Chalkbeat

Denver district, union to start negotiations Thursday on freezing some teacher raises

2020-06-17T22:28:08+00:00

The Denver school district and teachers union are set to begin negotiating Thursday on whether teachers will forgo some pay raises to help fill a $65 million budget gap.

In the hopes of avoiding layoffs and insulating individual schools from cuts, Superintendent Susana Cordova sent a letter Tuesday to the Denver Classroom Teachers Association requesting to reopen a three-year contract that resulted in substantial raises for teachers. The contract was signed last February after a three-day teacher strike.

While many teachers expressed frustration about the move on social media, union President Tiffany Choi said union negotiators are willing to hear the district out.

“DCTA recognizes that in the wake of a pandemic and economic crisis, everyone will need to make sacrifices, and we are willing to go to the bargaining table to have this discussion about what is best for our students,” Choi said in a statement Wednesday.

State law requires teacher contract negotiations be conducted in public. Thursday’s session will take place over video conference because of the coronavirus pandemic. The atmosphere will be different than that of the bargaining sessions held during the strike, when hundreds of teachers filled the room wearing union T-shirts, waving signs, and chanting.

A coronavirus-induced economic downturn has led to declining state tax revenue, which caused Colorado lawmakers to make steep cuts to education funding. As a result, Denver Public Schools must cut $65 million from its $1.1 billion budget next school year.

The district doesn’t have much time. By law, the Denver school board must approve a budget for the 2020-21 school year by June 30. School board members on Wednesday declined to comment on reopening the teachers contract.

Eliminating teachers’ annual cost-of-living raises would save the district $7 million, according to a proposal by district officials. Freezing teachers’ “step” increases — or the pay raises they earn for notching another year of service — would save another $9 million.

The proposal also calls for cutting $18 million in expenses from the district’s central office. Another $5 million in cuts would come from “progressive pay adjustments” for employees who are not teachers. Low-wage workers, such as custodians and bus drivers, would get raises, while higher-wage employees would see their salaries reduced.

In addition, district officials have proposed using $10 million from the coronavirus relief bill passed by Congress. But restrictions on the federal money make it difficult to use more, officials said.

“It is unfortunate that DPS so far has only proposed using $10 million of the CARES Act money and no reserves money to cover the budget shortfall for next year,” Choi said in her statement.

The district has about $100 million in budget reserves. While officials said the district will likely use some of it, they have not specified an amount.

Negotiations are set to begin at 10 a.m. Thursday. The public can watch here.

With 15.7% average pay increase post-strike, more Denver teachers returned

2020-01-11T01:36:25+00:00

Far more Denver teachers returned to the classroom this fall than in previous years, a retention boost that district officials attribute to pay increases won after a teacher strike last year.

But because veteran teachers tend to make more money than new hires, the higher retention means the district is paying more in teacher salaries than it budgeted for this year.

Whereas the district originally projected teachers would get an average 11.7% raise this year, the average raise for returning teachers was actually 15.7%, according to Denver Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Jim Carpenter.

The district also underestimated the cost of salary increases teachers could earn for completing training courses. A new contract with the teachers union allows teachers to cash in completed courses for pay raises.

The difference between what the district budgeted for teacher pay this year and what it’s spending is about $11 million, Carpenter said. The Denver school board will be asked later this month to amend the district’s $1.1 billion budget to reflect the higher sum.

The $11 million, which is about 1% of the district’s total budget, will come out of reserves, Carpenter said.

Carpenter called the increased teacher retention “a wonderful problem to have.” In each of the past four years, between 900 and 1,000 of the teachers, nurses, counselors, and other educators covered by the Denver Classroom Teachers Association contract left the district at the end of the year.

At the end of 2018-19, only 634 educators left — a 33% decrease in turnover.

Credit: Denver Public Schools

More than 5,600 Denver educators are covered by the union contract.

Improving teacher retention was among the union’s biggest priorities and a main motivation for the teachers who went on strike for three days last February.

While the average pay raise for returning teachers was 15.7%, more than 1,000 educators got raises of at least 20%, and 18 educators saw their pay increase by a whopping 40% or more.

The average returning teacher salary this year is $66,238, up from $57,258 last year.

Credit: Denver Public Schools

School board members on Thursday cheered the news about increased teacher retention. But board member Tay Anderson, who was an active union supporter during the strike, raised concerns about the district’s hourly wage workers. Until recently, Anderson worked in an hourly wage position as a restorative justice coordinator at Denver’s North High School.

“I want to see us actually making sure we have equity for our hourly workers,” he said. “Because for somebody who is cleaning our schools to make $15 an hour is not a livable wage.”

And the district isn’t even at $15 yet. The current minimum wage for district employees is $12.85, Carpenter said. The school board voted last year to raise the minimum wage for district employees to $15 an hour by 2023, a timetable the recently elected Anderson thinks is too slow.

Getting to $15 an hour will cost about $9 million, district officials said at the time. The district set aside more than $3 million in this year’s budget toward that goal.

Why the Denver school board ‘flipped’ and what might happen next

2019-11-08T00:28:17+00:00

Carried by momentum from February’s teachers strike and a broader backlash against the status quo, candidates opposed to the policies that made Denver Public Schools a national exemplar for education reform now control the school board for the first time.

Instead of five members backed by pro-reform organizations and two backed by the teachers union, the seven-member board will now feature five members backed by the teachers union: Jennifer Bacon and Carrie Olson, who won seats in 2017, and Tay Anderson, Scott Baldermann, and Brad Laurvick, who won seats this week.

The question now is what this “flip” will mean for teachers, students, and parents.

Those who have supported the district’s approach to school improvement fear that families will have fewer choices and schools won’t be held accountable for how well they serve students. Backers of the new board majority say the previous approach still left too many students behind. They’ve pledged to put more dollars in the classroom, make faster progress against achievement gaps, and not close neighborhood schools.

“Schools are reflections of the community,” said Tiffany Choi, a high school French teacher who recently became president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. “If we call a school ‘failing’, it’s almost like we’re calling the community ‘failing.’”

Denver Public Schools is Colorado’s largest school district with nearly 93,000 students. Once the lowest-performing large district in the state, Denver’s student test scores have improved to within a few points of the state average. But the district is still plagued by persistent problems of equity. For example, 74% of white students, but only 29% of black students, in grades three through eight met expectations on the state literacy test this spring.

The strategies employed by the district, which included fostering a “portfolio” of different school types, encouraging families to choose between them, and closing or replacing schools that don’t make the grade, helped raise achievement. But they also fueled a growing discontent among some community members and teachers, which in turn fueled February’s strike.

Van Schoales, CEO of the pro-reform education advocacy organization A Plus Colorado, points to a “disconnect” between the school district and the community. For several years, he said, the community has felt the district “had tin ears around a number of issues.”

“The common sense was that the district has community meetings, but they don’t really listen,” Schoales said. “So I think this is a natural backlash from that.”

Others, including Choi, credited the strike with raising awareness among Denver citizens who may not ordinarily pay much attention to Denver Public Schools that teachers were not happy — both with their pay and with reform policies.

Strikes “are transformative because they compel conversations that would never normally happen,” said Wendy Howell, deputy director of the Colorado Working Families Party, which supported the strike and two of the three union-backed school board candidates. “The power of those conversations outweighs any [campaign] mailer.”

Some see the election results as a rejection of big money. For several years, deep-pocketed donors and national organizations with local chapters, such as Stand for Children, have outspent the teachers union to support candidates more favorable to reform.

“Voters are tired of seeing outside influence manipulating local politics like our school board,” said Elsa Rocha, executive director of the Padres & Jóvenes Unidos Action Fund, a new political committee opposed to reform that grew out of a longstanding Denver advocacy group. “This is a way for voters and community folks to be like, ‘Enough is enough.’”

Still others tie the defeat of reform-backed candidates to voters’ distaste for President Trump and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos. While the Denver candidates soundly reject things like private school vouchers, the idea of reform is now tainted with some Democratic voters, which the union capitalized on with mailers linking their opponents to Republicans.

Krista Spurgin, executive director of Stand for Children Colorado, chalks the election results up to a general recoiling from the status quo. Stand for Children endorsed a slate of candidates — Alexis Menocal Harrigan, Diana Romero Campbell, and Tony Curcio — that lost. Though none were incumbents, the candidates were supported by current board members.

“I think there was a national wave that wanted a change,” said Spurgin, whose organization spent more than $300,000 in the race. “When you have a ‘flip the board’-type slogan, that feels like change. … I don’t think we can now say the whole community doesn’t like reform policies.”

The union-backed candidates campaigned on a platform of a smaller district bureaucracy, more dollars flowing directly to classrooms, higher teacher pay, and more mental health services for students. The reform-backed candidates promised the same things. But the union-backed candidates also pledged an end to school closures and a halt to approving new charter schools.

The union-backed candidates also questioned the merits of Denver’s school choice system, which they said creates winners and losers: those who are lucky enough to get into a good school and have the transportation to get there, and those who don’t.

Spurgin said she’s worried the new union-backed board will dismantle the systems she believes have helped the district improve. That includes cultivating a “portfolio” of school models, including charter schools, and allowing families to choose the best one for their child.

“We work with families in all [school] models and they all love their schools,” Spurgin said. “I don’t want to take that away from them.”

Schoales, of A Plus Colorado, said his biggest fear is that the new board won’t set goals for student achievement. For the past five years, the district has had a goal that 80% of third-graders would be reading on grade-level by 2020. Though it will likely fall far short — 39% were on grade-level last year — having a target has helped the district focus, he said.

“Will reading be important?” Schoales asked. “And if so, will there be a measurable goal around it? For better or worse, Denver has set itself apart from other districts in that they actually set out a goal you could benchmark against, which I think is critical.”

Reading is important, said Bacon, a union-backed board member elected in 2017. But she expects the new board majority will question whether standardized tests are the best way to measure whether students are succeeding and schools are high-quality.

“I’m not going to say, ‘Let’s lower our standards,’” Bacon said. “The interesting thing about having new voices [on the board] is that we have an opportunity to say what it is we want — and figure out how to build it, rather than use old tools.”

None of the newly elected board members have called to end Denver’s school choice system. State law allows students to choose a school other than the one to which they’re assigned, and Denver’s unified enrollment system makes it easier to do so. Bacon and others acknowledge that Denver’s landscape of charter and district-run schools would not be easily undone.

Even before the election, the board had backed away from closing low-performing schools, instead giving them more time to improve. Faced with flat enrollment, it had also slowed the pace at which it approved and opened new schools, including charters.

Those shifts are part of the reason board Vice President Barbara O’Brien, who first won election in 2013 with backing from pro-reform organizations, doesn’t expect a wrenching change when the new board members take office next month.

“The reality of the board is so different from what a campaign is like,” O’Brien said. “A campaign is all about you, you, you, what you’re trying to communicate, how you distinguish yourself from the other candidates. Then you get on the school board and you’re one of seven.

“I believe that everyone who just got elected wants the same things the current school board members want. We all want education to be better for all kids.”

But those who supported the newly elected board members hope some things do change.

“I’m looking forward to seeing immediate change,” said community activist Jeff Fard. “I do not want to see a flipped board going into an old system saying, ‘Now that we are here, we need to go slowly, we need to accommodate.’ We need them to go in and do the work boldly.”

Rocha, of the Padres & Jóvenes Unidos Action Fund, said she wants to see the board eliminate racial disparities in student discipline and invest in school-based mental health workers.

Choi, president of the teachers union, said she wants to see more transparency in how the district spends its $1 billion budget. Rather than focus on “turning around” failing schools, she wants the board to give schools the resources they need.

Where to get those resources is a question the new board will have to tackle. The district’s ability to raise new dollars is limited.

But regardless of what happens next, even supporters of education reform admit that a new era is dawning. Paul Hill, founder of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, said the new board members face a challenge: showing that their approach will do more for student achievement than any reform policies they may discard.

“It’s fair to say that the people who thought new schools and autonomy were the wave of the future, that is slowing down,” Hill said. “But will the people who reject those things be able to accomplish anything? Or will the same problems come back to haunt them?”

Denver school board ratifies deal that will give teachers an average 11.7% pay hike

2019-04-26T16:43:17+00:00

Without discussion, the Denver school board on Thursday approved a new pay deal that will award educators an average 11.7% raise next year. The deal, which was tentatively agreed upon in February, is what persuaded Denver educators to end a three-day strike earlier this year.

Union members ratified the agreement two months ago, leaving the school board vote the last step to making it official. The reason it took so long was because the district needed to integrate the terms of the deal into the master contract between the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and Denver Public Schools, district spokeswoman Anna Alejo said.

The new educator pay structure goes into effect for the 2019-20 school year. All teachers and “specialized service providers,” which include school counselors, nurses, and others, will get raises. The size of the raises will vary, but the average will be 11.7%.

The agreement moves Denver educators back to a traditional “steps-and-lanes” salary schedule from the heavily incentive-based system that existed for more than a decade. Incentive pay isn’t going away, but the number and size of the incentives will be smaller, making teachers’ pay more predictable. The starting salary for a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree will also increase significantly from less than $43,000 this year to more than $45,000 next year.

Read more about the details of the agreement here and the history of the incentive-based pay system here. Plus, check out the answers to some frequently asked questions about how teacher pay will work here.

A young strike captain wants to unseat the longtime president of the Denver teachers union

2019-04-16T17:38:00+00:00

On the heels of a three-day teacher strike that resulted in big changes in how Denver educators are paid, a young teacher who was a leader during the strike is challenging the longtime union president, who helped shepherd the deal.

Henry Roman has been president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association for 10 years. Released full time from his teaching position, Roman has led the organization through a time of controversial reform in Denver Public Schools and shifting fortunes for the union, which saw increased membership and community support in the run-up to the strike.

Tiffany Choi is a French teacher at East High School, the district’s biggest school and a union stronghold. Now in her eighth year of teaching, she has lived the reforms firsthand. Choi, who served as a strike captain at East, is also part of a group of younger teachers who want to see the union focus less on internal business and more on social justice.

Denver teachers who belong to the union have until Wednesday to vote for union president and other leadership positions. Such elections happen every two years, but the timing makes this one especially important. Membership in the union has reached 70 percent of the district’s more than 5,000 teachers, nurses, psychologists, and others, according to union leaders.

