Denver Public Schools · Est. 1960 · The Spartans
Home of the
Spartans.
Thomas Jefferson High School, TJ, is a brown-and-gold community in southeast Denver where a big-school roster feels like a close family.
- 1960
- Year founded
- 1,375
- Students · Grades 9–12
- 18:1
- Student–teacher ratio
- Brown & Gold
- School colors
Identity
A big school that runs like a family.
Brown & gold, since day one
Thomas Jefferson opened its doors in 1960 and took its colors, brown and gold, from the original Denver Broncos uniforms of that same year. Six decades on, the palette still reads across the building, the field, and the crowd.
Students and staff call the school TJ, and they describe the culture the same way year after year: a large, diverse student body that somehow stays close-knit. The mascot is the Spartan; the ethos is belonging.
Mascot since 1960 · brown & gold · Spartan Athletics →
“TJ is a big family, everyone finds their people here.”
Academics
The newsroom that made TJ famous.
Center for Communication Technology Magnet
Launched in 1994, the CCTM is TJ's signature: a four-year magnet program with industry-standard training in robotics, software engineering, web applications, 3D design, and broadcast journalism, taught across seven computer labs, robotics workshops, and digital studios.
Students can earn up to 21 college credits at no cost before they graduate. Around the magnet sits a college- and career-readiness core with a broad AP catalog open to any student ready to push.
CCT magnet founded
College credits available through CCTM, free
AP participation rate
Community
Drawn from all of Denver.
Diversity is the default
TJ pulls students from neighborhoods across the city, and the result is a genuinely mixed hallway. Two of every three students identify as students of color, and the school serves a large share of families who qualify as economically disadvantaged.
Staff treat that mix as the point, not a footnote. The range of backgrounds is what makes the “big family” feel real.
Students of color
Economically disadvantaged
Total enrollment · 2023–24
Athletics
Spartan sport, dawn to Friday night.
Fifteen-plus programs
The Spartans field a full slate across the seasons, enough that most students who want to compete can find a team. Brown and gold show up on the turf, the mat, the court, and the track.
The Neighborhood
Southeast Denver, best explored on two wheels.
Bible Park & the High Line Canal
TJ sits in the Southmoor Park neighborhood, quiet, tree-lined streets tucked between Hampden Avenue and I-25. Pedal a few minutes north and you're in James A. Bible Park: open fields, cottonwoods, and the High Line Canal Trail running straight through it, 71 miles of car-free riding across the metro.
Riding electric? Class 1 and 2 e-bikes are welcome on Denver's park trails (class 3 too, since 2020). Keep it under the 15 mph trail limit and call your passes. Rosamond and Southmoor parks are minutes away, the light rail at Southmoor Station takes bikes, and Cherry Creek State Park's reservoir loops make a perfect weekend mission.
Miles of High Line Canal Trail
mph, trail speed limit for e-bikes
Minutes by e-bike to Cherry Creek State Park (approx.)
Two Neighborhoods
Virginia Village to Southmoor Park.
One street links them
The house and the school sit almost exactly north and south of each other, about 3.3 miles apart on nearly the same line of longitude. That line is South Holly Street. Leave the front door, turn south, and you are pointed at the building, with the canal greenbelt shadowing the road most of the way.
They are two versions of the same idea, both laid out as Denver spread southeast after the war: curving residential streets, low brick houses, mature trees planted by people who would not live to see them get big, and a park never more than a few blocks off.
Virginia Village
About five miles southeast of downtown, held between Colorado Boulevard, Mississippi Avenue, Quebec Street and Evans, with Cherry Creek running along the northeast edge. It is postwar Denver at its most characteristic: ranch houses and townhomes on quiet curving streets, with shopping plazas and taller apartment and office blocks gathered along the big roads.
Holly Street splits the neighborhood in two, the Ellis community to the west and Cook Park to the east. Garland Park and Cook Park do the heavy lifting for green space, and Goldsmith Gulch threads between them.
