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.
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.