That’s a significant jump from the 50-percent membership that plagued the union for years, as it fought against what it saw as disruptive school closures and an erosion of teachers’ rights — even suing the district multiple times, only to have the state Supreme Court rule against it.

The union’s swelling ranks give it more influence at a time of transition for the state’s largest district. Denver has a new superintendent and is staring down a school board election in November that could change the board’s balance of power in the union’s favor.

Superintendent Susana Cordova, a former teacher, has already treated the union differently than her predecessor, personally attending every bargaining session this winter. Part of her “entry plan” this spring is to “establish a more productive working relationship” with the union, meaning its leaders could have the superintendent’s ear more than they did in the past decade.

In an interview in his second-floor office across the street from the state Capitol, Roman spoke about the unifying effect of the strike, the average 11.7 percent raise teachers will see in their paychecks this fall, and how he hopes to parlay that victory into another one in November.

“The next big challenge for us is the school board election,” Roman said.

The board has been controlled for more than a decade by members who support reforms that the union opposes, including closing struggling district-run schools and opening new charter schools. Union-backed candidates have tried and failed every two years to gain a majority of seats, though Roman counts the victory of two such candidates in 2017 as significant progress.

“It does have an impact on the day-to-day lives of our teachers, the kinds of policies they set for the district,” Roman said of the board. “That, to us, is so key and so important.”

Before he was union president, Roman was an elementary school teacher. For a time, he also worked as a “teacher on special assignment” in the district’s central office, helping to train other teachers. Roman said he was always a member of the teachers association, even serving as his building’s union representative — a position he said earned him the nickname, “the Hammer.”

But over the years, Roman said the more aggressive approach of his youth has given way to the increasingly strategic style he now uses to negotiate with the district.

“Over time, I learned there are other ways to push,” he said. “Conflict is part of this job description. If you let that overtake you, you lose focus on what you are trying to do.”

Whoever is the next union president will be in a better position to do that pushing because of changes to the union structure that occurred during his tenure, Roman said. He helped double the number of union staff members who support building representatives, giving each school more attention, and advocated hiring employees with more organizing experience. “Because of that level of work and structure we created, we’re in a significantly better place,” Roman said.

Roman said he is running for president “as a team” with Rob Gould, a teacher who serves as the union’s lead negotiator. Gould’s bullish stance during the contract talks made him a hero among the rank-and-file, often eliciting a standing ovation when he entered a room.

Gould is running unopposed for union vice president. He declined to speak with Chalkbeat for this story. Other candidates for union office, as well as current officeholders, either did not return messages or said they were uncomfortable discussing union politics in the press.

Choi agreed to an interview, sitting after school at a student desk in one of the classrooms where she teaches at East High. She started her Denver teaching career at the now-closed Montbello High School when it was being phased out, but she said it was a negative evaluation by an administrator that made her become more active in the union.

“I felt voiceless,” Choi said. “I started looking at jobs outside of teaching that year. I came to the realization that I could try another year and see if there was anything I could do to fight back against district policies. If anything, I was like, ‘I’m not afraid.’ I lost all fear of retribution.”

She went to a forum about the community schools model, which calls for providing a range of services to address challenges students and their families face outside the classroom. From there, she became involved with a group of young Denver teachers who researched how to apply the model here, an idea they hoped would be embraced by the teachers association.

But Choi said she and the others ended up feeling rebuffed by union leaders, who suggested they tone down the confrontational tack they planned to take with the school board. In late 2016, Choi became a founding member of a group called the Caucus of Today’s Teachers that was meant to push the association in a more progressive direction.

“Never tell a millennial ‘no,’” Choi said. “They will do the opposite.”

In the last union election in 2017, another young teacher in the caucus, Tommie Shimrock, challenged Roman for president. Shimrock narrowly lost by 50 votes, but several other caucus members won seats on the union’s board of directors, including Choi.

As a director, Choi counts among her biggest successes advocating for the union to join the Industrial Areas Foundation, a coalition of progressive religious and community groups. The foundation was a key ally in the strike, bringing faith leaders to rallies and bargaining sessions to pressure the superintendent to listen to teachers. It’s that kind of grassroots organizing that Choi believes can elect pro-union school board members and stop school closures.

“When we have any news of any possible closure, we have to get everyone there: parents, church leaders, teachers from other schools,” Choi said. In the past, she said she felt the union stepped in too late. “We don’t always have to be the last ones to know.”

Roman said the union expects to announce the election results on Friday.

Inside the reorganization of the Denver school district’s central office

2019-03-13T23:55:22+00:00

The people losing their jobs as part of a reorganization of the Denver school district’s central office range from literacy fellows who worked with students in small groups to instructional superintendents who supervised principals.

After Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova announced she had cut more than 220 jobs in the district’s central office, Chalkbeat submitted an open records request for a list of the cut positions, as well as new positions Cordova is creating and current ones she is reclassifying. The net reduction is about 150 positions.

The information obtained through the request shows the full breadth of the reorganization thus far; there will be further reductions, additions, and reclassifications as the district finalizes next year’s budget, a district spokesperson said.

The cuts, being made in part to pay for higher teacher salaries, represent what Cordova called a “real elimination of services.” Priority for access to things such as literacy and math specialists will go to schools where students have the highest needs, officials said.

The reorganization will save Denver Public Schools about $17 million next year. But saving money wasn’t the only reason for the cuts; Cordova has said they are meant to eliminate redundancies and narrow the district’s focus. One of the priorities identified in Cordova’s “entry plan” for her first several months on the job is improving instruction for the district’s black and Latino students.

The reorganization will take effect June 1.

Some notable cuts include:

Eliminating 28 “literacy fellows,” who worked for a salary of $23,100 each, tutoring small groups of students in reading. The literacy fellow program was based on a similar program for math that started in 2013. But the literacy program, which began in 2016, has not shown the same level of success as the math program, which is why it’s being discontinued, officials said.
Reducing the number of people who help teachers integrate instructional technology into the classroom. From the district: “Instead of dedicated coaching for a single school or two, ‘digital coaches’ will serve a portfolio of schools. The exact number of those positions is not determined yet.”
Reducing the number of people who supervise principals.
Eliminating more than 40 managers, directors, executive directors, and assistant superintendents who made between $66,000 and $171,000 a year. The goal, officials said, was to make the district more efficient and focused on fewer priorities.

Some notable additions include:

Six people who will help schools ensure their curriculum is responsive to the needs of diverse students. From the district: “We heard repeatedly from our board, from our community, and from our teachers that we did not have direct supports for schools around culturally responsive education. This is an area where we understood we needed to make deeper investments.”
Four people who will focus on “adult self sufficiency,” providing services to families to help improve the lives of students.
A person who will provide coaching and support to school-based initiatives to create safe spaces for LGBTQ+ students and staff.
A new person who will coordinate teacher training. That job will include updating and monitoring processes for how teachers complete classes, or “professional development units,” which can be used to earn raises under the new contract.

In the tables below, we’ve listed all of the positions that have been reduced, added, or reclassified. There is also a table that shows vacant positions that were cut. For positions that were cut or reclassified, we included the salary the person in that position was making. We’re publishing salary data so that the public can see at what levels cuts were made.

Count	Position	Division	Salary
1	110 Teacher Retiree	Human Resources	$27,541.70
1	Academic Manager, Elementary Math	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$85,850.20
3	Academic Manager, Literacy	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$77,899.70 - $94,009.40
1	Academic Manager, Literacy Interventions	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$94,003.80
1	Academic Manager, Math	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$89,717.40
2	Academic Partner, Early Education	Elementary Education	$39,029.70 - $39,307.00
13	Academic Partner, Literacy	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$74,651.00 - $88,213.40
11	Academic Partner, Math	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$75,882.40 - $87,416.20
1	Academic Partner, Small Group Instruction	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$80,588.10
1	Academic Program Supervisor, Out-Of-School Time	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$51,016.60
1	Assembler	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$32,995.90
1	Assessment Specialist, Read Act	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$21,648.90
1	Assistant Superintendent	Elementary Education	$171,903.40
1	Assistant Superintendent	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$171,021.70
1	Assistant To Pdu Coordinator, Temporary	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$61,623.80
1	Associate Director, Special Projects	Administration	$96,900.80
1	Before and Afterschool Programs Specialist	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$67,001.30
1	Business Manager, Access, Competency, and Engagement	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$70,635.40
4	Competency Based Learning Specialist	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$70,101.40 - $75,545.90
1	Consultant	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$47,217.50
1	Curriculum Specialist, Intervention	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$85,850.20
2	Curriculum Specialist, Literacy	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$77,629.00 - $81,953.00
1	Curriculum Specialist, Science	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$75,750.80
1	Curriculum Specialist, Summer Academy	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$74,639.80
8	Digital Coach	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$62,901.00 - $76,591.20
1	Director, Academic Portals	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$116,554.40
1	Director, Competency-Based Learning	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$105,917.30
1	Director, Innovation	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$99,542.20
1	Director, Innovation Research	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$99,600.50
1	Director, Leadership Pipelines, Pathways and Development	Human Resources	$114,176.20
1	Director, Organizationial Excellence	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$98,419.90
1	Director, Professsional Learning	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$114,747.70
1	Director, Public Affairs	Chief of Staff	$100,001.00
1	Director, Teacher Leadership and Career Pathways	Human Resources	$96,953.50
5	Educational Technology Specialist	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$75,429.40 - $93,505.60
1	Events and Resource Coordinator, Arts and Physical Education	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$43,723.20
1	Executive Assistant	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$75,117.30
1	Executive Director, Access, Competency and Engagement	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$134,561.00
1	Executive Director, DSSN and Pathways Network	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$151,172.70
1	Executive Secretary, Academics	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$50,782.60
1	Graphic Designer	Marketing	$62,000.50
4	Imaginarium Graduate Research Assistant	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$5,555.00 - $6,943.80
2	Imaginarium Research Specialist	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$64,500.90 - $71,071.50
5	Instructional Leadership Team Partner	Human Resources	$84,445.80 - $88,401.40
7	Instructional Superintendent	Elementary Education	$114,001.30 - $136,858.40
5	Instructional Superintendent	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$120,220.40 - $134,606.10
8	Instructional Support Partner	Elementary Education	$76,704.00 - $88,102.40
1	Lead Fellow, Small Group Instruction	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$25,100.80
1	Lead In Denver Program Coordinator	Human Resources	$60,618.70
1	Lead Instructional Leadership Partner	Human Resources	$91,520.30
5	Lead Instructional Superintendent	Elementary Education	$131,887.60 - $140,695.40
28	Literacy Fellow	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$23,004.80 - $23,100.80
1	Manager, New Teacher Development	Human Resources	$86,841.00
1	Manager, Public Affairs	Public Affairs	$67,001.30
1	Manager, Research and Evaluation, Hourly	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$12,782.30
1	Manager, Research and Strategy, APED	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$87,688.80
1	Manager, Student Teacher Residency	Human Resources	$90,200.50
1	Media Relations Specialist	Media Relations	$71,635.50
3	New Teacher Support Partner	Human Resources	$74,120.90 - $83,525.30
1	Office Support I	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$38,284.80
3	Peer Observer	Human Resources	$28,787.50 - $71,426.40
1	Pilot to Scale Field Manager	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$76,000.90
1	Policy Communications Specialist	Communications	$65,450.30
1	Policy Communications Specialist	Strategic and Policy Communication	$67,849.20
1	Posa, Secondary Division Equity Initiatives	Culture, Equity and Leadership Team	$129,268.80
1	Post Secondary Readiness Project Coordinator	Elementary Education	$49,421.40
1	Product Manager, Academic Systems	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$97,970.60
1	Professional Learning Specialist, Curriculum and Instruction	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$76,378.80
2	Professional Learning Specialist, Talent Management	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$70,550.80 - $79,200.60
1	Program Coordinator, Teacher Leadership and Career Pathways	Human Resources	$56,377.40
1	Program Manager, Operations	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$92,396.40
1	Program Manager, Strategic Mathematics Initiatives	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$77,001.00
1	Project Manager, Academics	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$108,639.60
1	Project Manager, Culturally Responsive Education	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$66,302.00
1	Project Manager, Culture, Equity, and Leadership Team	Culture, Equity and Leadership Team	$75,555.30
1	Project Manager, Early Childhood Education	Elementary Education	$88,679.60
1	Public Affairs Manager	Public Affairs	$69,281.80
1	Risk and Claims Analyst	Finance	$62,000.50
2	School Design Manager	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$88,365.60 - $89,912.90
4	School Improvement Partner	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$80,317.40 - $98,611.60
1	School Improvement Partner, Early College	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$83,205.00
1	School Leader Development and Pathways Partner	Human Resources	$78,661.10
1	School Support Technician	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$54,264.30
1	Senior Advisor to Assistant Superintendent	Elementary Education	$127,582.40
2	Senior Executive Secretary	Elementary Education	$52,700.20 - $56,726.40
2	Senior Executive Secretary	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$54,388.40 - $55,776.00
1	Senior Innovation Partner	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$90,031.30
1	Senior Innovation Research Specialist	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$80,426.40
1	Senior Manager, Extended Learning	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$83,148.60
1	Senior Manager, Pilot To Scale	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$93,421.00
1	Senior Manager, Talent Management Strategy	Human Resources	$89,008.60
1	Senior Program Manager, Academics	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$101,001.10
1	Senior Program Manager, Principal Development & Partnerships	Human Resources	$98,664.30
1	Senior Program Manager, Strategic Literacy Initiatives	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$78,228.70
1	Senior Program Manager, Student Training Initiatives	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$91,001.40
1	Senior Research Analyst and Data Strategist	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$90,892.40
1	Senior Research Analyst, PSR, Hourly	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$24,997.50
4	Small Group Instruction, Fellow Coordinator	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$57,716.60 - $74,254.30
1	Small Group Instruction, Talent Aquisition and Data Coordinator	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$54,050.00
1	Specialist, Colorado Open Records Act (CORA)	Media Relations	$51,109.70
1	Specialist, Family Empowerment and System Integration	Community and Family Engagement	$59,354.20
1	Strategic Resource and Development Manager	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$74,985.70
2	Student Teacher Residency Field Specialist	Human Resources	$70,380.60 - $78,029.60
1	Supervisor, Budget Arts and Physical Education	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$57,046.70
2	Teacher On Special Assignment	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$44,501.50 - $67,508.50
1	Teacher Portal Training Developer	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$60,237.10