- Address
- 5495 Nebraska Way, Denver, CO 80246
- Character
- Postwar ranches, townhomes, plazas on the arterials
- Green space
- Garland Park, Cook Park, Goldsmith Gulch
- Transit
- Colorado Station light rail
- To school
- 3.9 miles, about 24 minutes by e-bike, 1.7 of it on the canal trail
Southmoor Park
The far southeast corner of the city, tucked into the pocket between Hampden Avenue and I-25. Quieter and leafier than the map suggests, because the through traffic stays on the arterials and the residential streets bend back on themselves rather than carrying anyone anywhere.
The High Line Canal is the organising feature. It runs northwest through James A. Bible Park a few minutes up Holly, and it is the reason a student here can cross this part of Denver without ever taking a lane from a car.
- Address
- 3950 S Holly St, Denver, CO 80237
- Character
- Low brick homes, bending streets, heavy tree cover
- Green space
- Southmoor Park, Bible Park, the High Line Canal
- Transit
- Southmoor Station light rail, bikes welcome
- To Grandma's
- 4.1 miles, about 18 minutes by e-bike, almost all of it on streets
The Move
Eight days from the driveway to the first bell.
You pull out of La Honda on August 15 and give the drive two days, so Denver is roughly August 17. Denver Public Schools starts Tuesday, August 25. Enrollment at TJ is already settled, which leaves about eight days on the ground, and they are not about paperwork races. They are about the handful of things that quietly decide whether the first week is a good one.
One of those things is a direct consequence of not knowing when the containers land. Anything the school needs must travel in the car, not in the shipping container. Immunization records, the final transcript, the birth certificate and the signed sports physical are all small enough to ride in a folder on the back seat, and all catastrophic to be sealed in a box somewhere on I‑70 on the morning of the twenty-fifth.
Fall sports did not wait for the move. Under the CHSAA calendar, football and boys golf began practice on August 3 and field hockey on August 10. If he wants a fall season, the call to the TJ athletics office should happen before the truck is loaded, not after.
The good news is that eligibility is clean. A student entering high school for the first time is eligible for all interscholastic competition, so none of the transfer sit-out rules apply to a ninth grader. The one hard gate is the physical: CHSAA requires a completed physical evaluation, dated within the last 365 days, before any practice, tryout or conditioning session. That is far easier to get done in California this week than in Denver during the first week of school.
Days on the ground before the first bell
Days a CHSAA sports physical stays valid
School meals, and RTD for riders 19 and under
Bring these from California
Two of these are worth more than the rest. Immunization records are the usual reason a transfer student gets sent home on day one, and Colorado's requirements are not California's. From the 2026-27 year Colorado requires a Tdap dose given on or after the tenth birthday, on top of hepatitis B, DTaP, polio, MMR and varicella. MenACWY is recommended here but not required. Get the record printed before you leave; chasing a California clinic from Denver in late August is a bad week.
The second is the sports physical above. Everything else on this list is recoverable if it slips.
- Immunization record
- Printed, complete, including a Tdap dose on or after his tenth birthday
- Sports physical
- On the CHSAA form, dated within 365 days, done in California before you drive
- Middle school records
- Final transcript or report card, plus any IEP or 504 plan
- Proof of address
- Deed, lease or a utility bill for 5495 Nebraska Way, carried in the car
- Birth certificate
- Or passport, for the registrar's file
- Meals
- Nothing to buy. Colorado's Healthy School Meals for All makes breakfast and lunch free for every public school student
- Getting around
- Nothing to buy. RTD is free for riders 19 and under, so a bike plus light rail covers most of the city
Two things California does not prepare you for
The altitude. Denver is a mile up, and a fourteen-year-old arriving from sea level and walking into an August two-a-day will feel it for a week or two. It is not fitness, it is oxygen. More water than seems reasonable, and no heroics in the first few sessions.
Ninth grade is a clean slate. High school GPA starts here, which means nothing from a California middle school follows him into the transcript. Course placement is the one exception worth checking with the registrar, because Colorado and California sequence math differently and it is much easier to adjust a schedule in the first week than in October.
Late Enrollment
Classes, sports and electives, from a standing start.
TJ picks its courses in the spring. Counselors run selection with the students already in the building and ride out to the feeder middle schools to catch the incoming ninth graders, so by May most of the next year exists on paper. A student arriving in August missed all of it.
