A multilingual private school in Denver’s Lowry neighborhood is under contract to buy a nearby Catholic school’s building when it closes next year.
International School of Denver, which serves pre-K through the eighth grade, said the purchase of the Bishop Machebeuf High School property will allow it to add grades nine through 12.
Both sides of the pending deal disclosed it in separate press releases on Friday.
The archdiocese announced in September that Bishop Machebeuf, at 458 Uinta Way, would combine with St. John Paul the Great High School, at 2330 S. Sherman St., in Denver for the 2025-26 school year. Citing financial challenges and declining enrollment, the archdiocese also announced two other schools would close at the same time.
Bishop Machebeuf’s campus had previously been downsized. The school sold its baseball diamond to a developer several years ago.
The archdiocese said Friday that the property will be sold at an unspecified “fair market value.”
The International School opened in 1977 and has about 675 students, according to Alexis Wooll, the school’s senior director of advancement. In addition to English, students are instructed in one additional language — French, Spanish or Chinese. Tuition for this school year is $28,600 for middle school and just under that for lower grades, per the school’s website.
The International School currently occupies multiple buildings across 7.5 acres that total 160,000 square feet, according to Wooll.
Bishop Machebeuf, meanwhile, has one 75,000-square-foot building on 10.5 acres. It is located about a half mile east of the International School.
The International School said it will start using the property this coming fall, adding one grade a year until the school runs through the 12th grade. The school’s lower grades will continue to operate where they do now, although “we expect some crossover — particularly for our summer programs,” Wooll said in an email.
Wooll said the prospect of the International School adding a high school has “been a conversation throughout the years, particularly in the past decade.”
“In the past 3 years, school leadership has been working diligently to assess the educational and real estate markets and opportunities, ultimately mapping out curricular, extracurricular, and financial models of what ISDenver’s High School could look like,” she said.
Head of School Bob Carignan said in a statement that the school “considered several properties.”
“The property is a great academic space, so truly plug and play for us, from the safety-equipped science labs to the outstanding athletic facilities,” Carignan said.
Wooll said the International School expects its high school enrollment to max at between 300 and 400 students when fully established.
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