Reductions

Count	Position	Division
1	Accountability Manager	Accountability, Research & Evaluation
1	Apprenticeship Coordinator	Career Connect
1	Chief Of Staff, HR	Human Resources
1	Data Assessment Partner	Division of Secondary Education
1	Deputy Chief, LTL	Organizational Excellence
1	Digital Coach	Access Competency Engagement
1	Director, Strategic Communications	Communications
1	DSE Chief Of Staff	Division of Secondary Education
1	Elementary Math Partner	Curriculum & Instruction
1	Event Coordinator	Professional Learning
1	Executive Assistant, LTL	Chief Schools Office
1	Executive Director	Imaginarium
1	Executive Secretary	Elementary Education
1	FACE Center Manager	Family & Community Engagement
1	Lead Specialist Title I	Family & Community Engagement
1	Manager, Strategic Engagement	Family & Community Engagement
1	Media Relations Manager	Communications
1	Office Support	Early Childhood Education
1	Other Imaginarium	Imaginarium
1	Peer Observer	Talent Management
1	Project Manager	Accountability, Research & Evaluation
1	Secondary Math Partner	Curriculum & Instruction
1	Senior Educator Effectiveness Analyst	Accountability, Research & Evaluation
1	Senior Manager, Community Supports	Family & Community Engagement
1	Senior Manager, Strategic Literacy Initaitves	Curriculum & Instruction
1	Social Media Specialist	Communications
1	Web Developer	Communications
2	YFA/Passenger Van Driver	Family & Community Engagement

Vacancies

Position	Division
Chief Academic Officer	Academic Office
Community Engagement Specialist, Adult Self Sufficiency	Family & Community Engagement
Culturally Responsive Education Specialist	Chief Schools Office - Regions
Curriculum Specialist, Competency (Literacy)	Curriculum & Instruction
Curriculum Specialist, Competency (Math)	Curriculum & Instruction
Curriculum Specialist, Elementary Literacy	Curriculum & Instruction
Curriculum Specialist, Elementary Math	Curriculum & Instruction
Curriculum Specialist, HS Literacy	Curriculum & Instruction
Curriculum Specialist, Science	Curriculum & Instruction
Digital Coach	Curriculum & Instruction
Director, Leadership Pathways & Development	Educator & Leader Learning
Director, Strategy & Innovation	Impact Office
Executive Assistant, Chief Academic Office	Academic Office
Executive Assistant/Administrative Support	College & Career Readiness
Executive Director, Culturally Responsive Education	Culturally Responsive Education
Executive Director, Equity & Culture	Equity & Culture
FACE Center Support Coordinator	Family & Community Engagement
Graduation Clerical Support	Chief Schools Office
Lead, Educational Technology	Curriculum & Instruction
Leadership Network Learning (Level TBD)	Educator & Leader Learning
Literacy Specialist	Chief Schools Office - Regions
Manager, Elementary Literacy	Curriculum & Instruction
Math Specialist	Chief Schools Office - Regions
New Teacher Support Partner	Educator & Leader Learning
Office/Administrative Support	Chief Schools Office
Operational Superintendent	Chief Schools Office
PDU - Title TBD	Educator & Leader Learning
Pl Operations Coordinator	Educator & Leader Learning
Program Manager, City Affairs	Chief of Staff
Program Manager, LGBTQ+ Supports	Equity & Culture
Program Manager, Personalized Learning	Curriculum & Instruction
Program Manager, Strategic Initiatives	Family & Community Engagement
Regional Assistant Instructional Leaders	Chief Schools Office - Regions
Regional Culturally Responsive Education Specialist	Culturally Responsive Education
Regional Engagement Partner	Family & Community Engagement
Regional Instructional Leaders	Chief Schools Office - Regions
School Improvement Specialist	Chief Schools Office - Regions
Senior Executive Director, College & Career Readiness	College & Career Readiness
Senior Program Manager, Chief Academic Office	Academic Office
Strategic Planning Lead	Chief Schools Office
Strategy & Innovation Roles	Impact Office

New positions

Reclassified positions

Count	Position	Division	Salary	Old Position
1	Associate Director, Math Fellows	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$104,058.00	Director, Small Group Instruction Program
3	Curriculum Specialist, Culturally Responsive Education	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$73,180.13 - $81,703.86	Professional Learning Specialist, Culturally Responsive Education
1	Curriculum Specialist, Culturally Responsive Education	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$83,000.00	Senior Manager, Culturally Responsive Education
1	Director, Multicultural Outreach	Community and Family Engagement	$108,835.08	Executive Director, Multicultural Outreach
1	Performance Management Advisor	Human Resources	$91,789.00	Principal on Special Assignment
1	Regional Community Engagement Partner	Community and Family Engagement	$68,667.00	Manager, Program Services, Family and Community Engagement
1	Regional Community Engagement Partner	Community and Family Engagement	$59,138.00	Program Specialist, Strategic Family Empowerment
1	Senior Advisor, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion	Culture, Equity and Leadership Team	$98,000.00	Program Manager, Diversity, Equity And Inclusion
1	Senior Manager, Culture & Engagement	Culture, Equity and Leadership Team	$108,576.00	Director, Leadership Development
2	Senior Manager, Math Fellows	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$89,230.44 - $89,311.28	Associate Director, Small Group Instruction
1	Senior Manager, Policy Communications	Communications	$83,000.00	Senior Policy Communications Specialist
1	Senior Program Manager, Assistant Principal Development & Career Pathways	Human Resources	$109,000.00	Director, Principal Talent Management
1	Senior Research Analyst, ARE	Leadership, Teaching & Learning	$87,341.00	Manager, Research and Strategy

Reclassified positions

Three-quarters of Denver teachers went out on strike, new data shows. Look up your school here.

2019-03-06T18:30:00+00:00

Three-quarters of Denver classroom teachers were absent on the first day of a three-day strike earlier this month, according to attendance numbers obtained through an open records request.

That’s higher than the 56 percent teacher absentee rate the district reported on the strike’s first day. The figure was disputed at the time by the teachers union, which argued that its own attendance tally from the picket lines showed more support for the strike than the district was reporting. The numbers are significant because they are one measure of how many educators backed the union demands.

A district spokesperson explained that the district’s day-of count was based on information from school principals, some of whom may have been delayed in reporting teacher absences.

At the heart of Denver’s teacher strike was a dispute over how — and how much — the district’s educators are paid. By the time teachers took to the picket lines on Feb. 11, Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association had been negotiating for 15 months without reaching agreement on how to revamp the district’s complex teacher pay system.

Strike participation varied widely at schools across the district, the numbers show. At one extreme were three schools — Lena Archuleta Elementary, Florence Crittenton High School, and Respect Academy — where no teachers showed up the first day of the strike.

One issue the union and the district were debating was whether teachers at 30 “highest-priority” schools should continue to get bonuses for returning year-over-year or whether the money should go into raising salaries for all teachers. The final contract ultimately kept those bonuses, which were a top district priority.

Participation in the strike was low at some schools that get the bonuses but high at others. It ranged from 90 percent at North High School to just 7 percent at Cheltenham Elementary School, which had among the lowest participation in the district.

Look up your school in our searchable table below. It shows the percentage of teachers absent at each district-run school on the first day of the strike.

Districtwide, teacher participation in the strike decreased slightly from the first day (75 percent) to the second (74 percent) to the third (73 percent). The district’s numbers only include teachers. They do not include “specialized service providers,” such as nurses and counselors, who are also part of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and participated in the strike.

Our searchable table also shows student absences. Unlike teacher absences, which decreased as the strike continued, the total percentage of students absent at all district-run schools increased from 26 percent on the first day of the strike to 30 percent on the third day.

Student attendance also varied widely from school to school.

On the second day of the strike, the district and the union returned to the bargaining table. They met again on the third day, hashing out their differences for 20 straight hours.

The two sides announced a tentative agreement just before dawn the following morning, Feb. 14, and the union called off the strike. Because of the timing, not all teachers returned to the classroom that day. The district’s numbers show 31 percent of teachers were still absent. By Feb. 15, which was a Friday, the absentee percentage had fallen to 15 percent.

Note: After the story was published, we heard concerns about the data from teachers at schools showing no teacher absences. Teachers at those schools, including Denver Online High School and EXCEL Academy, said teachers there did go on strike. We reached out to the district, which explained that “the data only represents what was reported, and in those two cases, may not be an accurate picture of teachers’ participation in the strike.” We’ve removed the reference to those schools from the story.

Denver central office cuts will involve ‘real elimination of services,’ Cordova says

2019-03-01T22:27:32+00:00

Two months into the job, new Denver schools Superintendent Susana Cordova has cut more than 220 positions in the district’s central office, in part to pay for higher teacher salaries. At the same time, she is creating about 60 new positions and reclassifying 15 others to align to her vision for the district, which zeroes in on better serving the district’s black and Latino students.

The cuts will impact some services available to schools.

The changes amount to a net reduction of about 150 central office jobs and a savings of $17 million. Some of the money will be funneled into the higher teachers salaries promised by a new agreement reached this month between the district and teachers union after a three-day strike. The agreement injects a total of $23.1 million more into teacher pay next year, with some of the money coming from an anticipated increase in state education funding.

Denver Public Schools is Colorado’s largest school district with approximately 93,000 students and an annual budget of over $1 billion. It also has far more administrators than the statewide average. In the 2016-17 school year, Denver had one administrator for every 7.5 instructional staff members, a category that includes teachers, librarians, nurses, and others. The statewide average was one administrator for every 11.3 instructional staff members.

Employees whose jobs will be affected began receiving notification earlier this week. The district has not yet publicly released a detailed accounting of all 220 jobs affected. Officials did say that 20 of the jobs are currently vacant. Chalkbeat has requested more information, and we’ll update the story if we receive it.

But Cordova did provide some details about the restructuring in an interview. One big change, she explained, involves the supervisory structure for principals.

Now, Denver’s 147 district-run schools are grouped into 12 networks overseen by supervisors called instructional superintendents. Each network is supported by a team of central office employees who advise school principals on things such as how to effectively teach literacy, math, social studies, science, and other topics. Schools are grouped in networks based partly on whether they serve elementary, middle, or high school students.

Going forward, there will be just six networks, Cordova said. The networks will be regional and will include all schools, K-12, located in that region. They will be overseen by regional superintendents and supported by far fewer central office employees.

And the support those central office employees provide will be targeted at six areas Cordova believes are essential: elementary literacy, elementary math, secondary literacy, secondary math, culturally responsive education, and instructional leadership. That last one will provide support to the teacher coaches who teach part-time and coach their peers part-time, a strategy in which Denver Public Schools has invested heavily and believes is working.

See the district’s new organizational chart here.

The goal of these cuts and others, Cordova said, is to create a leaner and more effective central office focused on doing fewer things well, rather than spreading its efforts thin.

To figure out what to eliminate, Cordova said she and other top leaders took a different approach than usual. Rather than going through the budget department by department, they went through it by topic, an approach she likened to Japanese tidying expert Marie Kondo’s method of piling all of your clothes in the center of the room, rather than going closet to closet.

“We looked at, where in the budget are we investing in adult learning?” Cordova said, referring to training for teachers and other employees. “Where are there overlaps? Differences?”

The method helped make clear which investments were paying off and which were resulting in what she called “confusion in the field, overlap, and mixed messages.” The aim, she said, “was to keep as much of the high impact and eliminate as much of the noise as possible.”

But the cuts go beyond consolidation. Entire departments will be eliminated, Cordova said. For example, the district has for years had a department called the imaginarium, akin to an idea incubator that helps schools pilot new strategies. Its website lists 19 staff members, and Cordova said it has an annual budget of $2.4 million.

The imaginarium will go away, though Cordova said three positions doing the same sort of work will be part of a new impact office, whose head will report directly to Cordova. The impact office will focus on strategy development, project management, and research and evaluation, functions that previously were spread across several departments.

“A fair amount of what we’re doing is trying to create greater coherence,” Cordova said. But, she added, “there are real reductions, real elimination of services. I don’t want to pretend or be coy.”

Educators and others are already expressing disappointment on social media about some of the cuts, particularly the elimination of positions that provided support to teachers.

The reorganization is aligned to an “entry plan” Cordova released last week, she said. The plan emphasizes improving instruction for the district’s black and Latino students.

“We must break the historical patterns of inequity that have resulted in far too few black, brown, and low-income children succeeding at high levels,” the plan says. “We can do this if we focus our resources, energy, and talent on leveling the playing field for our most vulnerable students.”

One example of how the reorganization does that, Cordova said, is the addition of a central office employee to every school network who will focus on ensuring the academic instruction delivered in schools is culturally relevant. Until now, much of that work has been optional.

The definition of culturally responsive education can vary, but experts agree it entails building relationships with students, having high expectations for students of all races and family income levels, and planning lessons with students’ cultural backgrounds in mind.

Throughout the teacher pay negotiations, educators pressured the district to slash the central office budget, which they characterized as bloated, and invest more money into salaries they argued would stem the district’s teacher turnover rate, which was 14 percent last year.

In the end, Cordova committed to even larger cuts than she originally proposed. She also agreed to eliminate bonuses for herself and other top administrators. In addition to higher teacher salaries, money from the central office cuts will go toward higher pay for hourly workers, such as teacher aides, bus drivers, and food service workers. The district is also setting aside money for recommendations from a task force on special education.

This is not the first time in recent years that the district’s central office has experienced cuts. Reductions happened last year, as well, in part to pay for teacher raises negotiated as part of the master teacher contract, which was separate from the recent negotiations. In 2016, the district cut 157 central office positions because of state budget pressures.

The Denver strike was my school’s best team-building activity of the year. Our return didn’t go as well.

2019-03-01T17:10:41+00:00

When the Denver teachers strike reached its official end, I was already up, dressed and ready to picket for a fourth day. It was Valentine’s Day. My sign read, “Roses are red / Violets are blue / Pay your teachers, DPS / So we can go back to school.”

The strike was called off at about 6:15 a.m. I changed clothes quickly and hurried to get to school.

