DENVER ( KDVR ) — Denver Public Schools is feeling the pressure from a spike in migrant students.
About 2,900 new students have enrolled in DPS since October. The school system has been getting about 100 migrant students each week since the window closed in October.
How you can help migrants in Denver
Lyly Zaragoza has been a dual-language teacher at McMeen Elementary for the last five years. It’s what she calls her true calling.
“Right after high school, I got a job working with kids and I just really enjoyed it and that’s what I saw myself doing,” she said.
Zaragoza has seen a lot of changes since she first got into the profession.
“Definitely the class sizes,” said Zaragoza. “My first classroom, I had 14 kids. It was a really easy first year, I was really lucky.”
Like most of the school’s dual-language classrooms, her class size has more than doubled.
“This year we have 31. A lot of our kids that we’re getting are migrant students who are fleeing Venezuela, I believe. So, they had their schooling interrupted, or never gone to school,” said Zaragoza.