Aurora Public Schools opened its first dual-language magnet school this month, and the idea behind it is a quiet reversal of how schools have long treated kids who arrive speaking Spanish. Instead of a gap to close, the school treats Spanish as an academic asset to build on.
Escuela Bilingüe Betty Benavidez, in northwest Aurora, took over the former Sixth Avenue Elementary building and is named for Betty Benavidez, the first Latina elected to Colorado's Legislature. About 150 students, from preschoolers through first-graders, make up its first year. "I'd like our families and community to say this is a destination for bilingual education," principal Anabel Rafoul told Axios.
The district, formally the Aurora Joint District serving parts of Adams and Arapahoe counties, enrolls about 39,500 students across more than 60 schools, and a majority, roughly 58%, are Hispanic, according to federal data. District officials say around 15,000 Aurora students speak Spanish as a first language. For a school system that size, a Spanish-speaking student body is not an edge case to accommodate. It is a large share of the district.
How the model works
Benavidez runs on two-way immersion, which depends on the mix of kids in the room. The school keeps a roughly even balance between students who speak Spanish at home and students who primarily speak English or another language, so each group learns from the other. Preschool starts heavily in Spanish, about 90% Spanish to 10% English, and the ratio shifts year by year until instruction is split evenly in the upper grades.
That design is deliberate, and it lines up with what research on dual-language programs has found: students in well-run two-way immersion tend to reach strong literacy in both languages without falling behind academically, and native English speakers gain a second language in the bargain. The goal at Benavidez is not conversational Spanish as an elective. It is biliteracy, reading and writing proficiently in both languages, treated as the core academic outcome.
The school will grow into itself slowly. Aurora plans to add one grade each year as its first class moves up, reaching fifth grade in the 2030-31 school year. As a magnet, Benavidez draws students by choice rather than strictly by neighborhood boundary, the same way families opt into other themed schools. If you are weighing that kind of choice, our guide on how to get into a magnet school walks through how the application and lottery process usually works.
Aurora is not unusual in having a large Spanish-speaking student population, and its bet is that a district this diverse can turn that into a strength rather than a remediation problem. For a sense of how common that demographic reality is nationally, see our look at the most Hispanic school districts in America. Whether Benavidez becomes the destination its principal describes will take years to judge, since the first students will not reach fifth grade until the end of the decade, but the model it is testing could shape how Colorado approaches bilingual education well beyond one building.
Sources
Axios: Aurora Public Schools opens first dual-language magnet school
The Denver Post: Betty Benavidez, first Latina in Colorado House
District enrollment and demographic figures from allk12's analysis of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, 2024-25.