In part, my decision was driven by my finances. Teachers had a choice that Thursday — report to work or take an unpaid day with an assurance that administrators would not otherwise hold the day off against us. I had budgeted for three strike days (as much as any teacher can really budget for) because I believed in the cause and wanted to show solidarity with my coworkers. To take the unpaid day Thursday would cement another lost day of income.

But my decision was also inspired by what had happened during the strike itself. The strike had a more than 89 percent turnout at my school, higher than the district average of 75 percent. Many of my colleagues marched and cheered in unison in front of the school, and the experience became the best team-building of any activity or meeting we experienced this whole year. The strike gave us a chance to get to know each other, to find out how things are going across grade levels and content areas, to sympathize and empathize with one another’s struggles in and outside the classroom, and to be human with each other.

While there were some fun moments, the choice to strike was not an easy decision. We did not want to strike. We wanted to be in our classrooms with our students. We wanted to teach. And we were well aware of the chaos in our school building a few hundred feet from where we stood.

The kids sat at tables in the gymnasium, cafeteria, and auditorium. They filled out packets, played card games, and FaceTimed friends whose parents kept them home. Some of the kids expressed disappointment when we returned because they would no longer receive two recesses per day or be able to curl up on the floor and sleep.

One of my eighth-graders said that one of the good things about the strike was getting to know her classmates, especially students she did not hang out with before the strike happened. She formed friendships in hardship.

So did we.

I hoped that the transition back to work would mark a change at my school, after an intensely emotional and bonding week for teachers. But the reality fell short.

On that Thursday, many DPS schools celebrated the return of their teachers with songs, dances, debriefing meetings, healing conversations, and a unified entrance into the building. We saw this in the news. There were fantastic displays of school spirit, a common mission, and a collective coming together to support teachers and administrators alike.

I wish I could say my school was one of those schools.

We walked into the gym and divvied up the students by grade level. We were told to set our own schedules for the day. It was an essentially a “figure it out, we’re off the clock” mentality from the administrators. We had no lesson plans, no assistance (sans one very generous special education teacher who agreed to hang out in my classroom for all of those hours), and no schedule.

I held 29 seventh-grade students in my classroom for two and a half hours, followed by a second group of 28 seventh-graders for the next two and a half hours (with a 30-minute lunch break). No seventh-grader should be in a classroom for two and a half hours. Ever.

In my book — and in the students’ perspective — this was Strike Day 4, based on the chaotic nature of the day. The only difference? There were a few more recognizable adults around.

By Friday, most teachers were back in the classroom and the schedule returned to its normal operating hours. We rotated through all seven periods of the day, something I never thought to be grateful for. I got to see all of my students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, and had elementary kids stop by after school for hugs and Jolly Ranchers, a Friday tradition in my room.

Last week, we continued to work back in the direction of normal, but an unsettled feeling continued. No healing happened. No space was given to conversations that should happen when a return-to-work process occurs. At a 10-minute stand-up meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 19, our administrators told us to reach out to the Employee Assistance Program through HR if we were having a hard time.

Our attempt at a unifying staff breakfast was only supported by the teachers who were on strike, and the weekly bulletin that first Friday back highlighted the teachers and support staff who stayed inside.

My school building is not an example of what happened across all of DPS. But it is an example that I think needs to be shared as we all work to recover from the strike.

I teach my students to use their voices to advocate for what they believe in, and I would be failing to live out my pedagogy if I did not do the same.

In my opinion, the Denver teacher strike was about far more than compensation. It was a chance to raise awareness of how exhausted we are in body, mind, and spirit, and how undervalued our voices are. Teachers came together in the strike to stand up for their profession and to say, collectively, “We are here. We are important. And we are tired of being walked all over.”

In addition to teacher pay, let’s talk about how teachers are treated. Let’s honor their experiences and expertise. Let’s empower them to advocate for change within their school buildings. Let’s give them a voice at the table, not just when they are on strike, but every single day.

Autumn Jones is a teacher at Marie L. Greenwood Academy, a 1st-8th grade school in Denver Public Schools.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

Denver district begins cutting central office positions to pay for teacher raises

2019-02-28T02:09:45+00:00

Denver Public Schools began the process this week of cutting more than 150 administrative positions from its central office, which will free up $17 million for raises for teachers and other district employees, as well as additional money for special education services.

The Denver district has far more administrators than others in Colorado, and Superintendent Susana Cordova has said repeatedly that the district needs to have fewer initiatives and focus on doing a smaller number of things well.

“We have too many priorities, too many people working on those priorities, and not enough impact coming out of that,” Cordova told union negotiators at a bargaining session before the teachers strike. “I am 100 percent committed to right-sizing what the central office looks like.”

Over the course of negotiations before and during the strike, Cordova committed to even larger cuts than she originally laid out in order to put more money into teacher compensation. She also eliminated bonuses for many administrators.

This week, Cordova released an “entry plan” laying out her priorities for the next several months, with a focus on “equity, instructional excellence, and collaborative teamwork.” The district also started notifying employees who would lose their jobs.

“This week, we are refocusing our efforts where it matters most,” district spokeswoman Anna Alejo said in an email. “We will consolidate or realign central office teams to align with Superintendent Cordova’s vision and core beliefs and eliminate redundancies in our work.”

Cordova said during negotiations that the individuals who would lose their jobs care about children and are doing important work — but paying teachers more is even more important for the district’s mission.

District officials are not yet speaking publicly about which positions are being cut. Alejo called the reductions “extremely painful” and said they require the district “to make challenging trade-offs.” District officials want to wait until the internal notification process is complete before discussing the cuts in more detail.

“In a state as wealthy as Colorado, we should not have to be making these choices, but given the low state funding to schools, we have little recourse,” Alejo said.

In addition to teacher pay, money from central office cuts will go toward higher pay for hourly workers, such as paraprofessionals, bus drivers, and food service workers. The district is also setting aside money for recommendations from a task force on special education.

Post-strike, activists push to ‘flip’ the Denver board, but what that means is complicated

2019-02-26T01:21:16+00:00

The Denver teacher strike was, at its core, a fight for higher pay. But it was also a backlash against controversial school district policies, ballooning bureaucracy, and a sense that the powers-that-be weren’t listening to teachers.

Amid all of that, a battle cry that originated with black education activists in Denver began catching on with teachers and the parents supporting them: “Flip the board.” The message was written on signs, appended in hashtags to social media screeds, and shouted at rallies.

“Flip! The! Board!” teachers chanted. “Flip! The! Board!”

The message is a reference to the Denver school board, a seven-member body that sets district policy and acts as boss to the superintendent. For the past decade and a half, a majority of them have agreed with a set of policies — such as paying teachers based on merit, closing struggling schools, and opening new charter schools — that have made Denver Public Schools a nationwide exemplar for a certain brand of education reform.

But those same reforms fueled the frustration that drove many teachers to picket. The call to “flip the board” represents a desire to elect members who think differently. Advocates and parents who have long allied themselves with the board minority — opposed to school closures and skeptical of new charters — hope to parlay the anti-establishment momentum from the strike into a victory at the ballot box in November.

There are distinct opportunities this year. Term limits bar two incumbent board members from running again, leaving the field for those seats wide open. A new progressive political player with some successes under its belt is active in Denver. A longstanding Democratic consensus around education reform has frayed in the Trump era. And the strike created a vivid public display that all is not well within Denver Public Schools.

“The consciousness of the Denver community around public education has been taken to an all-new high,” said Hasira “H-Soul” Ashemu, an activist who is part of a coalition to recruit candidates and support them. “We’re going to seek to capitalize on that.”

But the people who have supported the board majority in the past downplayed the ways in which this year is different. Education reform has always been contested ground. Jen Walmer, head of the Colorado chapter of Democrats for Education Reform, said she isn’t interested in sowing political division but is rather focused on improving education outcomes for students.

With the election nine months away, it’s not even clear who the candidates will be or what the races will look like. Just one person, Tay Anderson, has declared. “We have no idea what this field is going to be like,” Walmer said. “Maybe we’ll agree on the same candidates.”

Three of the seven board seats are up for election this year. If enough candidates who want to change the status quo win, the board minority will become the majority, “flipping” the balance of power in Colorado’s largest school district for the first time in recent history.

But what that means, exactly, is complicated.

History lesson

Fifteen years ago, Denver Public Schools was far from an exemplar. It was bleeding students; about a quarter of children who lived in the city crossed the border to attend public schools in nearby suburbs or paid for private ones. The students who remained, on average, posted reading and math test scores well below the statewide average.

District leaders took drastic action. That included tying student test scores to school ratings, and using those ratings to help determine which low-performing schools should be closed. At the same time, the district nurtured the expansion of high-performing charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently run by nonprofit organizations. A quarter of Denver’s schools are now charters, which is far more than in any other Colorado district.

Charter schools are controversial. In Denver, the teachers union has accused them of siphoning students and money from traditional schools. Opponents claim charters are “privatizing” public education. And because they are supported nationwide by philanthropies that draw their money from wealthy entrepreneurs, charters are often vilified as serving corporate interests.

A big part of what allowed Denver Public Schools to close struggling schools, open new charters, and become a school reform darling was the continued support of the school board. In every election cycle, reformers held onto the board majority. For two years, in 2016 and 2017, they even held all seven seats, lending unanimous support to the district’s strategies.

Backers of those strategies say they’ve worked. Denver’s test scores have risen to within a few points of statewide averages. The graduation rate is up, and the dropout rate is down. Enrollment has swelled, and many families with the means to do so no longer flee the district.

Critics argue the gains have come at a cost. While the district talks a lot about equity, test score gaps between students from low-income families and those from wealthier ones, and between students of color and white students, have widened over time. Denver’s embrace of school choice has in some ways exacerbated school segregation. And closing neighborhood schools that served as the heart of communities of color has had unintended effects.

Despite those concerns, Denver voters have continued to hand victories to reformers. School board elections have historically had low voter turnout. In November 2017, when four seats on the board were up for grabs, only 32 percent of registered Denver voters cast ballots in the biggest of the four races. The elections have also historically been small money affairs.

But that’s no longer true in Denver. In 2017, groups affiliated with Democrats for Education Reform spent almost $428,000 to elect candidates who supported the district’s direction. Groups funded by teachers unions spent nearly $260,000 to elect candidates who did not.

The result was split. Two candidates backed by reform groups won, as did two candidates backed by teachers unions. Those two candidates, Jennifer Bacon and Carrie Olson, both former teachers, now make up what many people think of as the board minority. (A winning reform-backed candidate, Angela Cobián, is also a former teacher.)

The meaning of the word ‘flip’

Unlike in the past, when the board minority was openly hostile to the ideas championed by the majority and the district hired a marriage counselor to try to repair the rift between the two sides, the seven members who currently serve on the board tend to disagree politely. A lot of votes are actually unanimous. That includes the most important decision the board made this year: to hire longtime district administrator Susana Cordova as superintendent.

Board Vice President Barbara O’Brien said she doesn’t think of the board as divided.

“I don’t understand what they mean by ‘flip the board’ in today’s context,” said O’Brien, who was elected in 2013 and remembers when the board was more contentious.

Now, she said, “we have quite a diverse set of experiences and perspectives on the board, and we’re still almost always making unanimous votes.” She credits that to the work all seven members do before a vote to accommodate everyone’s perspectives.

But there are sometimes subtle differences in approach between the majority and minority.

Bacon and Olson have asked different questions about decisions such as whether to give district-run schools charter-like autonomy. In a district with a reputation for ignoring community wishes, the two, along with Cobián, have pushed to do a better job listening to what students, parents, teachers want. Bacon has elevated a conversation in recent months about how the district can better serve black students. Shortly after she was elected, in what was largely a symbolic vote, Olson stood alone in refusing to sign off on the contracts of five new charters.

And two weeks ago, when the district and the teachers union worked 20 hours straight to hammer out a new pay deal, Bacon and Olson kept vigil with the teachers throughout the night — after joining them at rallies and on the picket line earlier in the week.

At the same time, the board has adopted a much more cautious approach to school closures. It was Lisa Flores, a reform-backed board member, who initiated that discussion.

Not just a ‘catchy hashtag’

One of the first people to use the phrase “flip the board” in Denver was parent activist Brandon Pryor, who has emerged in the past year as one of the strongest voices for change, often making his case with the help of leaked district documents.

“The reason we started saying ‘flip the board’ is because the current school board hasn’t done anything or taken any measures to change the equity debt that’s in the district right now,” Pryor said. By “equity debt,” he means the district has done a poor job in serving the black and Latino students who make up the majority of its 93,000 students.

“We want to get people in there that have the community’s best interest at hand and are willing to partner with the community to ensure that things change — and not just paternalistically decide what’s best for us,” Pryor said.

Pryor said he’s happy the phrase “flip the board” is catching on, but he doesn’t want the focus on students of color to get lost. “I don’t want it to be all about a catchy hashtag or a Facebook group page,” he said. “How is equity going to be included in flipping the board?”

The Facebook page he’s referring to was started by a retired Denver teacher. Several parents help administer it. Before and during the teacher strike, it was called “Fair Pay for Denver Teachers.” With nearly 4,500 members, it became one of the main online gathering places for teachers, parents, and community members supportive of the strike.

After the strike ended, the administrators changed the name to “Flip the DPS Board 2019” and updated the description. “We have a great deal of momentum,” it now says, “and we will continue to shine a light on the truth about corporate education reform. #fliptheboard.”

Parent Margaret Fogarty helps administer the page. To her, flipping the board is about electing new members who are willing to question the district’s direction.

“It’s asking questions about, ‘Is this where we want to be? Is high-stakes testing the end-all, be-all for what we want our kids to be able to accomplish after their schooling?’” she said. Other questions she said she’s thinking about include what more the district should be doing to integrate its schools, and whether it should slow the growth of charter schools.

“It’s complex,” admits Fogarty, who is a relative newcomer to this fight. “There’s a lot of degrees of what people are looking at in terms of flipping the board.”

Walmer, of DFER, said the post-strike momentum around “flipping the board” won’t fundamentally change what DFER believes in. But she said it will push the organization to do a better job highlighting what she characterized as “large support” for the policies Denver Public Schools has put in place that are making a difference for students.

Similarly, Krista Spurgin of Stand for Children, which has also supported members of the board majority in the past, said her organization won’t enter the election with “preconceived notions” about the types of candidates it will back. But she cautioned against change for change’s sake, especially if that involves getting rid of improvement strategies that are working.

