Feb. 1, 2025
Feb. 1, 2025
Dear Team DPS,
February is Black History Month. This year, the theme, “African Americans and Labor,” highlights the many significant ways that work—whether free or unfree, skilled or unskilled, vocational or voluntary—has shaped the collective experiences of Black people. Throughout history, labor has been central to Black history and culture.
In DPS, we see evidence of remarkable work in the Black educators and staff members who show up for our students every single day. We see it in the influence of prominent DPS change-makers like Jessie Whatley Maxwell, the first Black school principal in Colorado at Columbine Elementary, and in Omar D. Blair, the first African-American to serve as President of the DPS Board of Education. We see it in Florida Pitt Waller, who was the first Black principal at Washington Park Elementary, a formerly all-white school operated under desegregation. Her legacy of work lives on at Florida Pitt Waller ECE-8 school.
Black history is DPS history. I invite you to join Denver Public Schools in deepening our personal awareness of the multiple facets of Black determination, resilience, and perseverance against all odds as we work together to lift all students toward a bright horizon. Stay tuned to the DPS social media pages and newsletters for Black History Month spotlight stories highlighting our remarkable students and staff.
In collaboration,
Dr. Alex Marrero
Superintendent