Audiotronics 210 Manual High School
Manual High School’s history since busingIntegration, 1973 – An expansion would mark a significant step in the evolution of Manual, which was integrated through busing after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that DPS had intentionally segregated schools and put in place a district busing plan.End of busing, 1995 – The infusion of students from generally higher socio-economic backgrounds raised the average level of academic performance at Manual, though low-income. Student achievement remained abysmal.
Audiotronics 210 Manual High School Alumni Association
The busing order was lifted in 1995 by U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch.Division into three, 2001 – The school board redrew the school’s boundaries so that virtually all students in the new attendance zone were low-income, and test scores plummeted. In 2001, DPS divided Manual into three high schools, one to each floor and each with its own principal. A $1.2 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation helped fund the transformation.Closure, 2006 – But the experiment failed and achievement continued to decline, leading the school board and then-Superintendent Michael Bennet to close Manual after the 2005-06 school year.
Bennet, now a U.S. Senator, promised that when Manual reopened it would be a “premiere high school.”Reopening, 2007 – Manual started a new life with its reopening in August 2007, beginning a slow climb back toward greater respectability, adding one grade at a time, and winning approval as one of the first two DPS innovation schools in March 2009.Changes, 2010 - Rob Stein – a busing-era Manual graduate, class of 1978 – was hired away from the prestigious Graland Country Day School to oversee Manual as principal at its rebirth.
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Stein held that job for two years and left at the end of the 2009-2010 school year, in part because he chafed at bureaucratic constraints imposed by district administration.Today – DPS veteran Joe Sandoval served as interim principal in 2010-11, presiding over the school’s first graduating class since its reopening. Brian Dale, assistant principal for the past two years at Bruce Randolph School, took the helm July 1 for the next phase of Manual’s journey.