The district’s new chief thought spring was too late for such a drastic move: Parents had already made plans for the fall term.

“I thought, ‘Why are you closing a school right now? ’ ” Dorland said. “ We’re preparing for next year.”

Enrollment at , a school in Arvada, outside Denver, hovered around 100 students — representing a 45% drop since 2017. Some grade levels had dwindled to a single classroom and the district was losing money on basic services like busing and lunch. Most extracurricular programs had disappeared.

But closing schools was “political suicide,” Dorland thought.

Then she started visiting classrooms herself. “We had families deciding to leave these small schools even though they loved them,” she said. 

Since her arrival, Jeffco has shuttered 16 schools. Four more are slated to close at the end of the school year.

School communities forced to say goodbye to legacy institutions go through something akin to the stages of grief. Residents with emotional ties to schools their parents and grandparents attended frequently push back. But Dorland has earned respect for a straightforward approach to a process leaders will confront in the coming years. While implementing a daunting closure plan, she didn’t ignore the human cost, assigning staff members to ease both principals and families through the transition.

“A lot of people don’t have that muscle — to just look someone in the eye and say, ‘I know this is devastating, but I’m looking at the district as a whole,’ ” said Trace Faust, senior project director at the Keystone Policy Center, a Colorado nonprofit that held community meetings to discuss the closures. “That’s a bold thing to do, and that’s what districts need right now.”

In Colorado, as in much of the nation, experts chalk up enrollment declines to a drop in birth rates and housing prices that remain out of reach for most young families. The “gateway to the Rockies” is such a desirable place to live that older after their children grow up, leaving fewer houses on the market. 

A need to grieve

At Fitzmorris Elementary, one first grade class had just five students. Small schools lacked their own music and physical education teachers. And afterschool providers canceled programs because only a handful of students signed up.

After a second last-minute vote to shut down Fitzmorris in the spring of 2022, board members decided they could no longer address closures piecemeal. The district recommended shutting down 16 schools and held a series of community meetings before casting a final, unanimous vote in November. The timing gave families the rest of the school year to absorb what the changes would mean for their children.

But some of those gatherings didn’t get off to a great start. With talk of “re-envisioning” schools and the benefits of consolidation, the staff from Keystone was several steps ahead of the community — even “tone deaf” to parents’ concerns, Dorland said. 

Faust agreed those first meetings “honestly missed the mark. The community needed to grieve and needed to be mad.”

That’s when principals began to take a larger role in the conversations. School leaders could “get the room back together if things were going sideways,” Faust said. Some stationed themselves in their school libraries for days to talk to parents one on one.

What Dorland didn’t want, however, was parents coming to the forums hoping to get leaders to reconsider. 

“I don’t believe in pretending like communities have a choice when they don’t,” she said.

‘Don’t want a mass exodus’

That left some parents feeling shut out. Families from Kullerstrand Elementary, a Title I school in the Jeffco city of Wheat Ridge, wrote letters and protested at public hearings.

“Their minds were already made up, which was really sad,” said Kim St. Martin, Kullerstand’s former PTA president. 

After the board’s latest vote in October to this spring, some parents threatened to leave the district. 

“That’s a tricky situation, because we don’t want a mass exodus,” said LaVerne Manzanares, a former reading specialist who now helps families with children attending new schools.

Michael Zweifel, a former principal whose school, New Classical Academy at Vivian, was one of those closed, also shifted to a new role. She began supporting administrators at “receiving” schools that suddenly had to accommodate more cars in their parking lots and students in the lunch line. They’ve opened up spots on school leadership committees for teachers from closing schools, and held ice cream socials, movie nights and picnics for families to meet.

The closures were especially jarring for families in Wheat Ridge, a tight-knit community between Denver and the Rockies. The district closed three of the small city’s elementary schools, sparking anxiety about the future of its local high school. 

Alanna Ritchie, whose first grader attended Wilmore-Davis Elementary, was among who wanted Wheat Ridge city council members to pressure district leaders to change their minds. During a September 2022 council meeting, she warned the mergers could lead to the opposite problem — overcrowding — and that some of the receiving schools couldn’t accommodate additional traffic.