“We’re currently focused on, ‘How are we going to heal as a district after the strike?’ versus ‘How can we continue to divide?’” Spurgin said.

O’Brien said she expects this year’s election to be hotly contested. But if past history is any judge, she also expects the fiery “I’ll never” rhetoric from the campaign to give way to more collaborative decision-making once new members are seated.

“Whoever gets elected, the reality of what you’re working on and the various stakeholders who have different opinions about their children’s education, it makes people work really hard to find good solutions, and the rhetoric kind of goes away,” O’Brien said.

Asked about the movement to “flip the board,” neither Bacon nor Olson disparaged their fellow board members. But they did acknowledge a growing hunger in the community for change.

“We can no longer have people (on the board) with policies and theories who are not able to articulate how it impacts people,” Bacon said. “DPS is in very real need of leadership. I’m incredibly interested and invested. We gotta move.”

Plan in progress

How the “flippers” plan to pull off a feat that has eluded the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and its allies for more than a decade is still a work in progress. Ashemu, who co-directs a group called Our Voice, Our Schools, is heading a coalition that aims to identify a single candidate to run for each of the three open seats.

One of the biggest mistakes made in 2017, he and others said, was that challengers to the status quo weren’t united. O’Brien, for example, won re-election with 40 percent of the vote because her two opponents split the other 60 percent.

This year, the field is wide open. The three seats up for election are held by board President Anne Rowe, former president Happy Haynes, and Flores, the treasurer. Rowe and Haynes have served on the board for eight years and are barred by term limits from running again. Flores did not return messages inquiring whether she plans to seek re-election.

Anderson, the only candidate to announce thus far, has kicked off a campaign for Haynes’s seat. A recent Denver Public Schools graduate who works as a restorative practices coordinator at North High School, he is firmly on the side of the flippers. He also ran in 2017, ultimately losing to Bacon, who won the union’s endorsement over him.

The coalition hasn’t yet announced which candidates it will back or how it will support them. But Ashemu said it’s clear that their strategy will have to go beyond money. While deep-pocketed donors such Colorado billionaire Phil Anschutz and national organizations such as Democrats for Education Reform and Stand for Children have supported pro-reform candidates, those on the other side have relied on teachers unions to fill their more modest war chests.

“We understand that we have to do with people what the other side plans to do with money,” Ashemu said. “We really are going to have to be better wordsmiths, and use social media, and use things at our disposal in order to have an impact on the consciousness of voters and populations that before now have been disengaged.”

One of those populations will likely be the Denver teachers, parents, and community members for whom the strike was something of a crash course in school district politics. Henry Roman, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, said he expects this year’s election to be marked by heightened awareness and activism among educators, some of whom don’t even live in Denver but who are already pledging their help to “flip the board.”

“Because of the strike, people are paying close attention,” Roman said, “not just to their paychecks, but they are also looking at the link between what’s happening in the classroom and the role the Denver Public Schools board of education plays in that context.”

The flippers will have help from the Working Families Party, a national political organization that is relatively new to Colorado. The group, which gets funding from labor unions as well as individual members, played a minor role in the 2017 Denver school board election and a bigger one in last year’s Colorado House and Senate races, where four of the five candidates it supported won competitive Democratic primaries, including against better-funded opponents.

It makes sense, Deputy Director Wendy Howell said, that campaigning for change on the school board would be the next step for those who were “fired up” by the strike. Denver’s complicated teacher pay system, she said, “is just one piece of a much larger thing.”

“It’s the much larger thing that needs tackling,” Howell said. “And that is fundamentally electing a school board that reflects community voices rather than outside interests.”

Fernando Sanchez, a math teacher at West Leadership Academy, a high school in west Denver, agreed that the strike reflected larger problems in the district. Standing at a busy intersection on the third day of the teacher walkout, he gestured toward a crowd of red-clad educators who were there with him, waving signs and chanting for change.

“The board is the leader, and if they allow this to happen, it’s not functioning and something needs to change,” he said. “If they won’t change it, we need to change it ourselves.”

Denver teachers union ratifies contract deal reached after strike

2019-02-25T19:37:05+00:00

The Denver teachers union has ratified a new pay agreement reached with the school district after a three-day strike and an all-night bargaining session. The agreement includes pay raises and a continuation of bonuses for educators who work at a set of schools deemed “highest priority,” where many students are living in poverty.

In an online vote conducted by a third party, more than 97 percent of union members voted to ratify the agreement, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association announced Monday.

Only a simple majority was needed to ratify the contract. The new contract affects more than 5,300 teachers and “specialized service providers,” a category that includes nurses, counselors, and others. The union has about 3,800 members. It did not say how many voted on ratification.

The Denver school board must also ratify the contract before it goes into effect.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association and Denver Public Schools had been negotiating an overhaul to the district’s complicated teacher pay system, called ProComp, for 15 months when the union went on strike starting Feb. 11. Shortly before dawn on what would have been the fourth day of the strike, the two sides reached a tentative agreement.

The agreement will inject an additional $23.1 million into teacher pay and give educators an 11.7 percent raise next year on average, according to the district. It also will pay bonuses and incentives to educators who work in hard-to-fill positions, high-poverty schools, and schools deemed “highest priority.” The bonuses and incentives are a key aspect of ProComp.

The “highest priority” bonus, paid to educators who stay at those schools year over year, was a sticking point in negotiations. The district fought to keep it, while the union wanted to get rid of it and use the money to increase the salaries of all educators. The union compromised after the district agreed to adopt a salary schedule that was closer to what the union had proposed.

If the school board ratifies the contract and it goes into effect, the starting base salary next school year will be $45,800, a 7 percent increase from $42,789 this year. The maximum salary — for educators with 20 years of experience and a doctorate — will be $100,000.

‘We are all educators’: How the teachers strike opened a rift at one Denver middle school network that will take time to mend

2019-02-17T04:00:00+00:00

For the first time since the Denver teacher strike exposed divisions in their ranks, the 100 adults who make the Beacon middle school network run gathered in the same room.

Teachers, some still wearing red for the union cause, brought breakfast burritos to share. Upbeat soul music pumped through the speakers, an attempt to set a positive tone.

Speaking to the group assembled Friday for a long-scheduled planning day in the cafeteria of Grant Beacon Middle School, Executive Principal Alex Magaña opened by acknowledging the awkwardness that had taken a toll on a school community that prides itself on a strong culture.

Some teachers who had gone on strike — exhausted by the experience and exhilarated by the outcome — felt snubbed. Where was the celebration of what they had just fought for?

School administrators were smarting for another reason: A large number of teachers did not return to work on Thursday after the tentative pact was signed, making for another hard day.

Just as it was starting, the effort to heal the Beacon school community was stumbling a bit.

One day after the end of the three-day strike over teacher pay, students at the Beacon schools had a day off Friday, giving leaders the opportunity to begin repairing any damage done. The district administration shared resources with schools, too, including a “lessons learned” tipsheet from the recent Los Angeles teachers strike.

The challenge is proving unexpectedly daunting at the city’s two Beacon schools — Grant Beacon in southeast Denver and Kepner Beacon in southwest Denver — which share a common central administrative staff, approach, and mission to serve the city’s neediest students.

“It’s never been administration-versus-teachers, district-versus-teachers, in the culture we have created here,” said Magaña, who oversees the two schools. “We have a lot of good leadership, a lot of input from teachers. But this caught everyone kind of by surprise.”

By “this,” Magaña means the tension on the two campuses before, during, and after the strike that put Denver in an unfamiliar national glare. The 93,000-student district is better known for its unique brand of at times controversial education reform — of which the Beacon network is part — than it is for labor strife and division in the educator ranks.

As it became evident that the teachers union was intent on striking, Magaña said he sent a message to his teachers, staff, and administrators.

“I called it out two weeks ago: Be careful with what you say, because it’s going to cause harm and impact our culture,” he said. “Everyone has their own right to make their own individual decision. Respect it. And people were trying to respect it.”

From Magaña’s perspective, it didn’t always happen. At Kepner Beacon, where 96 percent of students qualify for subsidized lunches, the young corps of teachers “grouped together and suddenly had this camaraderie, which is something that is part of our culture and that makes us successful,” Magaña said.

All but a few Kepner Beacon teachers went out on strike. Magaña harbored concerns, though, saying some striking teachers “were guilting teachers into joining for solidarity.” Teachers who crossed picket lines told him they felt alienated, he said.

Linsey Cobb, a special education teacher and special education team leader at Kepner Beacon, disputes that. She said every teacher wholeheartedly supported each teacher’s decision.

Cobb herself was torn about striking. She said she stood with teachers fighting for a system they believed would pay them a better, fairer wage. But the third-year teacher ended up reporting to work as usual Monday morning, feeling too strong of a pull to fulfill her responsibilities supporting students with individualized education plans — the complex and sometimes confounding binding documents for students with special needs.

Cobb said she was not fully prepared by what she experienced that morning.

“Even though I am very close with my students, I felt incredibly isolated,” she said. “I got the weirdest feeling. I got a lot of, ‘Miss, why aren’t you striking? Don’t you believe what teachers are fighting for?’ I was like, ‘I do!’ I had a little bit of an internal struggle.”

After attending the big teachers union rally Monday at the Capitol, Cobb said she woke up Tuesday and decided to join her colleagues picketing, which she did for the strike’s duration.

The strike brought to the forefront just how different the two Beacon campuses are. At Grant Beacon, 80 percent of students qualify for subsidized lunch — slightly above the district average. That part of the city, like much of Denver, is gentrifying. The southwest Denver neighborhood around Kepner is not. The school is a safe harbor from violence and trauma.

About half of Grant Beacon students showed up for school during the strike, and six in 10 teachers joined the strike. Four miles and a world away at Kepner Beacon, 90 percent of students showed up for school — and all but a few teachers were out on strike.

Against the backdrop of the strike, Magaña said he emphasized that words matter. Everyone in the buildings, he thought, not just teachers, ought to be considered educators. That was the role everyone was thrust into — administrators, deans, and district central office staff who through no choice of their own had to cover for absent teachers. Magaña, too. He taught math.

“We maintained a positive culture through a really weird and complicated time,” said Tristan Connett, who as Kepner’s dean of students was pressed into service to teach eighth-grade reading and language arts. “Not just for students, but all the adults, everyone included.”

Outside Kepner Beacon each morning of the strike, teachers huddled over donuts and coffee. Parents brought them hand-warmers in the 20-degree chill. One teacher sat in her car with the engine running to record a video message to her students, telling them where she was and spelling out the day’s lesson plan before she joined the picket line, Cobb said.

The Beacon schools promote character-building and use personalized learning, using data and technology to tailor instruction to individual students. As “innovation schools,” the schools are exempt from some state laws and aspects of the teachers union contract. Both schools were “green,” the second-highest ranking, in the district’s most recent school ratings.

Cracks in school culture did show during the strike. Magaña said one teacher at Grant Beacon was hurt by the negative reaction he received from striking colleagues.

The strike’s sudden end just after 6 a.m. Thursday led to mixed messages and confusion about what was expected of teachers that day, deepening rifts at the Beacon schools.

Cobb, the Kepner special education teacher, said teachers somehow got what turned out to be incorrect information from the union that they couldn’t be late for the start of school if they wanted to return.

Many striking teachers did not come back to school Thursday. That was out of step with the district as a whole, which saw more than 80 percent of teachers back in classrooms.

Some Beacon teachers, Magaña said, “said they were mentally and physically exhausted.” What, he asked, does that tell everyone who took on unfamiliar roles to keep the schools open?

When teachers, administrators, and staff arrived for Friday morning’s meeting, they congregated at tables with colored pencils and “reflection forms.” Everyone was asked to write down answers to two questions: What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about your colleagues?

“I also brought out the obvious — the elephant in the room,” Magaña said. “There are hurt feelings. There is resentment from teachers to staff to students to parents. That is something we can’t pretend isn’t there, and we put it out there and acknowledge it to move forward.”

The message from the network administration left a number of teachers disappointed.

“Every teacher who went out on strike believed in it, we got this victory, and it wasn’t celebrated as a whole,” Cobb said. “It was more like there was an acknowledgement of what we want to repair. OK, but we felt like we deserved a little celebration for what we accomplished.”

Several teachers took up administrators’ offers to speak in private throughout the day, and when everyone gathered to wrap things up, Cobb said there was acknowledgement of what teachers had accomplished. Magaña said Saturday he doesn’t regret starting off the day like he did.

“We had to acknowledge all of the feelings of the group,” he said. “It was about all of us working together for a common ground.”

Under the tentative deal union members are expected to vote on next week, all of the teachers in the Beacon network will see their base pay increase. The incentives Kepner Beacon teachers receive for teaching in a “highest priority” school will be slightly smaller but will continue.

After the Presidents’ Day holiday Monday, teachers and students will return to school Tuesday for another test of the culture that has contributed to promising academic progress.

“It’s about trust,” Magaña said. “Some of it was cracked a little it. There was no contention in the room (Friday). It was really coming in with openness and willingness by everyone to say, ‘It’s done, and we did the right thing for ourselves. Now it’s time to come closer together.’”

“Normalcy will happen,” added Cobb, the teacher. “But it might take a bit.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story reported that Denver Public Schools were off Friday, when only some were.

New Denver teacher contract: We answer the most common questions about the tentative pact

2019-02-16T17:14:00+00:00

One reason many Denver educators didn’t like the district’s old ProComp pay system was that it was too complicated and unpredictable. Both sides agree that the deal reached early Thursday morning creates a much simpler pay system for teachers.

But educators — and the general public — still have a lot of questions about the tentative ProComp agreement, which still needs to be ratified by union members and the Denver school board. Here we’ve answered some of the most common questions we’ve heard since the end of the strike.

How do I place myself on the salary schedule?

The salary schedule is made up of “steps” and “lanes.” The “steps” represent years of service for which a teacher had a positive evaluation. The “lanes” represent levels of education. The new schedule has 20 steps and seven lanes.

Worked in Denver Public Schools for five years and have a master’s degree? Go to step five and then slide your finger over to the master’s degree lane. That’s your base salary.

Did you have a year when your evaluation wasn’t good? Go back one step. Have an additional 18 credits on top of your master’s degree? Go up one more lane.