That is a different process, not a closed door. TJ sent the freshman course list and its virtual selection form, and it has been submitted — the requests are in. What is left is a schedule assembled around them by the counselor assigned to his last name, out of whatever sections still have room. There is no lottery and no waitlist queue to have joined in March. It is simply first-come, which is why the calendar decides almost everything here: three jobs run in parallel, and only one of them can afford to wait.
Classes
Finish enrollment with the registrar first — a schedule cannot be built for a student the system does not yet have. The course requests are already submitted, so the appointment with the counselor who covers E through L is about confirming them and settling placement — and placement is set by the August assessments and the transcript, not by the conversation.
Registrar first, counselor second
Sports
Fall practice started before the first day of school, so this is the one that cannot wait. Register on FamilyID, pay the season fee, get the CHSAA physical on file, then get cleared by the Athletic Director. Eligibility itself is clean: a first-time ninth grader carries no transfer penalty.
The physical is the bottleneck
Electives
Requested at the same schedule build, out of whatever seats are left, which means the popular sections are the ones that go first. The CCT magnet has a freshman on-ramp a late enrollee can still step onto — but only if somebody says the words out loud at the appointment.
Ask for the CCT elective by name
Steps before an athlete can be cleared to practice
Per sport season, or $26 with approved free-and-reduced lunch
Clubs, most of them meeting at lunch
What decides placement
Placement is the part of a late enrollment that is genuinely hard to undo, and two of the three levers are pulled in August rather than on paper. Math is placed by assessment: TJ gives the math placement test to incoming DPS eighth graders and to out-of-district students during 9th Grade Academy, and that score is what separates Integrated Math 1 from Math 1 Honors and Math 2 Honors. Nothing about it can be settled in advance, which also means nothing is lost by having arrived late.
World language works the same way. There is a placement test, and a student who already did middle-school Spanish or French can test straight into Level 2 or higher rather than repeating Level 1 — a year he would not get back. The transcript still matters here, as the evidence that the test is worth giving.
Honors is neither: it is a request. TJ runs more than 40 honors and AP courses, the honors track is open to freshmen, and dropping an AP, honors or concurrent enrollment class later takes a drop form plus teacher and administrator permission. Easier to ask for it now than to move up in October.
- World language
- Spanish, French, Japanese, Level 1 through AP, plus Spanish for Heritage Speakers. Prior middle-school study should mean Level 2 or higher
- Math
- Placed from the transcript — worth checking against the Colorado sequence, which does not match California's
- Honors & AP
- 40+ courses, and an honors track available to ninth graders. Requested, not assigned
- Registration
- In person 9 a.m.–noon Monday to Thursday, or online through the registrar. Not complete until every required document is in
- The schedule itself
- Handed out at 9th Grade Academy in the week before school. If enrollment finalises close to those dates, say so in advance
Cleared to practice
Fall sports for boys are football, soccer, cross country, golf and tennis, and registration runs through FamilyID. Three things have to be true before a coach can put him on the field, and they are checked against a live cleared-to-try-out list, not a memory of a phone call.
- Register the athlete on FamilyID. This is the record everything else attaches to.
- Pay the season fee on MySchoolBucks. $92 per sport season, or $26 with approved free-and-reduced lunch.
- Get the CHSAA physical on file. Uploaded, emailed to the athletics treasurer, or handed over as a hard copy.
Then a transcript review and the Athletic Director's approval, and he is cleared. Confirm that last step with the AD directly rather than assuming the paperwork arrived.
CHSAA accepts only the official CHSAA pre-participation form, pages one through four, and it is valid for 365 days. Not a school physical, not a camp form. DPS students can get one free at the Denver Health school-based clinic inside TJ (720-423-7190); Place Bridge Academy (720-424-2050) and the Evie Dennis Campus (720-423-7610) also run them.
This is the step that quietly ends fall seasons, because the appointment is the part you cannot compress. Book it before anything else on this page.
Eligibility is not the problem
It is worth saying plainly, because "moved from out of state" sounds like it should cost something. It does not. Under CHSAA's Article 18 a student entering high school for the first time is eligible for all interscholastic competition, and the non-participation and non-member-school bylaws each confirm it independently. A first-time ninth grader is not a transfer student, needs no waiver, and skips the transfer registration step that applies to tenth through twelfth graders.