The convenience of walking to school is a “right” that was being “ripped away from our own children,” she said. “Small, connected neighborhood schools — it’s what defines us as a true community.”

St. Martin, the former Kullerstrand PTA president, still gets choked up over losing her neighborhood school. It was important to her, she said, that her children attended a more racially diverse school. Now they attend predominantly white Prospect Valley Elementary.

“Selfishly, I loved my relationships,” she added. “You could talk to any teacher.” 

‘Day and night contrast’

While some parents wish they could have had more say over which schools closed, experts say Dorland’s plan was better than leaving families in limbo. Brian Eschbacher, an enrollment consultant, said the uncompromising way she managed the closures is a “night and day contrast” to how Denver Public Schools, her previous employer, handled a similar issue.

Denver leaders a definitive list of schools to be closed last school year. They from the community, but ultimately abandoned a closure plan in the face of emotional appeals from parents.

Denver’s union-backed school board placed a lot of the blame for enrollment loss on . But Eschbacher, who previously led planning and enrollment services for the district, said the city has contributed to enrollment decline by continuing to approve construction of luxury that don’t attract families with young children. 

“I always tell boards, ‘This is outside of your control. This is about births and housing, and you don’t control either,’ ” he said.

Meanwhile, the challenges that defined Dorland’s early tenure aren’t over. Her plan to close two K-8 schools — Arvada and Coal Creek — has strong opponents, including Danielle Varda, the only person on the five-member board to vote against closure. She thinks the decision to shut down the two schools was rushed. Closing Arvada K-8 will cause further disruption for students who have been through previous mergers, she told the board. The district would also have to expand programs for English learners and immigrants at other schools when Arvada K-8 already offers those services.

“This plan perpetuates systemic oppression that these families have faced much of their lives,” she said.

Dorland acknowledges that parents in Wheat Ridge, where families have lived for generations, are “probably still angry.” She wishes she had done more to help city and county officials understand why the district couldn’t put off closing schools any longer. But once the decision was made, the consolidation process moved quickly.

“We had run out of runway,” she said, “and we had to take off.”

The Bentonville School District is considering building affordable housing for teachers who are struggling to secure homes amid skyrocketing home prices in Northwest Arkansas.

Superintendent Debbie Jones said district officials first realized the severity of the problem in 2021 when teachers who signed contracts resigned before the start of the academic year because they couldn’t afford housing in the area.

The Rogers School District, another large district in Benton County, has also had employees rescind job offers after realizing they couldn’t afford moving to the area, Communications Multimedia Specialist Jason Ivester said.

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“It is an ongoing concern that we are constantly looking at,” Ivester said.

The affordable housing issue complicates teacher recruitment, which is already challenging because the pipeline is shrinking as fewer people go into education, and a solution is going to take a community effort, Jones said.

To that end, the Bentonville School District has partnered with the Excellerate Foundation, a grant-making organization that has previously worked on housing issues in the region. President and CEO Jeff Webster approached Jones with a possible solution to the district’s affordable housing problem and presented his proposal at the Bentonville School Board’s .

The proposed project would involve construction of a community center, 50 to 60 multi-family rental units and 20 single-family rental homes on land adjacent to Bentonville High School. Developers would also build 20 single-family homes that could be sold for $180,000 to $200,000.

The average sale price of a home in Bentonville was about $475,000 last year, according to a . In July, the median sale price of home in the city was $507,500, according to .

Webster told the board there will be no cost to the district, which can donate the nine acres, six of which are usable because of a floodplain. Webster estimated the project will cost $20 million to $25 million and said the development would be built by Strategic Realty, whose founder and CEO is Sen. Jim Petty, a Republican from Van Buren.

Excellerate will invest millions into the project and act as “the quarterback” by bringing different funding sources to the table, Webster told the Advocate.

“It’s everybody doing their part, and we’re just trying to step up and play our role,” he said.

Jones said she didn’t understand the depth of the affordable housing issue until she received an email from a teacher earlier this year.

“We gave a 6.5% salary increase this year, and she said, ‘I’m a single parent and I can finally breathe…but the housing is a whole different challenge,’ and we know it is,” Jones said.

