Comment on Mike’s Blog Round-Up

Colorado’s eating disorder treatment industry will soon face tighter regulations of providers’ practices under a new state law spurred in part by former patients and providers’ accounts of punitive environments and treatment practices. The law, passed by lawmakers this spring as Senate Bill 117, charges the state Behavioral Health Administration with issuing new rules for eating disorder treatment clinics.

Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we offer our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems). It’s been a bad year for my garden tomatoes so far. I planted seeds indoors too soon, in early April; even after a month, they all were stunted in their starter pots.

Organizers of the inaugural Outside Festival took a risk in putting on the three-day event last week at Civic Center, betting that industry insiders and ticket-buyers would support it. Their expectations were exceeded and their vision was validated, they said. About 18,000 people attended, according to Robin Thurston, chief executive of Outside Interactive Inc., and nearly 20% of the ticket buyers were from out of state.

Most Colorado hospital systems had a profitable start to 2024, a financial rebound following a difficult year when expenses grew faster than their incomes. Only two of the six health systems that operate in Colorado reported a loss in the first three months of 2024: Denver Health, the region’s financially strained safety-net hospital, and CommonSpirit Health, which owns the Catholic hospitals in the former Centura Health partnership, including St.

Sunshine Thomas-Bear has visited a lot of museums in her role as the cultural preservation director for the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and knows the feeling when an institution seems open to returning sacred objects. The Denver Art Museum, she said after an introductory April meeting with museum staff, isn’t one of them. “It does not seem they are willing to work with tribes,” she said, noting her tribe is still figuring out how many of the 130 objects in the Denver museum it will request back. The experience of the Winnebago delegation is hardly an outlier.

Denver Public Schools projects 6,338 fewer children will attend its schools within the next five years as the declining K-12 enrollment continues to hit Colorado districts – and their budgets – despite the unexpected boost from last year’s surge of migrant students. Enrollment in Colorado’s largest district is expected to fall 8.3% from 76,157 K-12 students during the 2023-24 academic year to 69,819 pupils during the 2028-29 school year, according to a presentation DPS officials are scheduled to give the Board of Education on Monday. The school board on Monday is also expected to discuss the district’s policy on school consolidation and closures, which, if approved, would set guidelines for Superintendent Alex Marrero if and when he decides which schools to recommend for closure. The policy includes directives such as not using enrollment minimums as “bright line criteria,” as schools of any enrollment size are eligible for consolidation, according to the latest draft. “We’re currently waiting on a decision around (that policy) and that dictates both whether we consider consolidation and what the parameters of that process and consideration will be,” said Andrew Huber, executive director of enrollment and campus planning for DPS. The school board’s goal is to vote on the school closure policy, titled Executive Limitation 18 School Consolidation and Closure, in June, district spokesman Scott Pribble said. Across Colorado and the U.