Teachers can also go up a lane once they hit the 10-year mark because the district wanted to reward longevity. Other milestones that merit a lane change: earning national board certification or an advanced license, or completing six “professional development unit” training courses.

Still not sure? Denver Public Schools plans to put a salary calculator on its website soon.

What if I have more than 20 years of experience?

If you have 20 or more years of experience, you’re placed at the top of the salary schedule, on step 20. After step 20, you’ll get yearly cost-of-living raises. You’re still eligible to change lanes, but you won’t get any more step raises.

Does the district know everything it needs to know about individual educators to pay them the correct salary?

Denver Public Schools plans to send letters or emails this spring to every teacher and special service provider (nurses, counselors, and others) covered by the contract, laying out where the district believes that employee falls on the schedule based on information they have on file. Educators will have a certain amount of time to correct any wrong information and get on the correct step and lane for the 2019-20 school year.

Under the new salary schedule, it looks like I’ll earn less next year than I do now. Am I taking a pay cut?

No. The agreement includes a “hold harmless” clause that ensures everyone will get a raise next year. Those whose salaries are higher now than they would be under the new schedule will get a cost-of-living raise each year until the salary schedule catches up with them.

How are bonuses and incentives different under the new contract?

The bonuses and incentives are different in three ways: There are fewer of them, the dollar amounts are different, and the dollar amounts won’t change year to year.

This year, there are six bonuses and incentives offered by the district: one for educators who work in Title I schools where 60 percent or more of the student population qualifies for subsidized meals; one for educators who work in hard-to-fill positions; one for educators who work in “hard-to-serve” schools; one for educators who work in one of 30 “highest-priority” schools; one for educators who return year over year to those schools; and one for educators who work in schools deemed top-performing or high-growth, as based on school ratings.

Here’s what’s left in the new contract: Teachers in Title 1 schools and those in hard-to-fill positions, such as secondary math, will get $2,000 a year. Teachers who return year over year to 30 highest-priority schools will get $3,000 a year. Teachers in 10 schools deemed “distinguished” will get $750 a year, with the criteria to be determined by the district and the union.

Why aren’t the district and the union tying bonuses to test scores anymore?

Unions have traditionally been skeptical of paying teachers based on student test scores because the scores are so closely correlated with factors like race and household income. In Denver, these bonuses were also less predictable for teachers because the district often changed the criteria it used to rate schools and award “top-performing” bonuses.

The district also came to see these bonuses as canceling out the effects of bonuses for teachers at high-poverty schools. A teacher could get nearly the same kind of monetary reward by moving to a more affluent school or by staying in one where students face more challenges. The new bonus system provides clearer monetary benefits to working in a high-poverty school.

Why did the union agree to keep the incentive for highest-priority schools, when that had been such a sticking point?

In any negotiation, there’s give and take and a lot of moving pieces.

Here’s what lead negotiator Rob Gould said to district officials during bargaining: “We are open to the incentive because we know it’s important to you. And we’re willing to entertain your ideas if we can get the base salary schedule that our teachers need. Because if we can get the base salaries we need, we can keep our teachers in Denver.”

This was also an issue that divided teachers, with some teachers at schools that received the highest-priority incentive pushing to keep them.

Did teachers get a better deal out of the strike than the district’s last offer before the strike?

Teachers were getting a raise no matter what. The district was offering an average 10 percent raise before the strike (this included a cost-of-living raise that was agreed to back in 2017). Now teachers will get an average 11.7 percent raise, though individual teachers will see a wide range.

The district is putting the same amount of new money — $23.5 million — into teacher compensation as it was offering before the strike. It can give a larger average raise with that same amount of money because the incentives are smaller than under the previous proposal and because of limits on how teachers can use training to get raises. That gives the district more predictability about how many teachers will get raises each year.

Union leaders call the deal a win. They secured more opportunities for teachers to earn raises and move into higher categories on the salary schedule, including through completing training partially during work hours at no additional cost. And teachers can get to $100,000 in 20 years, rather than the 30 years in the last district proposal.

However, individual teachers aren’t necessarily getting more base pay next year than they would have under the district’s last offer. Early-career teachers without advanced degrees would have earned more in base pay under the district’s last offer. The teachers who do better under the deal reached after the strike are veteran educators with more education.

To take two examples: A second-year educator with a bachelor’s degree and no extra credits or training would have earned $47,550 in base pay under the district’s last offer before the strike but will earn $46,869 under the deal reached this week.

But a 20-year educator who has a master’s degree and an advanced license who has been with the district for 10 years will earn $88,907 in base pay under the new agreement, compared with $87,550 under the district’s last proposal before the strike.

The union fought for this kind of salary schedule in part to address a longstanding complaint that teachers have little reason to stay in a district where base pay levels off.

You can see the salary schedule from the district’s last offer here and the schedule from the tentative agreement here.

Is this deal financially sustainable for the district?

Denver Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Mark Ferrandino says that is the “million-dollar question,” perhaps closer to the “half-billion-dollar question,” since that is roughly how much the district spends on educator compensation.

Ferrandino believes the answer is yes, with the standard caveat that all projections are just that.

What will be cut to pay for this?

The district plans to cut $20 million from administrative costs over the next two years. That includes cutting 150 jobs in the central office and ending all executive bonuses. The bulk of it — $13 million — will go to fund the ProComp agreement.

District officials have not yet said which central office jobs will be cut, though Superintendent Susana Cordova has said cuts will be to “discretionary” departments. Departments that will not be cut include special education, English language acquisition, and transportation, she said.

Teachers will get a raise. What about paraprofessionals, bus drivers, custodians, and cafeteria workers?

These other district employees, much lower paid than teachers, are not covered by the contract that was the subject of the strike. Cordova has said these workers also deserve raises and a portion of administrative cuts will go to pay for them.

But how much of a raise will they get? That will all be worked out over the next few months and include discussions with the unions that represent these employees.

Will striking teachers get back pay?

Not according to district officials. After this story was published Friday, we asked for further clarification on this. We received this statement Saturday morning:

Superintendent Cordova understands that when teachers make the choice to strike, they are doing so to make a statement and bring attention to the importance of the issue at hand. Foregoing pay during the time that a teacher is not working is a challenging decision that no one makes lightly, and consequently, brings with it an impact that is intended to push for change. DPS did not feel that it would be fair or appropriate to provide back pay to striking teachers when many others — including more than 40 percent of classroom teachers — chose to remain at work this week. However, DPS is working with the DCTA to offer all teachers the opportunity to attend a Saturday session to replace the professional development day that was cancelled in the days leading up to the strike. Any teacher who attends will be paid a day’s salary.

When will the new agreement go into effect? How long will it last?

Assuming both sides ratify it, the new agreement technically (and retroactively) went into effect Jan. 19, the day after the old one expired. But educators won’t start receiving the new salaries, incentives, and bonuses negotiated under it until Aug. 1. The agreement expires Aug. 31, 2022.

What exactly is in Denver’s new teacher pay deal? Here’s the nitty-gritty

2019-02-16T00:14:43+00:00

By now, you’ve likely heard that the Denver school district and teachers union reached a deal this week on how — and how much — Denver educators will be paid.

The agreement came just before dawn Thursday, as teachers were waking up and getting ready to strike for a fourth day. Instead, many headed back to their classrooms, to the delight of their students. The Denver Classroom Teachers Association hailed the tentative agreement — which still must be ratified by union members and the Denver school board — as a victory.

“Educators in Denver Public Schools now have a fair, predictable, and transparent salary schedule,” said Rob Gould, a teacher and the union’s lead negotiator.

So what exactly is in the deal? Here’s a breakdown.

A new salary schedule
It will go from $45,800 for a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree to $100,000 for a teacher with a doctorate and at least 20 years in the classroom next year. It will allow teachers to earn larger raises more consistently than under the previous system.

Here’s how: The new salary schedule has 20 “steps” and seven “lanes.”

In many districts, “steps” correlate to a teachers’ years of experience. Each year, teachers go up a step and get a raise. In Denver Public Schools, it works a little differently. For teachers to go up a step every year, they must receive a performance rating of either “approaching,” “effective,” or “distinguished.” Educators who are “not meeting” cannot go up a step.

“Lanes” represent a teacher’s level of education or training. The first lane is for teachers who have a bachelor’s degree only. The second lane is for teachers who have a bachelor’s degree plus 18 college credits or the equivalent amount of in-district training — and so on, all the way up to a doctorate.

Educators move into the next lane whenever they reach that level of education. Moving a lane nets educators a bigger raise than moving a step.

The salaries on the new schedule are higher than on the current one. For example, starting pay for a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree this year is $42,789.

But there’s another reason why this new salary schedule is a big deal. In the past, the Denver salary schedule was used only to set an educator’s starting salary. In other words, when they were hired, they’d be placed on the schedule based on their experience and education.

There were no yearly step raises or opportunities to move lanes. The only ways an educator could raise their base salary were to get an advanced degree or license (a $3,851 raise this year), complete a “professional development unit” training course (an $855 raise this year), or earn a positive evaluation (an $855 or $427 raise this year, depending on a teacher’s years of service).

There was also a huge catch: Teachers with 14 or more years of service could not increase their base pay by completing professional development units; they got a lump-sum payment instead. And a positive evaluation only netted those teachers a $427 raise, as opposed to $855.

This new salary schedule has no such limits, making it a better deal for veteran educators.

Several different ways to move lanes
The new agreement allows teachers to move lanes several different ways. That’s important to teachers because lane movements net the biggest raises. Educators can move lanes by:

Earning college credits. Every time an educator earns 18 credits, they move a lane.
Completing professional development units. One unit is worth three credits, similar to a college class. Educators can complete up to two professional development units per year for the purposes of lane movement.
Earning continuing education credits. (The rules are still being worked out.)
Earning an advanced license. This is most relevant for the non-teachers covered by the contract, such as nurses, counselors, psychologists, and speech language pathologists.
Earning National Board Certification.
Ten years of service in Denver classrooms within the past 15 years.

There are a couple of caveats to that last one. Educators can only cash in their “longevity” lane change once. And it can’t be used to move into the doctorate lane. To be in that lane, an educator must have a doctorate. Those in the lane just before the doctorate lane — master’s degree plus 54 credits — who hit 10 years of service will get a $2,000 bump to their base salary. Those in the doctorate lane who have nowhere higher to move will get the same.

A note about professional development units: Educators who had more than six units “banked” as of Jan. 19 — meaning they completed them but hadn’t cashed them in for raises — can either trade their units for a lane change or receive a lump-sum payment of $1,700 per unit. Educators with fewer than six units banked get the lump-sum payment.

Three incentives
Under Denver Public Schools’ educator pay system, called ProComp (read the history here), educators earn bonuses and incentives on top of their base salary.

The number of bonuses and incentives, and the dollar amount associated with each, has changed over the years ProComp has been in effect. That variability is one of the things teachers found frustrating and confusing about it. This year, for example, there are six incentives and bonuses (and even more confusingly, two of them aren’t even part of ProComp.)

Under the new agreement, there are three incentives:

A $2,000 incentive for educators who work in Title I schools. To qualify as Title I, at least 60 percent of a school’s students must be eligible for free or reduced-price meals. The majority of district-run schools are Title I.

A $2,000 incentive for educators who work in hard-to-fill positions. A team of district staff and union representatives decide which positions qualify for this one. This year, there are 13 qualifying positions, including middle and high school math teachers, nurses, and teachers who deliver instruction to English language learners in Spanish, known as English Language Acquisition-Spanish teachers.

A $750 incentive for educators who work in 10 “distinguished” schools. The same district-union team will set the criteria here. It will be based on how well schools support students socially and emotionally, not on student test scores.

One retention bonus
Educators who work in 30 schools deemed “highest-priority” by the district and the union will receive a $3,000 retention bonus for returning to work at those schools the following year.

The union has openly questioned whether such retention bonuses actually work to keep teachers. To answer that question, the new agreement requires the district and the union to do a joint research study “to examine the root causes of educator retention and turnover” in the highest-priority schools and identify possible solutions. According to the agreement, “the findings shall be utilized to determine if the incentive shall be continued.”

Tuition reimbursement
Educators can receive $1,000 a year to be spent on repayment of student loans or reimbursement for the costs of training directly related to their job. The maximum reimbursement an educator can receive in their career is $6,000.

Cost-of-living raises for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years
Educators will get one for the 2019-20 school year, too, but that one was previously negotiated.

Got more questions? We answered some of the most common ones here.

An innovative elementary school — a product of Denver education reform — tries to get back to normal post-strike

2019-02-15T06:24:32+00:00

Nic Savinar tried to maintain a measure of normalcy for three days in her fifth grade classroom at Centennial Elementary School in northwest Denver, even as her students asked awkward questions about why she was still there when most teachers were out.

Walking in the door, she had a fleeting thought that someone from outside the school community might join the picket line and lash out at her. Her fellow teachers marching in the cold lent nothing but support, sending her texts throughout the day checking in.

Then not long after 6 a.m. Thursday, word started getting around that the Denver teacher strike was over. Principal Laura Munro’s phone blew up after her morning Crossfit workout. Munro ended up getting to school late because excited teachers kept texting her.

With the three-day strike about teacher pay ending with a tentative deal that gave both sides reason to feel good, Denver schools spent Thursday in a strange in-between place as substitutes and central office staff fill-ins reported for duty and striking teachers returned.

The labor action and its sudden conclusion posed a test for the 147 district-run schools affected by the strike and the 71,000 students in grades K-12 who attend them. Centennial just a few years ago was at risk of closure due to persistently poor academic performance. The school started to turn around after it reinvented itself in 2013 as an expeditionary school, where teachers in each grade weave a year-long “expedition” theme into their everyday lessons.

The school, in a gentrified neighborhood in a city that has become less affordable for families and teachers alike, would not exist in its current form without the kind of education reform that has gained Denver both a national reputation and opposition from the union and its allies.

“We have worked really hard to build a positive and trusting culture,” said Munro, who has been principal for eight years. “Even that being said, trying times can make any situation difficult.”

Of the 32 teachers, nurses, counselors, and other educators at Centennial covered by the teachers contract, all but six took part in the strike on Monday, Munro said. One teacher returned to the classroom Tuesday, and a nurse came back Wednesday, she said.

Those are higher strike participation figures than in the district as a whole. Between 56 and 58 percent of teachers were out each day, Denver Public Schools has said.