During the 2022-2023 school year, Bentonville had the third highest starting salary for teachers in the state at $48,755. The LEARNS Act of 2023 raises Arkansas’ minimum teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000.

����ԳٴDzԱ���������’s for a new teacher with a bachelor’s degree and no experience is $51,924 for the 2023-2024 school year.

Webster said he expects the project to be completed within two years, but the district is awaiting a legal opinion from Arkansas’ Attorney General before moving forward. Rep. Mindy McAlindon, R-Bentonville, has submitted questions to the AG’s office to ensure the novel project is legal.

If approved, Webster said the project could become a model for others. No districts have pursued such a project in Arkansas, but organizations in other states have.

For example, a California school district south of San Francisco opened 122 apartments for teachers and staff last year, while the American Federation of Teachers opened a building with apartments and shops for teachers in West Virginia, according to .

Arkansas School Boards Association Policy Services Director Lucas Harder said the housing issue that affects teacher recruitment in the Natural State more often deals with a lack of housing in remote areas.

“It’s one of those things that always comes up every so often, especially in the Delta or some of the more rural areas, where it can be hard to get someone to come and move out there, either because there isn’t housing or there aren’t other things available,” Harder said.

Sen. Linda Chesterfield, a former educator and Democrat from Little Rock, tried to address this issue in 2003 when she was a member of the Arkansas House and lead sponsor of . The law created the Arkansas Teacher Housing Development Foundation to develop affordable housing and provide housing incentives to attract high-performing teachers to high-priority school districts.

The law was repealed in 2016.

A growing problem

If the Bentonville School District moves forward with its affordable housing project, the development will be built just south of Walmart’s Home Office, which is under construction on 350 acres. The world’s largest retailer has spurred a lot of economic development in Northwest Arkansas, which has come with rising home prices in recent years.

The average price of a home in Benton County in the second half of 2022 reached $401,875, nearly 76% higher than five years ago, according to released in March. The average price was $376,018 in Washington County, 71% higher than five years ago.

A variety of organizations and municipalities have taken steps to study and develop plans to address the region’s affordable housing crisis. In March 2021, the Northwest Arkansas Council launched a with the goal of providing housing solutions for the region’s critical workforce.

The center rebranded as Groundwork in July when its executive director announced a in downtown Springdale that will include 30 units permanently reserved for households earning below the region’s area median income.

In late 2021, the Bentonville City Council adopted a resolution to establish a group to study workforce and affordable housing. Webster served as chairman of the Bentonville Housing Affordability Workgroup, which met for a year and released a in January. The group’s work included a recommendation for developer incentives and process improvements called Project ARROW.

In early August, the Excellerate Foundation , a wholly-owned subsidiary, to accelerate the creation of affordable housing in the region.

“The affordable housing crisis has been with us for years, but it continues to intensify in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, historic inflation and a population growth rate that shows no signs of slowing down,” Webster said in a statement. “Excellerate Housing will help those who have been hit the hardest by the lack of affordable housing, especially the region’s ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) population.”

The 25-year-old foundation has worked in the housing space for about six years. Among other things, Excellerate led the creation of the NWA Regional Fund through which local banks invested more than $40 million in equity to support five new affordable housing developments. The fund supported 345 rental units for lower-income families that will run, on average, 49% below current market rate rent.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

Georgia is one of them, something Valencia Stovall, a former state legislator, tried to change in 2020. 

She sponsored a bill that would have allowed a parent to use an address outside their attendance zone as long as the person living there gave permission. The legislation also would have exempted such parents from fraud or forgery charges.

“No parent wants to drive an hour and a half in traffic to get their child in another school,” said Stovall, a Democrat who supports school choice. “They are thinking about the future of their children, and they know education is the key.”

The bill didn’t pass, and to date, only Connecticut has decriminalized what the report — published Tuesday by nonprofits Available to All and Bellwether — calls “address sharing.” 

In a post-pandemic era where more parents are shopping around for schools that better suit their children’s needs, the authors hope other states follow Connecticut’s lead. According to co-author Tim DeRoche, who has previously written about exclusionary , the issue falls under the radar because it’s more common for districts to “quietly kick the kids out of schools, using the threat of prosecution.”  