What the Athletic Director still needs is mundane: the CHSAA rules acknowledgment, the parent consent, and the physical, all on file before the first practice.
Electives, and the door into CCT
Ninth graders can reach most of the elective catalogue, and a late enrollee reaches whatever still has seats. Ask the counselor to prioritise the top two or three and to waitlist anything full, rather than accepting the first available substitute.
The one worth naming specifically is CCT — the Center for Communication Technology, the magnet TJ has run since 1994. The formal magnet designation goes through SchoolChoice, but the freshman on-ramp does not: any enrolled student can request CCT Foundations, in either the media, journalism and design strand or the computer science and game design strand, and taking one keeps the door open for the following year.
With one caveat that matters for a late enrollee, and it is in the course list in TJ's own words: seat priority goes to students who have requested to enroll in the CCT Magnet. Requesting the magnet and requesting the course are two different asks, and doing only the second puts him behind everyone who did both.
The full freshman catalogue, department by department with the fees attached, is set out in the next section.
Two useful pieces of trivia, both of which free a slot: JROTC can count toward the PE requirement, and so can a single athletic season — one season waives one semester, but the waiver has to go in immediately after the season ends, and it cannot be done in senior year. And clubs are the cheap version of all of this — roughly forty of them, mostly at lunch, joined by talking to the sponsor rather than filling in a form. That makes them the easiest thing in the building for a new student to walk into during the first week.
The Course List
Seven classes, and what he picked them from.
TJ's freshman course list came with a virtual selection form, and it has been filled in and sent. Everything below is the menu it was chosen from, kept here because the next conversation with the counselor is about these exact course names — and because offerings can still be adjusted before the fall based on demand, budgeting and other factors, so a request is not the same thing as a seat.
A full freshman schedule is seven classes. Four of them are effectively decided for him — English, math, a science and a social studies pairing are all requirements he will carry every year or nearly every year — which means the real choosing happens in the remaining three, and one of those has to be a fine art or a CTE course to keep the graduation ledger straight.
What has to be on the ledger by 2030
Worth reading once now rather than in junior year, because two of these are quietly expensive if they slip: the fine art or CTE year, and the world language. Neither has to happen in ninth grade, but both are much easier to fit early.
- English
- Four years, all four years of high school
- Math
- Four years, all four years of high school
- Science
- Three years, two of them lab sciences — biology, chemistry or physics. A fourth is recommended
- Social studies
- Three years, including a semester each of civics and government, cultural studies, conflict and healing, and personal finance. A fourth is recommended
- Fine art or CTE
- One year, required
- Physical education
- One year, two semesters
- Health
- One semester
- World language
- Not required, but completing level 2 is strongly advised — and two years or more is what college admissions expects
- Competency
- Two years in a CTE pathway, or a career certification, can satisfy it
The freshman catalogue
Every course open to a ninth grader, as TJ lists them, with the fees and the prerequisites that actually gate entry. Course descriptions are compressed to the line that changes a decision; the promo videos on TJ's electives page are the long version.
