Emily Griffith Technical College is a public technical college in downtown Denver, Colorado, United States. Founded by Emily Griffith in 1916 as Opportunity School, it was renamed in her honor in 1933. The school is affiliated with Denver Public Schools, offering an alternative high school program, and is part of the Colorado Community College System.HistoryDenver educator Emily Griffith shared her dream of opening a school to serve people of all ages and interests with a Denver Post features writer in 1915. Following its publication, she persuaded the Post and local trolley cars to promote the idea. In May 1916, Griffith received the condemned Longfellow School at 13th and Welton Streets from the Denver Board of Education. Opportunity School opened on September 9, 1916.By 1954, the school served 10,000 students annually and had over 400,000 alumni. Public television in Denver, directed by Jim Case, signed on January 30, 1956 from a studio in an auto body shop at the school. Funding from Denver Public Schools gradually declined over the years, leading the school to begin charging Denver residents tuition in 1991.Courses also changed with the needs of the community, adding more English as a Second Language and health care courses and closing programs in shoe repair, audio/visual electronics, and precision machining in the mid-1990s.