When districts do involve law enforcement, criminal charges and stiff fines often land on the backs of Black, Hispanic and low-income families, he said. The report points to a in Philadelphia where across 20 districts, families questioned about their residency or disenrolled from schools were disproportionately nonwhite.

“The enforcement is highly selective,” he said. If a school isn’t overcrowded, officials might not report a good student who fits in and doesn’t get in trouble, DeRoche said. “There is a lot of winking and nodding that goes along with this.”

The authors urge states to repeal laws that target address sharing and refrain from using general statutes, like those against theft or perjury, to charge parents who lie about their residence. They also support open enrollment laws that allow families to choose a school in any district, regardless of where they live.

“When Good Parents Go to Jail” follows a 2021 Bellwether report that shows how district boundaries separate families by race and class, with low-income and minority parents often unable to attend a better school in a nearby district even when the district is within walking distance of their home.

Data for sale

As long as attendance is tied to a student’s residence, DeRoche said, districts will be on the lookout for families trying to skirt the law.

“In some ways, districts have to enforce it because these coveted public schools are largely full,” he said.

Those highly desirable schools and districts use a range of investigative tactics to identify offenders, the report shows. 

In released with the report, private investigators say they sometimes use video with night vision software to capture students’ faces on dark winter mornings. Districts also use tip lines and offer rewards to encourage those with knowledge of address sharing to make a report.

, a business that works with over 150 districts in multiple states, purchases U.S. Postal Service records and other databases to track down where students actually sleep at night, said Mike Auletta, a New Jersey-based private investigator who runs the company.

“It’s very difficult these days for a person in the wild to completely conceal where they live,” he said. “You’d be surprised how much of your data is for sale.”

With two young children and a wife who teaches special education at a public school, Auletta said he understands both sides of the issue. But districts are trying to protect their bottom line. Address sharing “strains budgets,” he said. “Now we don’t have enough teachers. Now we have 40 kids in a classroom.”

During the pandemic, which upended students’ living arrangements and caused educators to worry that some had stopped attending school anywhere, districts lightened up on enforcement. But now, more are conducting residency audits because “they’re done putting out fires,” he said.

‘Safe and educated’

Some officials just want to grasp the extent of the problem, while others, especially those with top-ranked sports teams or highly regarded special education programs, enforce the rules more aggressively.

Residency fraud can impact more than just the student in question. A had to forfeit football titles for the 2013 and 2014 seasons because a player’s family provided false residency documents.

In one of the most well-known examples of “boundary hopping,” Akron, Ohio, mother was convicted of two felonies for falsifying records in 2011 after she used her father’s address to enroll her two daughters in the suburban Copley-Fairlawn district.

She spent nine days in jail, but former Gov. John Kasich later to misdemeanors.

“If I had had my way, I would have never gotten into trouble,” said Williams-Bolar, now a parent liaison for Available to All. “It’s very scary for an average parent that just wants their child safe and educated.”

was split. Supporters argued she and her children were victims of an inequitable system, while critics said her punishment was justified. Similar debates over the ethics of address sharing show up on community and sites . 

 A Philadelphia man recently defended his actions in a commentary about school choice. “What the hell — the statute of limitations must be up: I lied, so my son could go to top-rated McCall Elementary School in Society Hill,” . “And I make no apologies for it. We didn’t have financial capital at the time, but we had social capital.” 

Parents confronted with such decisions sometimes contact Williams-Bolar to share their stories, but she understands why most are reluctant to speak publicly. 

“Many parents are worried that they will be the next Kelley Williams-Bolar,” she said. “No one wants a mug shot.”

A push for open enrollment

Some states use civil penalties, such as fines or community service, to discourage address sharing. But back tuition for an out-of-district student can run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the report. The District of Columbia attorney general, for example, multiple parents who live outside the city for lying about their residency. One family owed over $700,000.

In addition to decriminalizing address sharing, Available to All wants states to expand open enrollment policies that allow students to attend school outside their district or zone, like and did this year. 