English
Required all four years
- English 1 Honors Full year
Math
Required all four years. Placement assessment given during 9th Grade Academy in August, to DPS eighth graders and out-of-district students alike
- Integrated Math 1 Full year
- Integrated Math 1 Honors Full year
- Integrated Math 2 Honors Full year · must qualify on the assessment, or pass Math 1 Honors
Science
Three years to graduate, two of them lab sciences. A fourth is recommended
- Biology Lab science · full year
- Biology Honors Lab science · full year
Social Studies
Three years to graduate, a fourth recommended
- Introduction to Ethnic Studies One semester, paired with A History of Power, Conflict and Healing · fulfils the cultural studies requirement
- Introduction to Ethnic Studies Honors One semester, paired with the honors History of Power, Conflict and Healing
World Language
All year-long. A placement test can move a student straight into a higher level — the lever worth using here
- Spanish 1 Can test into a higher level
- Spanish 2 Spanish 1, or the placement test score
- Honors Spanish 3 Spanish 2, or the placement test score
- Honors Spanish 4 Spanish 3
- Spanish Language Arts 2 For students who read, write, speak and understand Spanish fluently as a first language
- French 1 Can test into a higher level
- French 2 French 1, or the placement test score
- Honors French 3 French 2, or the placement test score
- Honors French 4 French 3
- Japanese 1 Level 1 only for freshmen
CCT Magnet
Center for Communication Technology. These count toward the fine art or CTE year. Seat priority goes to students who requested the CCT Magnet
- CCT Foundations — Media, Journalism & Design Full year · digital media, journalism and design, and the careers behind them
- CCT Foundations — Computer Science & Game Design Full year · coding, computer science and game design
- Digital Electronics Honors — Robotics 1 $60Full year · applied engineering design, control systems, the engineering design process
- CTE Digital Audio Tech Honors — Audio Production Full year · hands-on lab: audio software, equipment, music theory
- Video Production 1 Honors — Digital Media $30Two semesters · video and photography, motion graphics, audio
- Commercial Photography I Honors $30Full year · studio work, DSLR operation, lighting and styling, portfolio pieces
- Coding 1 Honors — Game Design & Development
CTE — Business
Two years in a CTE pathway, or a certification, can satisfy the competency requirement
- Principles of Marketing Honors — DECA $25Full year · the fee is DECA membership
CTE — Biomedical Science
- Principles of Biomedical Science A Human medicine, research process and bioinformatics: body systems, heart disease, diabetes, sickle cell, hypercholesterolemia, infectious disease
Performing Arts
Fulfils the fine art or CTE year
- Intro to Performing Arts A survey across dance, theatre and music
Music — Instrumental
- Band $60Full year · winds and percussion, beginning to intermediate
- Band Honors $75Full year · audition, contact Ms. Morrissey at robin_johnson@dpsk12.net · pep band plays home football and basketball
- Beginning Piano Skills $20Full year
- Beginning String Orchestra $60Full year · violin, viola, cello, double bass
- Honors String Orchestra $75Full year · audition, contact Ms. Morrissey · a major research paper or project each semester
Music — Vocal
- Choir $40Full year
- Choir Honors $40Full year · audition, contact Ms. Reed at tambyr_reed@dpsk12.net
Theater Arts
- Theater 1 Full year · open to anyone, with or without experience
Visual Arts
Fulfils the fine art or CTE year. Demand is high enough that taking more than one at a time needs counselor permission
- Ceramics 1 $40Full year
- Drawing / Painting 1 $40Full year
Physical Education
One year required. One athletic season waives one semester, but the waiver must be turned in immediately after the season ends, and never in senior year
- Functional Fitness — Bodyworks $10Full year · aerobics, strength, barre, yoga, TRX, plus nutrition and stress management
- Dance and Human Movement $10Full year · ballet, modern, West African, jazz, hip hop, choreography · counts as PE
- Team / Life Activities $10Full year · flag football, soccer, tennis, softball, gym hockey, basketball, volleyball, badminton, archery
- Fitness & Conditioning — Weight Training $10Full year · resistance training, endurance, speed, agility, programme design
- Beginning Swimming, then Intermediate $10Fall then spring semester · non-swimmers welcome, includes basic rescue skills
JROTC
- LET 1 Full year · can count toward the PE requirement. History, customs and leadership in the fall; communication, conflict resolution, financial planning, fitness and first aid in the spring
Additional Electives
- AVID 9 Full year · a college-preparatory support elective — tutorials, note-taking, collaborative work, test prep and college planning alongside a rigorous course load
Multilingual Education
Placed by ACCESS score, not chosen
- ELD 2B Required at ACCESS 1.0–2.4 · earns no English credit, pairs with Beginner ELD
- ELD Seminar Required at ACCESS 2.5–5.0
Three things that apply across the whole list. Every fee above can be reduced or waived if the student qualifies for free and reduced lunch — the same test that takes the athletics fee from $92 to $26. Dropping an AP, honors or concurrent enrollment course later requires a drop form plus teacher and administrator permission, so an honors request is a commitment for at least a semester. And TJ's own note on the list is worth repeating: offerings may be adjusted before the fall based on demand, budgeting and other factors.
Reproduced from the freshman course list TJ provided. The school's electives page carries promo videos for most of these, and the counselor holds the current credit-mapping sheet — check both against this page before treating any line here as final.
