News Release
October 20, 2006
DPS Is Proposing Changes To The Community Use Of Facilities Policy, Public Comment Is Encouraged
The proposed revision aligns directly with the Denver Plan, which calls on community members to support DPS students in their quest for academic and personal excellence.
DPS has a vested interest in allowing and encouraging certain community groups to use our facilities for activities that directly or indirectly benefit DPS students and their communities.
The revised policy re-categorizes users in order to provide a more community friendly and open environment, while at the same time a less costly one for users.
First, we collapsed the five previous user categories into three, which are:
- Category A - DPS organizations and non-partisan, non-profit community service and youth service organizations. For this category there is no facility rental fee or application fee. Only labor, that is overtime, for District employees will be charged on an as needed basis.
- Category B - Other community non-profit organizations. For this category, there are fees for facility rental, applications, and overtime.
- Category C - Commercial, for profit, and private organizations. For this category, there are fees for facility rental, applications, and overtime. These fees are higher than for Category B.
This restructuring,
- Eliminates the requirement of facility rental fees for any non-partisan community service or youth services organization.
- Eliminates the requirement of application fees and facility rental fees for all Category A users.
- Results in many current user groups paying less fees since they've been moved to another, less costly Category.
All school hours have been extended to anywhere between 9:00 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. on weekdays, so as long as organizations use schools within these normal, open times there will be no overtime fees. This change alone will reduce much of the costs that have in the past been passed on to the community.
Secondly, in order to better protect our facilities and thus provide a better service to the community, we've added a slight fee for use of grass fields, and parking lots in order to cover some maintenance and operational costs. These increases are very small since the bulk of any damage repair would continue to be achieved through insurance claims. Artificial fields will also require the presence of a custodian to allow access to the building's restroom facilities and to ensure that the appropriate use/cleaning of the area is maintained. This cost will be assessed to the users when the building is not open for normal operations. This is being implemented to make sure our fields are in optimal condition for use by District students the following day.
The Denver Public Schools Facility Management department is striving to provide optimally maintained facilities for our students while satisfying the requests of the community. We invite the Denver community to comment and respond to our proposed procedures and policies.
If you have comments please mail or deliver them to the Denver Board of Education, Denver Public Schools, 900 Grant Street, Room 105, Denver, CO, 80203. Comments may also be faxed to 720-423-3216 or emailed to board@dpsk12.org. Comments must be received by November 3, 2006.
For questions about the policy please call the office of Community Use at 720-423-4200.
» Current Policy (Policy KF-R)
» Proposed Changes [pdf]