Most states have some provision related to open enrollment on the books, but barriers like tuition still keep families from taking advantage of the opportunity, DeRoche said. have laws that make the process easier, like offering transportation, according to the libertarian Reason Foundation.

The debate over open enrollment played out in Missouri this year, with education leaders, especially in rural areas, that would allow districts to opt in. They argued their schools would lose enrollment and the funding that goes with it. And they said it’s difficult to compete for students when they can’t raise as much in property taxes as wealthier districts. The in the Senate, but is likely to return next year.

The idea can be just as controversial in dense urban areas where well-off families pay steep home prices to buy into neighborhoods with the most sought-after schools, DeRoche said. 

“These are families with [Black Lives Matter] , but they go apoplectic if you suggest that maybe this school shouldn’t be closed to families outside the zone,” he said. “[That] leads to the distorted home prices, which exacerbates the problem that only wealthy folks can attend the best public schools.”

Disclosure: Stand Together provides funding to Available to All, Bellwether and The 74. Andy Rotherham co-founded Bellwether and sits on The 74’s board of directors.

From nine stories high, she can gaze down at a sun-smothered, urban Arizona sprawl featuring a school she began serving in 1981 – the top of an auditorium here, her last faculty office there.

The former political science professor is so fond of Arizona State University that she retired on campus.

“One of my former professors said, ‘Stay on campus as long as you possibly can. … Because those students will keep you young,’” she recalls. “I realized the wisdom in what he said.”

Dr. Jones lives in a high-end, intergenerational senior living residence that opened on the Tempe campus last year. With perks like access to classes and campus IDs, Mirabella at ASU is billed as an immersive alternative to traditional lifelong learning. Retirees here are convinced they have more to give, rejecting a mindset of decline for one of usefulness and growth.

Take Karen Busch, for example. She’s embracing life at Mirabella after tough pandemic months and the death of her husband.

“I feel now like I have a much better purpose again to life,” says the senior with spiked, rose-colored hair. 

Christine Hudman Pardy had achieved the artist’s dream: a passion-filled career and financial stability. But when the pandemic hit and she lost it all, she turned inward to face her external circumstances.

But seniors aren’t the only ones benefiting.

Intergenerational living: A two-way street

Pencie Culiver and Deven Meyers both wear thick watches on their left wrists. At Mirabella’s street-level bistro one October afternoon, they joke around as if pals forever – no matter their ages are decades apart.

Mrs. Culiver, a Mirabella resident, shared burgers with her future husband at ASU football games in the ’60s. Now back living on campus, she and Ms. Meyers, an ASU student, sometimes do double dates.  

“She energizes me. She gives me hope for the future,” says Mrs. Culiver of her new friend. 

“Honestly, it’s just fun to hear her stories,” says the business health care major.

They were paired through an intergenerational “pen pal program,” though they prefer meetups over missives. As director of lifelong university engagement, Lindsey Beagley is tasked with promoting such cross-campus exchanges.

“I do think part of my job is to challenge assumptions on both sides, right? About the different generations,” she says.

Mirabella’s sleek 20-story tower opened its doors last December. Surrounded by traffic and eateries, it sits on the urban edge of the Tempe campus, which hosts roughly 55,000 students. U.S. News and World Report  for innovation.

“We believe strongly at ASU in the idea that we should all be lifelong learners,” says Morgan Olsen, executive vice president, treasurer, and chief financial officer of the school.

Mirabella’s couple-hundred residents, ages 62 and older, are largely white and presumably well-off. (Entrance fees range from $382,400 to over a million dollars, on top of monthly service fees up to $7,800.) Some residents have moved there from across the country, while several have ties to the university as alumni or former employees, like Dr. Jones, who mentions enjoying an undergrad course on world religions and recreational art classes at Mirabella.

“They say to get outside your comfort zone,” she says at home, enthroned on a yellow leather recliner. “No greater discomfort than taking a watercolor class.”

By staying on campus, Dr. Jones also gets to witness her professional legacy unfurl. As the first tenured woman in the political science department as well as the first to serve as its chair, she recruited several women to ASU during her career – a point of pride for the retiree.