Ninth Grade Academy
Four mornings in August, two weeks before anyone else.
Monday 10 to Thursday 13 August, 8 a.m. to noon, at the school. TJ has run it for eighteen years: upperclassmen lead it, freshmen walk the building before it is full of eight hundred other people, and the week ends with a schedule in hand, TJ swag, and 2.5 elective credits already on the transcript. The district's own evaluation is unusually blunt about why it exists — students who attend do better academically, are more attached to the school and their peers, and are more likely to graduate.
For a student arriving from California two weeks before the first bell, it is the single highest-leverage thing on this entire page. It is also the one with a roster problem.
Mornings, 8 a.m. to noon, all four expected
Elective credits for completing the week
Years TJ has been running it
Every incoming freshman is auto-enrolled in the Academy — which is exactly the problem. The roster is generated from students who were already enrolled, and a SchoolChoice Round 2 placement in early August is not on it. Nobody will notice, and nobody will call. Getting added is two steps and both have to happen this week.
- Finish in-person enrollment at TJ first. This is a hard prerequisite — a student has to be fully registered before participating. It is also what generates the DPS student ID, the class schedule and the Chromebook. Registrar Peg O'Keefe, 720-423-7079.
- Then ask to be added. Email site leader Kyler Jackson at kjackso@dpsk12.net, copying the district at ninth-grade-academy.groups@dpsk12.net, or leave a message on the DPS Ninth Grade Academy hotline, 720-424-8277.
What that email needs to contain
This is the exact set of fields the district's registration messages ask for, so sending it complete the first time saves a round trip in a week that does not have room for one. Add one question at the end that the standard form does not cover.
- School
- Thomas Jefferson High School
- Student
- Full legal name
- DPS student ID
- Assigned at enrollment — say "pending" if the call to the registrar has not happened yet, rather than waiting to send
- Contact
- Home address and phone
- Context
- Placed at TJ through SchoolChoice Round 2, enrollment in progress
- The ask
- Add him to the Aug 10–13 roster
- The question
- If he can only attend part of the week, what does partial attendance earn against the 2.5 credits? That is decided case by case by the site leader, so it has to be asked, not assumed
Monday morning
Report to the main entrance at 3950 S Holly St at 8 a.m. There will be staff and student ambassadors in the lobby directing people; the exact room comes in the site leader's email to registered families about a week out. If that email has not arrived by Friday the 7th, call the main office rather than assuming he is on the list.
- Bring
- Water bottle, something to write with, and his Chromebook if he already has one. If not, TJ issues one on the first or second day
- Wear
- Standard DPS dress code, and dress to be active — team-building runs in the gym and outdoors. Phones and earbuds stay in the backpack during sessions
- Food
- Snacks are provided; extra is welcome. No lunch on an 8-to-noon day
- Cost
- Free
- Getting there
- Drop-off is normal, and DPS provides free RTD passes for students who need them during the Academy. Ask the site leader
- Parents
- It is a student programme — drop off and go. TJ lists no parent session this year
What the four mornings actually cover
The Academy is student-led, which is most of the point: the people explaining the building are the ones who were lost in it last year. Across the week it works through the tour, the culture, the paperwork of being a high school student, and the part that does not fit on a list — knowing faces before the first day.
- Building tours Classrooms, lockers, where things are
- Culture and expectations The handbook, and the norms that are not in it
- Graduation requirements, GPA and transcripts How to read the thing that decides everything later
- The online platforms Schoology for grades, and the DPS email account he will be expected to check
- Team and community building Gym and outdoors — the reason for the dress-to-be-active note
- Meeting teachers, counselors and administrators Plus the other freshmen, which is the real deliverable
- Schedule review and pickup Handed out during the week
If the schedule is not ready in time
A late enrollee may reach Monday without a built schedule. Go anyway. The tours, the culture sessions and the peer mentoring are the parts that cannot be caught up later, and none of them depend on having a timetable. Check the DPS student portal mid-week and pick the schedule up from counseling once it exists.
And if TJ says enrollment cannot be finished before the 10th, ask two specific questions rather than accepting the answer: can he attend provisionally while the paperwork finishes, and what is the make-up path for the 2.5 credits.
