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Good morning, Colorado.

I’ve been trying to make the most of these warm days in the Denver metro while keeping my eye on when temps will inevitably drop again.

Watch out for Friday, everybody. By the way, thanks to everyone who responded to yesterday’s announcement about The Sun becoming a nonprofit. We are excited about this new path and grateful for all of the support so many of you showed us yesterday. We promise to work hard to earn it! (It’s also never too late to make a donation)

Now, on to the news.

A graphic showing how much the ingredients in a burger have increased
A Washington County wind farm seen in June 2022. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)

Xcel Energy has a vision for Colorado’s clean energy future — one with 7,100 megawatts of new generation and storage, nearly $3 billion in new transmission lines and 26% more generation. It also comes with a $15 billion price tag that’s twice as expensive as an earlier plan that was approved. Mark Jaffe has more.

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A graphic showing how much the ingredients in a burger have increased
Fifth grade teacher Liz Banesberger, left, instructs students during a reenactment of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ on Tuesday at C3, or Creativity Challenge Community in southeast Denver. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)

Innovation schools were designed to give struggling public schools more flexibility and control in how they teach kids. But a recent report by the nonpartisan Keystone Policy Center found that the schools are largely failing to ensure students meet grade-level benchmarks. Erica Breunlin has more.

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A graphic showing how much the ingredients in a burger have increased
The Yellow Barn Farm’s namesake barn stored hay for decades when the farm served as an equestrian center. Since 2021, sisters Azuraye and Devon Wycoff have worked to convert it into an event space. They’ll host the inaugural Yellow Barn Film Festival here on Saturday. (Photo by Devon Wycoff)

There’s a historic yellow barn sitting in the foothills west of Longmont. But if you head there this weekend, you won’t find hay stored inside, but rather people gathered for a one-day film festival. Yellow Barn Farm was once a thriving equestrian center. These days it’s an incubation site for all kinds of cultural and agricultural experiments, Parker Yamasaki writes.

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Old Firehouse Books staff picks

Each week as part of SunLit — The Sun’s literature section — we feature staff recommendations from bookstores across Colorado. This week, the staff from Old Firehouse Books in Fort Collins recommends:

Read what the bookstore staff had to say about each. Pick up a copy and support your local bookstores at the same time.

RECOMMENDATIONS


My phone says the temperature will get up to 67 degrees today. Unbelievable.

Danika & the whole staff of The Sun

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

This byline is used for articles and guides written collaboratively by The Colorado Sun reporters, editors and producers.