For over 20 years, the Office of Business Diversity (OBD) has helped guide DPS’ efforts to involve diverse businesses in our construction projects. The program is the only one of its kind for a Colorado school district, and has helped promote diversity in construction and related contracting for various bond-funded capital improvement projects.

Over the past several years, the DPS Board of Education and our team have taken significant steps to provide greater opportunity to diverse construction suppliers and teams through enhancing the OBD. A cross-disciplinary team of employees evaluates our current policies in collaboration with OBD processes to determine where we have room for improvements. In addition, the District completed a study with MGT of America to assess our utilization of minority- and women-owned business enterprises (MWBEs) for Denver Public Schools.

Based on this report, we are designing a comprehensive program to address the issues identified. For more on our engagement with MGT, which also evaluated our MWBE work in 2014, please visit this webpage.