What is confirmed, and what is inference. The dates, the 8 a.m. to noon window, auto-enrollment, schedule pickup, the 2.5 credits and TJ swag, the eighteen years, and Kyler Jackson as site leader all come from TJ's own Ninth Grade Academy page for 2026-27. The daily shape of the week, the snacks, the RTD passes, the Chromebook timing and the report location are drawn from prior TJ language and from sister DPS schools whose pages repeat the model almost verbatim — George Washington, Northfield, Denver School of the Arts, Manual and East. Reliable, but not TJ-2026 verbatim on every point.
No public hour-by-hour agenda exists for any DPS school; the real daily schedule arrives in the site leader's email to registered families about a week out. One stale detail worth knowing: some cached search results still list Erin Thompson and 720-423-7179 as the NGA contact. She is now a TJ counselor covering P–R. Use Kyler Jackson for anything Academy-related.
Action Plan
Which week, and who to call.
The awkward shape of an August arrival is that the school year and the sports year do not start together. Fall practice opens three weeks before the first bell, orientation sits in between, and the paperwork that unlocks both has to be finished before either. Laid out on a calendar it stops looking like a scramble.
- Aug 3
- Football and boys golf begin practice
- Aug 5
- First boys golf contest
- Aug 10
- Cross country, boys soccer, softball, boys tennis, girls volleyball and gymnastics begin practice
- Aug 10–13
- 9th Grade Academy, 8 a.m.–noon. Every incoming freshman is enrolled automatically — which is exactly why a Round 2 placement has to ask to be added
- Aug 13
- First softball and boys tennis contests
- Aug 20
- First cross country and boys soccer contests; football Zero Week
- Aug 25
- First day of school, K through 12
- Aug 27
- Football Week 1
Finish the paperwork, book the physical
- Close out enrollment with the registrar: birth certificate, proof of address plus landlord letter, the Pescadero transcript and attendance record, vaccination records, and the JDF 751 custody forms. Ask for three things on the way out — the DPS student ID number, when the schedule will be ready, and when the Chromebook is issued.
- Ask to be added to the Ninth Grade Academy roster, the same day. Auto-enrollment does not reach a Round 2 placement, and the Academy starts before school does.
- If any fall sport is wanted, register on FamilyID, pay the fee, and book the CHSAA physical the same day. Practices have already begun.
- Email the Athletic Director: a first-time ninth grader, new from out of state, interested in a named sport. Ask her to confirm clearance once the registration and physical land, and to pass on the coach's contact and practice times.
- Email Maggie Kennedy — the counselor for E through L — to confirm the submitted course requests landed and to book the schedule build. Attach the transcript and say plainly which requests matter most: the honors lines, the world-language level, and CCT Foundations, which is the one with a seat-priority queue ahead of him.
Into the building before anyone else
- 9th Grade Academy, 8 a.m. to noon: building tours, expectations, graduation requirements, GPA and transcripts — and the schedule itself. Watch for the site leader's email a week out; if nothing has arrived by Friday the 7th, call the office.
- The math placement assessment happens here, for out-of-district students as well as DPS eighth graders. It is the thing that decides Integrated Math 1 versus Math 1 Honors versus Math 2 Honors, and it cannot be taken early. Ask about the world-language placement test at the same time.
- First fall-sport practices, if he is cleared.
- Chromebook pickup, fees on MySchoolBucks, ID photo. TJ has not published 2026-27 dates for these, so confirm them with the registrar rather than assuming.
- Ask about club sign-ups while everyone is standing right there.
Fix what the hand-built schedule got wrong
- Read the schedule against the transcript. The add/drop window is the cheap moment to correct a placement or swap an elective; October is not.
- If a sport is being dropped, request the refund before he plays in any scrimmage or game, and inside the first two weeks.
- Go to a couple of clubs at lunch. It is the lowest-cost way into a building where everyone else already knows each other.
Where the plan bends
Three things can go differently, and none of them is fatal if it is spotted in the same week rather than in September.