“It’s not hard to recruit good women,” she says. “It’s hard to create the environment that will help them succeed,” adding that she maintains casual meetups with some of the women still there. 

Down the hall lives Dr. Busch, with the short, soft-pink hair, a retired director of faculty development who moved from Michigan. This spring she launched a weekly conversation group in Spanish that she hopes more students will join.

Another Mirabella resident, Richard Ruff, who, with his wife, Janet Spirer, divides his time between here and San Diego, also connects with students on academic topics. A retired organizational psychologist, he mentored students this past semester through the Center for Entrepreneurship. Along with helping him feel purposeful, the gig afforded him welcome insight into kids these days.

“They’re scary smart,” says a gray-sweatered Dr. Ruff.

Mirabella at ASU, a 20-story retirement community, features intergenerational socializing and lifelong learning opportunities. Mirabella’s Executive Director Tom Dorough believes interactions across generations can help chip away at ageism.

A growth path for campuses?

Older adults seek three things, says Andrew Carle, a senior living and aging industry consultant: “They’re looking for active, they’re looking for intellectually stimulating, and they’re looking for intergenerational retirement environments. And basically, I just described a college campus.”

One  counts around 100 higher ed-affiliated retirement sites. But Mr. Carle, who coined the term “university-based retirement communities” (UBRCs), says only three or four dozen projects meet most of his criteria.

The ASU model is unusual for its on-campus location and close affiliation with the school, he adds. Boston-area Lasell Village is another example, where residents on Lasell University’s campus  to at least 450 hours of enrichment a year.

Given declining enrollments – and potentially more empty buildings if virtual learning expands – UBRCs can increase campus-based revenue, Mr. Carle argues.

“I said to one university president … ‘You can hopefully start giving birth to baby geniuses who start college at age 5, or you can recycle your old customers.’”

ASU leases the nearly 2-acre site to a joint venture managed by Pacific Retirement Services. The 99-year land lease cost around $7 million up front, plus the joint venture pays a semiannual fee.

As a life plan community, Mirabella offers multiple levels of care. Beyond the 238 independent living residences, a few dozen units are dedicated to assisted living, skilled nursing, and memory care, though the latter hasn’t opened yet due to industry-wide staffing shortages.

Other growing pains stem from its location. In October, Mirabella filed a lawsuit against Shady Park, a live music venue across the street, asking Maricopa County Superior Court for an injunction to keep it from emitting noise above local limits. 

Mirabella alleges the venue’s noise and vibrations have caused “substantial personal harm” to residents, though the city says the venue, which predates Mirabella, hasn’t been cited for noise violations. A judge denied Mirabella’s request for a temporary restraining order last month.

“Discovery is ongoing but we are confident that when the facts are developed they will confirm that the sound created by music at Shady Park is reasonable and appropriate,” emailed Shady Park spokesman David Leibowitz.

Despite some friction, having both retirees and college-age concertgoers wanting to call Tempe home is “a great problem to have,” says Deputy City Manager Rosa Inchausti.

Senior advocates agree that the benefits of proximity outweigh the hiccups.

Counteracting ageism

Mirabella’s Executive Director Tom Dorough believes interactions across generations can help chip away at ageism.

“For whatever reason, in Western culture, we kind of push older adults to the side like they’re no longer useful,” he says. “The more intergenerational opportunities that we have where we’re connecting younger adults to older adults, I think the better the understanding is.”

To encourage that interaction, Mirabella pays room and board for four student musicians-in-residence. In exchange, they dedicate at least two hours a week to performance or other programming, like lessons. 

At a late-summer Mirabella happy hour, musician-in-residence Michelle Kim was playing the piano when she says a man encouraged her to choose a favorite tune of her own. A couple months later, she still recalls the group’s applause as her fingers sank into the opening keys of “Autumn Leaves.”

“They’re so compassionate,” says Ms. Kim, who’s pursuing a doctorate of musical arts. After months limited by COVID-19, “it’s so nice to have a regular audience – and your fans.”

“I’m just so grateful to work with the residents,” she adds. “They’re literally like my grandparents.”