Savinar was among those Centennial teachers who remained in the classroom. But it wasn’t because she disagreed with the union’s opposition to many aspects of ProComp, the once-promising pay-for-performance system that was the subject of negotiations.

Savinar recently took maternity leave, much of it unpaid. She and her husband crunched the numbers — taking into account that teachers strikes typically last a week — and concluded that foregoing a paycheck, as striking teachers must do, was not something they could afford.

The irony is not lost on Savinar: She couldn’t afford to strike to improve her salary prospects.

“There was a lot of thought behind it, and it was definitely a financial decision,” she said, pointing out that her Centennial colleagues who remained in classrooms all have children 1 or younger. “It was a very challenging decision for every single person, I’m sure.”

A ninth-year teacher, Savinar left a job in neighboring Jeffco Public Schools to join Centennial four years ago. She said she was won over by the people and by expeditionary learning.

The school has a vegetable garden, an outdoor classroom with log benches, and a devoted corps of parent volunteers. For a recent lesson on biodiversity, Savinar took her students to Denver Botanic Gardens to visit a rainforest exhibit. They learned about different habitats and species of plants. Students who are now working on writing first-person narratives written from an animal’s perspective, like a jaguar or an exotic bird that makes its home in the lush canopy.

That a district-run public school would offer a model like expeditionary learning is unusual, and it’s part of Denver Public Schools’ philosophy of offering families a variety of school choices.

Centennial is also an innovation school, which means it doesn’t need to follow all aspects of state law or the teachers union contract. That allows for a much longer school day, for one. The opening bell rings at 8 a.m. and dismissal is at 3:45 p.m., with an 80-minute enrichment period.

Savinar is a “teacher-leader,” spending part of her time teaching and part of it coaching other teachers — another initiative that other U.S. school districts look to Denver to emulate.

Savinar said her support for the union stance during ProComp bargaining was rooted mostly in supporting an increase in all teachers’ base pay and in cost-of-living increases. She said she loves the flexibility that innovation status affords teachers and students both.

“It’s all relative, I guess,” she said. “Completely depends on what teachers are wanting in their school community.”

During the strike, Munro kept a detailed spreadsheet of classroom assignments, using a combination of regular teachers, substitutes, central office staff temporarily reassigned to schools, and her own preschool teachers who were available because DPS shut its preschools.

All but two classrooms were covered by certified teaching staff during the strike, she said.

Because of the timing of the tentative agreement, Thursday was more chaotic than when teachers were on strike, she said. Although all the striking teachers returned, the school retained a few substitutes to honor their commitments. Central office staff helped cover classrooms until late-arriving teachers got to work, then went back to their regular jobs.

“People had been gone three days and were just trying to put the puzzle pieces back together,” Savinar said. “People were scrambling a little bit because teachers are always prepared for their students, and they were feeling unprepared, coming into I am not sure what.”

Centennial will move on from the disruption of the strike at a time it faces its owns challenges. What was once a predominantly Latino student population has grown whiter and wealthier, driven by neighborhood changes and the appeal of expeditionary learning.

Having fewer students whose families live in poverty cost Centennial its Title I status, and the extra funding that goes with it. Munro said school officials knew it was coming and planned accordingly, accounting for the lost revenue over a two-year period and lessening the blow.

The older grades at Centennial are more diverse than kindergarten and the earlier grades, so as a fifth-grade teacher Savinar has a more diverse class than most.

Next up, her students will begin a module on inequality. She and a returning colleague struck upon an idea Thursday: including a discussion about the issues underlying the strike. It’s in keeping with expeditionary learning’s aspiration to connect learning to real-world events.

So in the near future, Nic Savinar’s fifth-grade students at Centennial Elementary could talk about the issues that kept their teacher in school while her colleagues picketed outside.

Empowered, tired, and better off: Victorious teachers reflect on Denver strike

2019-02-15T01:55:18+00:00

Denver educators described empowerment, fatigue, relief, and in some cases residual frustration Thursday after the end of the three-day teacher strike that threw the district into turmoil this week.

Reyes Navarro, who teaches Spanish to kindergarten and first-grade students at Mathematics and Science Leadership Academy, an elementary school in west Denver, used a single word to describe how she felt about the strike: “Power.”

“It was so cold, and we didn’t quit,” she said, of picketing and marching. “We did what we needed to do.”

Moss Kaplan, a creative writing teacher at Denver School of the Arts, said he headed back to his classroom Thursday before knowing exactly what was in the pay deal. But later, after he reviewed the details, he said he was happy with the new salary system. He said most of his colleagues feel the same way.

“Overall, everybody’s far better off than they were a week ago,” he said.

Kaplan said he didn’t realize until Thursday what an emotional toll the negotiations and strike have taken on him.

“It’s really been a couple months that this has been all-consuming,” he said.

Denver teachers went on strike Monday after 15 months of negotiations failed to produce an agreement. Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association bargained all through the night and announced a tentative agreement just after 6 a.m. Thursday. It secures higher pay and a more predictable pay schedule for teachers, while retaining bonuses for teachers at high-poverty schools that were a priority for the district.

Marisol Enriquez, principal of Inspire Elementary in Stapleton, said she woke up at 1 a.m. Thursday and was shocked to see that the two sides were still bargaining.

“Am I dreaming? Is this a nightmare?” she thought to herself.

Enriquez, who was glued to social media posts and news reports about the strike this week, said her building ran fairly smoothly despite the disruption. It helped that some of her teachers stayed on the job. But she also understood the motivations of those who joined the strike.

“It’s an important part of our democracy to fight for what you believe in,” she said.

Enriquez said she’s looking forward to having her whole staff back together for a training on Friday. There, instead of talking about long-term strategic planning as planned, they will debrief about the strike, she said.

She expects some teachers might have strong feelings, and she plans to approach it the same way her staff talks with kids about emotional topics: “We have to name our feelings so we can tame them.”

Many teachers said they were satisfied with the agreement hammered out overnight.

“I’m excited. It’s clear,” said Ryan Marini, a social studies teacher and football coach at South High School. “I have a pretty good idea of what I’m going to be paid next year, which is great.”

When Marini went into teaching, his dad told him that it wasn’t the best job, but that it was very consistent and dependable. But ProComp — the district’s complicated pay system — destroyed that, he said. The new deal represents a good compromise in his view.

The strike divided teachers, with roughly 42 percent of them still going to work, according to district officials. Some stayed on the job out of financial need or out of fear related to their immigration status, but many others disagreed with the union position on how teachers should be paid.

While the final deal preserved bonuses for teachers at 30 schools the district labels “highest priority,” for months the union had advocated for getting rid of them and using the money to increase base pay for all teachers. Participation in the strike was lower in the schools that receive those bonuses. Some of those teachers said the strike was a difficult experience because they didn’t see their interests or those of their students represented.

“It was really painful for the people in our building to feel like the union was advocating against the truth of our lived experiences,” said Alison Corbett, a teacher at High Tech Early College, where she and many of her colleagues stayed in the classroom.

Corbett said she shared many of the other frustrations that drove the strike; now she is just eager to move forward from it.

Like parents and staff throughout the district, Beth Corona, a teacher at Maxwell Elementary in the Montbello neighborhood, is relieved that the strike is over. She said the strike brought teachers in her building together, and gave them a new sense of empowerment. Still, she said she was disappointed that it took a strike for the district to agree to significant changes.

“I was kind of hoping that when she started that we didn’t have to be going down this path,” Corona said of new superintendent Susana Cordova, who has been on the job less than two months.

Marini said the strike reflected pent-up frustration with Cordova’s predecessor.

“I feel bad for Susana,” he said. “This was Tom Boasberg’s strike, and she had to deal with it.”

Now, Corona is cautiously optimistic about the future of the district. While the pay changes of the new deal give her hope that she can stay in Denver, Corona got emotional thinking about other changes she hopes might come.

She said she hopes that administrators from central office who covered classrooms during the strike might have learned something.

“A lot of them have not been in the classroom a long time, and they don’t know the reality of what classrooms are like now,” she said. “It was a reality check for them. Teaching is not what everyone might think it is. Sometimes it feels like an impossible job.”

Erica Meltzer and Yesenia Robles contributed reporting to this story.

Praise and education political points: How Colorado is responding to the end of Denver’s teacher strike

2019-02-14T19:22:23+00:00

The reactions began as soon as the deal was announced, with a tweet from Gov. Jared Polis expressing relief that the labor dispute between the Denver school district and its teacher union was over.

Polis was among the many Coloradans weighing in about the end of the strike that kept many Denver teachers out of schools for three days this week. Like him, many said they were excited that schools could begin to return to normal, while people on both sides of the dispute claimed political wins. We’ll document the reactions here.

Gov. Jared Polis declined to intervene before the strike, saying that doing so could slow down the path toward a resolution. Here’s his complete statement today:

I am pleased that after months of negotiations, both sides stepped up, worked together, and found a solution that works for our district, our educators, our parents, and most importantly our children. While it’s unfortunate that this agreement was not reached prior to the strike, today’s results are a testament to Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association’s commitment to working together in the best interest of our children. Denver’s kids are the biggest winners in today’s agreement, and I think everyone is relieved that the strike is over and students and teachers will be back in school working together to build a brighter future for themselves and our community. Denver Mayor Michael Hancock made the Denver Public Library’s central branch available for bargaining, kept the building open through the night, and sent over food for teachers and district officials. His statement notes the role he played during the strike: It’s good news that the DCTA and DPS have reached a tentative agreement. I know from the several calls and meetings I undertook with both sides, that it has been challenging to build trust and reach an agreement. Our students are the biggest winners with this deal, and I’m sure they’ll be happy to have their teachers back in their classrooms.

Here’s what Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association teachers union, tweeted this morning:

All week, the nation has looked to Denver with hopeful hearts. We are so proud of Denver’s educators and this historic agreement that will provide greater opportunity for students and stability for their schools. @ColoradoEA @DenverTeachers #DCTAstrong #RedForEd @AmieBacaOehlert pic.twitter.com/0RLeyaAgi6
— Lily Eskelsen García (@Lily_NEA) February 14, 2019

Colorado Education Association President Amie Baca-Oehlert, head of the state teachers union to which the Denver union belongs, held up Denver teachers as models for the rest of the state.

I am overwhelmed with gratitude for our Denver educators for being brave and bold and for standing up for Denver students and our profession. Denver educators didn’t just fight for their students, profession and community. They have led the way for our entire state by bringing to the forefront our students’ need for qualified, committed, and caring educators that can afford to stay in the classroom and live in the communities where they teach.

And people that lobbied to preserve ProComp emphasized that teachers will still get extra money for working in high-poverty schools, something the union had said it wanted to see diminished and, in some cases, eliminated.

From an official at A+ Colorado:

Good news and progress here. Equity investments and priority incentives are still key alongside big base pay increases. Proud of both @DPSNewsNow and @DenverTeachers for making progress. #edcolo https://t.co/aPaBvY2k2o
— Landon Mascareñaz (@lmascarenaz) February 14, 2019

And from Stand for Children Colorado:

We are so happy @DenverTeachers and @DPSNewsNow reached a deal where educators get a raise, equity incentives are protected, and now students and teachers are back to the classroom! https://t.co/Rdn0fMWKne
— StandforChildren CO (@ColoradoStand) February 14, 2019

Ready Colorado, a conservative education advocacy group, went further, casting the deal as no better for teachers than the one the district offered before the strike. The organization had threatened to file a lawsuit if the agreement deviated from ballot language approved by voters in 2005, and a spokesman said Thursday morning that the organization still needs to review the details. Here’s President Luke Ragland:

We are glad to see that the union caved on the bonuses for teaching in the 30 highest-need schools — which was the biggest sticking point between DPS and the union when the strike began. That is a big win for the neediest kids who will get those essential extra resources. The teachers themselves should be proud — they are getting a 10 percent raise. But unfortunately for the union’s credibility, it’s essentially the same raise they were offered before the strike. Students, teachers, and families were put through an unnecessary week of chaos.

(The district did not put much more money on the table to reach the deal, but it did agree to changes the union wanted in terms of how educators earn raises. The average raise is now 11.7 percent instead of 10 percent, according to the district.)

Union allies are also going all in. The Colorado Working Families Party, which supports progressive Democrats in primaries and has worked alongside Denver Classroom Teachers Association to build community support for the union, said the strike represents momentum toward changing the balance of power on the school board. A majority of the seven-member board has supported a suite of education reform policies. Here’s what deputy director Wendy Howell said:

Colorado Working Families Party was proud to stand with the teachers in this fight. We congratulate them on their victory at the bargaining table which will improve schools, student outcomes, and the profession of teaching in our city. Along with these steps forward for education, the strike also exposed problems with corporate control of the Denver Board of Public Education. Today, teachers win a fair agreement. In November, we take back our school board. The strike revealed the incredible appetite and hunger of Denver residents to fix our school system. This action showed the power that educators, parents, and the community command; this is the power that will elect a school board that represents community interests, not corporate ones.

Jubilation, and some confusion, as Denver schools begin their post-strike recovery

2019-02-14T15:52:03+00:00

Lupe Lopez-Montoya got the text message at 6:15 a.m. The strike was over, the colleague who’d been keeping her up to speed on news from her union told her.

And so as district and teachers union officials celebrated their deal at the Denver Public Library, Lopez-Montoya on Thursday resurrected her regular commute to Columbian Elementary School, the northwest Denver school where she’s the longest-serving tenured teacher.

For the past three days, Lopez-Montoya had stayed out of school as Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association sparred over how teachers in Denver are paid. She still had unanswered questions about the future. But first, it was time to greet students.

One girl ran across the sidewalk to give a hug. “Ms. Montoya’s back,” she shouted, burying her face in the teacher’s side.

Lopez-Montoya began to welcome students into the building. “Line up and you can go get breakfast,” she told one boy. “I’m happy you’re here today.”

The moment kicked off what was a not-quite-normal day in Denver schools. With a deal coming just an hour before some schools were due to start for the day, teachers and families had little time to adjust their plans. The district also had too little time to reopen early childhood classes that have been closed all week; those will reopen on Friday, officials said.

Building principals got an email around 7 a.m. telling them that the strike was over and that many teachers would be coming back to work. In some buildings, central office staff and substitutes who had been filling in for teachers were already on site when teachers returned to work. And some students who commute long distances didn’t get the word in time to go to schools.

