of graduating.

Monday’s ceremony, Taylor said, closed the “loop.”

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