WEEK OF MAY 15, 2025
VOLUME 37| ISSUE 20
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Federal order a threat to instate tuition Executive order aimed at ‘sanctuary city’ policies BY JASON GONZALES CHALKBEAT
Classroom space in the STEAD school. LONDON LYLE
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• Vestas to lay off 200 employees
STEAD School celebrates expansion BUSINESS
Commerce City school breaks ground on new field, two facilities •27J Schools moves online-only Dec. 1
BY LONDON LYLE SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA
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LOCAL OBITUARIES LEGALS CLASSIFIED
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
LOCAL
The Science, Technology, Engineering, Agriculture and Design School in Commerce City hosted a groundbreaking ceremony May 6 for its new 29,900-square-foot Founder’s Field and a tour of two new instructional buildings for students and the community, a 2,800-square-foot production greenhouse and the Cultivate Center. The natural grass athletic
field is named in honor of the school’s founding families and students. The student-led, experiential charter school currently enrolls about 500 ninththrough 12th-graders and its founding students make up the Class of 2025, its first graduating class of seniors. The STEAD high school campus operates on 8.5 acres in the Reunion community in Commerce City managed by housing developer Oakwood Homes, and they were able to construct Founder’s Field thanks to a $550,000 grant from Adams County and the land donation from Cal Fulenwider, who chairs a Denver metro-based family real estate development company. The new Cultivate Center
will serve as the campus’s final academic building, and will be used for retreats and training for current and future educators as well as for hosting events. In the new greenhouse facility, students are able to grow their own fresh produce in a controlled environment, which they can then use in one of the campus’s four commercial kitchens to prepare lunches. All students receive free lunch, and lunches are all prepared using produce grown at the school. The school also has bees, chickens and critters of all kinds, including snakes and tarantulas that students are responsible for. The school is also an offi-
OBITUARIES: PAGE 6| CLASSIFIEDS: PAGE 8 | LEGALS: PAGE 10
cial site of the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s Soil Health Program, connecting students with local farmers and agricultural experts. Just this month, STEAD, CSU Spur and the CSU School of Agricultural Sciences finalized an articulation agreement that allows students to develop certain credits and guarantees them automatic admission for college. Of this year’s graduating class, a couple seniors are attending Ivy League colleges; some who come from multigenerational ranching families are going on to work for the family business, some are headed to trade school and many are headed to CSU. SEE EXPANSION, P5
Undocumented students in Colorado have gone on to be teachers, nurses and business owners thanks to a program that allows them to pay in-state tuition at public universities. Now the future of that program and ones like it in 23 other states are in doubt after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that seeks to punish states and cities with so-called sanctuary policies. The order, signed April 28, also specifically calls out programs that provide in-state tuition for undocumented students who graduated from high school in that state or who meet other residency requirements. Allowing in-state students who are not citizens to pay less tuition than out-of-state students who are citizens represents discrimination, according to the order, which says that the attorney general, in cooperation with the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, “shall identify and take appropriate action to stop the enforcement of state and local laws, regulations, policies, and practices favoring aliens over any groups of American citizens that are unlawful.” Advocates for immigrant students say that without in-state tuition, many undocumented students will struggle to afford college. They don’t qualify for any federal financial aid and face other barriers to college. “This is absolutely essential for immigrant students,” said Raquel Lane-Arellano, communications manager for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, which fought to pass Colorado’s in-state tuition law in 2013. “It’s not these students’ fault that our immigration system is so broken. They deserve the opportunity, just like all of their peers, to access higher levels of education.” So far, Colorado universities are not making any immediate changes to their policies. SEE TUITION, P6
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