It’s a familiarity similar to what Ms. Meyers and Mrs. Culiver share. As they prepare to leave the Mirabella bistro, the two mention a plan to reunite for sandwiches soon.

Then they hug goodbye.

This originally appeared at  and is published here in partnership with the .

The sit-in began after returning students reported and maintenance issues this fall. Howard confirmed 34 instances of “suspected fungal growth.” University officials noted the affected under 1 percent of on-campus dorm rooms.

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Howard also instituted a $2,000 tuition hike this school year, to $28,000.�� 

Compounded with the removal of student trustee representatives and , frustration turned into mass action earlier this month when students occupied the Blackburn Student Center, hanging painted banners reading “enough is enough.”

Tensions further heightened between students and the university administration last weekend; as thousands attended the , campus police closed entry to the Blackburn student center, which had been occupied in protest for 11 days.��

in the rush to secure the building.��

In a , University President Wayne Frederick called for an end to the protests, citing his ongoing conversations with key activists regarding demands and referencing the University’s existing, multi-year .��

“There is a distinct difference between peaceful protest and freedom of expression and the occupation of a University building that impedes operations and access to essential services and creates health and safety risks,” Frederick’s statement read. “The .” 

students have no intention of ending the sit-in at this time.

Protests continued throughout the campus’s highly anticipated in-person — a celebrated multi-day welcome event featuring musicians, performers and alumni. with rapper Gucci Mane’s label refused to perform, standing in solidarity with protesters.��

“This whole week we’re supposed to be coming together and being energetic and it’s like, it doesn’t feel right to be a part of that when there are still students without housing, and still students suffering in the housing that they do have,” an anonymous , Howard’s student newspaper.

Mold remediation teams have been dispatched to student rooms, yet social media accounts suggested the issue may be more pervasive: Hallways, showers, carpets and air ducts appear lined with mold, according to student Twitter accounts where they also at night.

An associate professor tweeted that one of his students was diagnosed with “.”

At least four of Howard’s main residence facilities are , a company that partners with public institutions, including the University System of Georgia and U.S. military bases, to renovate and manage infrastructure.��

Student reports of black mold and unsafe living conditions parallel the experience of military families living in Corvias-run housing; several in Fort Bragg, North Carolina are in a class-action suit.��

In 2020, to Corvias CEO John Picerne requesting information on how they may have “put profits above public health” and influenced universities’ return plans during the pandemic.��

Student activists demand an in-person town hall with President Frederick before November; the reinstatement of student, faculty and alumni affiliate positions on the board of trustees; legal and academic immunity for protesters; and a meeting between student leaders, Frederick and chair of the board to hear their housing plans for incoming classes “because .”

Howard’s Board of Trustees removed affiliate representatives in June. Since protests began earlier this month, the faculty senate has voted to collaborate with students and alumni to reinstate these positions, which they describe as a “.” 

Frederick agreed to students’ final demand, meeting student leaders to discuss housing policy, . He rejected their request for a town hall, saying  multiple times he felt uncomfortable with the idea, suggesting instead biweekly meetings with student representatives.��

“I am a Black girl at a Black college. I came here to this HBCU to escape the oppression of the world, and here I am being physically hurt at a peaceful protest. The chaos has been created by the administration,” , reflecting on the altercation during a student-led press conference on Oct. 24. “Our demands are not demanding,” she added.��

Over a week has passed without further action since Board president and alumnus Larry Morse on the ongoing sit-in, where he pledged a commitment to hearing student voices but did not offer a timeline or specific action regarding future living accommodations.��

“We know we have a gap to bridge in order to meet your expectations and ours. While we may have closed the gap in several areas, challenges remain,” the statement reads.

The board did commit to including student representatives for one-year positions, but did not specify any long-term representation or whether faculty positions would be reinstated.

As temperatures dip to 48 degrees in Washington, D.C., students continue to sleep in tents surrounding Blackburn on “The Yard” in central campus. Many have dubbed the area “”, to remain until needs are met.��

The 74 has compiled student, alumni and community accounts of living conditions and the #BlackburnTakeover:

This is Howard

Reply to @babyace2002 they publicly said they support protesting but email their students saying they would be EXPELLED.