- Elective full
- Ask for the waitlist and a named alternate. CCT Foundations and the visual arts fill first — CCT because magnet requests are served ahead of course requests, visual arts because demand there already needs counselor permission to double up
- Not on the NGA roster
- Email the site leader and the district hotline the same day, and ask what partial attendance earns. If enrollment cannot close before Aug 10, ask whether he can attend provisionally and what the make-up path for the credits is
- No physical in time
- Expedite through the free clinic at TJ. Registration, fee and physical must all be complete before he can be cleared — two out of three clears nobody
- Full CCT magnet wanted
- Not just the course: talk to the counselor and the CCT department about the magnet designation, which is also what moves him up the seat-priority queue for CCT Foundations. Taking the course keeps the door open regardless
The people who can actually unblock this
Published school directory contacts, current for 2026-27. The main line is (720) 423-7000, and the building is at 3950 S Holly St.
Counselors, by last name
The counselor is assigned alphabetically, and that assignment is what determines who builds the schedule. A surname beginning with G lands in the E–L band, which makes Margaret "Maggie" Kennedy the person to email — not the front desk, and not whoever answers first.
Two things can still move it. Assignments are re-cut year to year, and a two-part surname can be filed under either half, so confirm the band at registration before a week disappears into the wrong inbox.
- A – D
- Jillian Gleason · jillian_gleason@dpsk12.net
- E – L
- Margaret "Maggie" Kennedy · margaret_kennedy@dpsk12.net — the band that applies here
- M – O
- rjacks2@dpsk12.net · also students in the ELA-S Spanish language-acquisition pathway
- P – R
- Erin Thompson · ethomps@dpsk12.net · also students with an IEP
- S – Z
- Jeremy Anderson · jeremy_anderson@dpsk12.net
Read this part before relying on the rest. TJ had not published 2026-27 dates for Chromebook pickup, ID photos, or a standalone schedule pick-up day beyond 9th Grade Academy at the time of writing; confirm them with the registrar.
Counselor last-name assignments shift from year to year, and the $92 fee and the CHSAA form requirement are taken from TJ's current athletics page — amounts and forms can change by season. CHSAA sub-bylaw numbering has also moved between editions (1800.42 was formerly 1800.52) with the substance unchanged, so for anything being filed officially, verify against the live bylaw book through the Athletic Director.
Visit
Find TJ in southeast Denver.
- Address
- 3950 S Holly St
Denver, CO 80237
- Phone
- (720) 423-7000
- Contact & staff
- Reach the office →
- District
- Denver Public Schools
Grades 9–12
- Official site
- tjhs.dpsk12.org →
- Events & calendar
- See what's on →
- Athletics
- Spartan Athletics →
- Mascot & colors
- Spartans · Brown & Gold
- Founded
- 1960
- Get directions
- Open in Maps →
- The proposed family home
- 5495 Nebraska Way
Denver, CO 80246
View the listing →
- Grandma's
- 1939 S Quebec Way, #602
Denver, CO 80231
Fourteen, and already independent
Put a fourteen-year-old at 5495 Nebraska Way and the three places that make up his week stop depending on anyone's calendar. School is 3.9 miles south, about 24 minutes on a class 1 e-bike. Colorado sets no minimum age for class 1 and 2 e-bikes, so this is a ride he can legally make himself, today, without a licence and without a lift.
The honest version of that ride is worth stating, because the trail does not run to the door. It is roughly a mile of ordinary residential streets south and east to pick up the High Line Canal Trail near Bible Park, then 1.7 miles of car-free trail, then a little over a mile of streets again to reach Holly and the school. Call it 44 percent of the trip away from traffic, with the connecting bits on quiet neighbourhood roads rather than arterials.
Grandma's at 1939 S Quebec Way works out much the same, 3.5 miles and about 18 minutes, again with roughly a mile and a half on the canal. School to Grandma's is the exception: 4.1 miles in around 18 minutes, but the canal barely helps on that heading, so it is a street ride. Hover any dashed line on the map and it will tell you the split.
Where the trail is too far out of the way, the fallback is not a parent. RTD is free for riders 19 and under, buses carry bikes on the front rack, and light rail takes them aboard, so the pattern that actually works is ride to the station, load the bike, ride off the other end. Between the canal, the free fare and a battery, a fourteen-year-old's radius stops being whatever a parent can drive and starts being most of southeast Denver.