By early afternoon, about 81 percent of teachers in district-run schools had shown up to work, and about 83 percent of students had, according to Denver school district spokesman Will Jones.

In the parking lot outside Mathematics and Science Leadership Academy, a west Denver elementary school, teachers still clad in the red of their cause gathered in the parking lot to walk in together. Asked what the mood was, reading intervention teacher Denise Saiz said, “Relief!” and her colleagues responded with an enthusiastic “Yes!”

“We’re really excited to get back to the kids,” said fifth grade teacher Emily Mimovich.

While strike participation was high at the school — it was founded with support from the state and local union as a teacher-led school — the teachers said they did not believe there would be hard feelings between those who walked and those who didn’t.

“We have such a good relationship,” said Reyes Navarro, who teaches Spanish to kindergarten and first-grade students. “We understand that you have to do whatever is right for you.”

Parents also said they were eager to have their children get back to school.

Shannon Cruwys was happy to drop off her fifth-grader this morning at Centennial Elementary in northwest Denver with the strike over. She says the #DenverTeachersStrike was worth it. #DenverTeacherStrike pic.twitter.com/pCYA6ZYdqu
— Chalkbeat Colorado (@ChalkbeatCO) February 14, 2019

Sarah Murphy, who has a third-grader and a 4-year-old preschool student, said this morning was a “bit of a scramble, albeit a welcome one.” She had both children signed up for a day camp at the University of Denver and was unsure if she should send them to school or to camp because she wasn’t sure teachers would be back at school. Then she got word that camp was canceled for both children — but Denver Public Schools preschools are still closed.

“We were left trying to figure out what to do with our ECE4 since they were still closed,” she wrote to Chalkbeat. “We know how hard this has been on everyone, but this morning proved that the ECE program was the hardest hit, short notice every step of the way. We very much look forward to tomorrow when both are back in their normal school routines.”

Not everyone returned to school. Some teachers said they needed a day to collect themselves after an emotional experience. Judy Kelley, a visual arts teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. Early College, said she and many of her colleagues live too far away from the school to get there on short notice.

But the majority of teachers who went back to work Thursday describe positive experiences returning to their schools. Ryan Marini, a social studies teacher and football coach at South High School, called it the “best day” in 17 years of teaching.

Suzanne Hernandez, a first-grade teacher at Westerly Creek Elementary in Stapleton, said she and other teachers gathered to walk into school together at 7:45 a.m.

Teachers thanked the subs from central office who were in the building. They headed back to their roles in central offices.

Early in the morning, Hernandez sent a message to her students’ parents to let them know teachers would be back in school. The reaction from students as she greeted them was “overwhelming,” she said.

With the help of paraprofessionals who had prepared lessons, Hernandez said teachers were able to jump right back to where they left off last week.

As far as Valentine’s Day, that celebration will be pushed back until Friday afternoon, she said. For now, teachers are having their own celebration, happy to be back in the classroom.

“I think if there’s any sort of effect from the strike, it’s been a positive one,” she said. “It’s been a very unifying experience.”

Allison Hicks, a teacher at Colfax Elementary, said returning teachers were greeted with hugs, music, smiles and tears.

“After finding out an hour ago we were going back to work, I scrambled home to get ready,” she wrote to Chalkbeat. “I am exhausted, but so excited to be back with my students. This day won’t be normal, but knowing I did my part to put my students first is the best feeling to have.”

Kade Orlandini, who teaches at John F. Kennedy High School, said most of the teachers are back in her building, despite the short notice.

“Teachers were ready, and we are jumping right back into instruction,” she wrote. “Attendance seems lower than normal, but students who are here are ready to learn. The atmosphere in the school is very positive all around.”

What was your experience going back to school? What other questions do you have? Take our survey.

Chalkbeat’s Ann Schimke, Erica Meltzer, and Yesenia Robles contributed reporting to this article.

Strike over: Denver school district, teachers union sign tentative pact raising teacher pay

2019-02-14T13:25:01+00:00

The Denver school district and teachers union have reached an agreement in their long-simmering dispute over teacher pay, ending a strike as it entered its fourth day. The tentative deal gives teachers significant raises and a more traditional pay system, while keeping incentives for teachers at high-poverty schools that the district believes are essential.

The tentative agreement was announced shortly after 6 a.m. Thursday, after the two sides emerged from behind closed doors after some nine hours of huddling separately. They had begun the bargaining session at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Union members and the Denver school board still need to approve the deal, but this brings a close to the first Denver teacher strike in 25 years. With the timing of the announcement, it’s unclear if all teachers will return to work Thursday.

“We didn’t want to have to go to the strike,” lead union negotiator Rob Gould said after the tentative agreement was signed, “but the ability to utilize our last tool in our tool belt to get the district to listen to our needs — we used it, and I think it’s a victory for our teachers but more importantly, for our students.”

The strike was a test for the union, which has become more assertive and gained members in recent years. Teachers on Wednesday expressed an eagerness to return to their classrooms after three days of picketing, rallies, and advocacy. Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova said she believes the strike was critical for teachers “to make incredibly clear what was important to them” and express their values.

“Frankly, they’re values I share,” Cordova said.” Her hope for the future, she added, is that teachers and district officials could talk through differences “along the way, as opposed to it feeling like it’s mounting and mounting and mounting.”

With the exception of preschool classrooms, the district kept schools open throughout the strike using a combination of paraprofessionals, substitute teachers, and redeployed central office staff. But about a quarter of students stayed home, and some of those who did go to school reported problems ranging from overly simplistic lessons to chaos. At several large high schools, students walked out in support of their teachers.

The district and the union were negotiating major changes to a once-groundbreaking merit pay system that had become complicated and unpopular. Educators complained their pay was too low and unpredictable, and this deal goes a long way toward addressing those concerns.

The agreement will inject an additional $23.1 million into teacher pay and give educators an 11.7 percent raise next year on average, according to Denver Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Mark Ferrandino.

The deal covers 5,353 teachers, nurses, counselors, and other educators in the district. It will have ripple effects throughout the district, as part of the money to pay for the raises will come from cutting administrative costs, including 150 central office positions. Those same administrative cuts will also pay for raises to paraprofessionals, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and others not covered by the teacher contract, the superintendent has said.

The agreed-upon salary schedule has seven “lanes” and 20 “steps.” Lanes represent a teacher’s educational attainment, such as whether they have a bachelor’s or master’s degree, and steps represents a teacher’s years of positive evaluations.

Teachers would get a base salary raise whenever they move a lane or gain a step. That’s different from how the district’s pay system, called ProComp, works now. For years, the schedule has been used only to set teachers’ salary when they are hired, with raises based on factors such as whether they complete certain training.

The starting base salary next year would be $45,800, a 7 percent increase from $42,789 this year. The maximum salary — for educators with 20 years of experience and a doctorate — would be $100,000. That doesn’t include the bonuses and incentives teachers can earn on top of that.

The two sides agreed upon a $2,000 incentive for educators who work in high-poverty schools, a $2,000 incentive for educators who work in hard-to-fill positions, such as special education or secondary math, and a $3,000 retention bonus for educators who return year over year to 30 “highest-priority” schools.

That last bonus was a major sticking point in negotiations, which stretched over 15 months. The union originally proposed to eliminate it altogether and put the money into base pay for all teachers, but agreed Wednesday to compromise and keep it.

“We are open to the incentive because we know it’s important to you,” Gould said Wednesday evening. “And we’re willing to entertain your ideas if we can get the base salary schedule that our teachers need.”

However, union negotiators made clear they don’t think the incentive is effective. The data doesn’t support it, they said, arguing that there are better ways to improve conditions in high-poverty schools: smaller class sizes, less punitive discipline policies, hiring more teachers of color, and an evaluation system that doesn’t penalize teachers for low student test scores.

“If we really care about these students in these schools, you’ll be looking at these things and you’ll be talking with educators,” said Greg Ahrnsbrak, a physical education teacher at Bruce Randolph School and a member of the union bargaining team. “We’re in the field. We know.”

Nothing in this deal directly addresses those needs, though both sides hope that the new pay system improves teacher retention — to the ultimate benefit of students.

The district also made several big concessions Wednesday, including reducing the number of proposed steps on the salary schedule from 30 to 20. Each step represents a year in which an educator gets a positive evaluation. Having fewer means educators can get bigger raises more quickly.

The two sides also agreed on an idea originally proposed by the district: allowing educators to get a raise for 10 years of continuous service with the district.

Arielle Sawyer, who teaches eighth grade language arts at Bear Valley International School in southwest Denver, said that she was thinking about how to catch her students up on missed work even as she marched along South Broadway Wednesday morning with hundreds of chanting, red-shirted colleagues.

“We are ready to get back in the classroom,” she said. “We miss our students.”

Denver’s teacher strike, Day 3 (and into 4): Dawn breaks with a deal after bargaining lasts all night

2019-02-14T09:00:00+00:00

A productive day of bargaining between leaders of the Denver school district and its teachers union stretched into Thursday morning as the two sides met separately to work toward a deal.

That deal got struck just after 6 a.m. Thursday, more than 20 hours since the bargaining session began and just before the fourth school day of a teacher strike would have begun. Here’s our story about the deal.

As we did Tuesday, our team spent Day 3 of the strike — and the entire night — tracking developments across the city. You can catch up on the highlights here, including scenes from picket lines, a detour for some cute dog pictures, and details from bargaining.

6:30 a.m. That’s a wrap, except for preschool families

We’ve just posted a story about the deal, so tune in there for details. We’ll have more throughout the day on what the agreement means for teachers, students, schools, and the education policy world.

For now, the day is beginning with praise for the Denver district and its teachers union for toughing out talks — here’s a tweet from Gov. Jared Polis — and questions among educators and families about what’s supposed to happen in schools today.

Here’s the official word from Denver Public Schools:

All DPS schools are open on Thursday. Preschool (ECE) classes are still canceled, due to the hour that the agreement was reached. ECE classes will resume Friday.
— Denver Public Schools (@DPSNewsNow) February 14, 2019

What’s your school like today? Let us know. And if you’re among the readers who appreciate Melanie for her bargaining all-nighter and the entire team for its tireless strike coverage, you can always donate to Chalkbeat. Thanks for joining us on this journey!

6:12 a.m. Dawn breaks with a deal

This is what you need to know about Denver’s response to the teachers union’s latest proposal:

Susana Cordova: “We only have one change recommended. We’d like to add a signature line to the proposal.” Rob Gould: "And we will accept that change."
— Melanie Asmar (@MelanieAsmar) February 14, 2019

Followed shortly by this:

Rob Gould: “We are recommending now to our members that we officially end the strike.”
— Melanie Asmar (@MelanieAsmar) February 14, 2019

It’s a Valentine’s Day love-fest! One clear highlight: Teachers will continue to get bonuses for teaching at high-poverty schools. We’ll have all the details about the deal shortly.

We’re also playing fast and loose with definitions of time right now. The official sunrise today in Denver is 6:54 a.m. Schools start opening a little bit after that. A big question today will be what happens inside them.

5:30 a.m. Back at the table

Union negotiators are back at the bargaining table after a late-night break, more than 19 hours after this session first started. Rob Gould says the union has a new proposal: “We think it may end the strike.”

2 a.m. Thursday Into the wee hours of the morning

It’s now been about six hours since the two sides last appeared together at the bargaining table.

Still in the basement, for anyone who’s still awake and following along. The sides are still caucusing.
— Melanie Asmar (@MelanieAsmar) February 14, 2019

We still don’t have a clear answer to the very practical question on so many people’s minds: If a deal is reached after all these hours, are striking teachers returning to work Thursday, or will they be out at least another day?

We heard from one school-level union organizer who told us Wednesday night that teachers should prepare to strike again until they hear otherwise, that a tentative deal should include a return-to-work date, and that union members do not need to vote to vote to ratify a deal before returning to classrooms.

We’ll keep you posted.

11:35 p.m. When is the tipping point?

Both sides continue to work separately on their proposals. It’s not clear how much longer they’ll work, but if they weren’t hoping to reach a deal before dawn, presumably they would have wrapped up for the night with a plan to meet tomorrow.

One of the outstanding questions is whether teachers will go back to work tomorrow, if a deal is reached tonight. The later we go the less likely that seems.

9:12 p.m. No, we haven’t forgotten about you

The district came back briefly a while ago to agree to some aspects of the union salary schedule, but since then, the two sides have been in caucus, crunching numbers. The optimists have lost the Chalkbeat Colorado office pool about what time we would see a deal.

The two sides are still caucusing. The crowd of teachers has dwindled. I see two Denver school board members here: Carrie Olson and Jennifer Bacon. Happy Haynes has popped in and out today, too.
— Melanie Asmar (@MelanieAsmar) February 14, 2019

7:11 p.m. Getting closer

That was fast. After a short caucus, the union came back to the table and gave a lightning-fast presentation on its new proposal — which moved the two sides closer.

The union accepted the district’s proposed salary schedule of 20 “steps” and seven “lanes” separated by increments of 18 college credits (or equivalent training courses).

“We see how far you all have moved,” lead union negotiator Rob Gould said, “and in an effort to get a deal tonight, we’re accepting your number of lanes and your steps.”

The union also accepted the district’s proposal to cap the number of “professional development units,” or training courses, teachers can do at two per year. It had previously proposed a cap of three. The number matters because teachers can use those courses to change lanes and get raises.

There are still several areas of disagreement, including the size of the bonuses and incentives for teachers who work in high-poverty schools and hard-to-fill positions.

The district is now reviewing the union’s proposal.

5:40 p.m. ‘This is big’: The district offers a new proposal, and one big sticking point remains

The negotiators are back — and the district has a new proposal that more closely matches what the union has been asking for.

The changes involve both the “steps” and the “lanes” in the salary schedule. The district’s new proposal has 20 steps, which is the number the union has been pushing for. (The district had been holding firm at 30.) The lanes have shifted in the district’s proposal as well, requiring teachers to earn fewer credits to jump a lane and increase their pay.

The district has a new proposal. General counsel Michelle Berge is walking through it. First big change! Instead of BA+20, BA+40 lanes, district has agreed with union to do: BA+18, BA+36. "We are trying to meet you here."
— Melanie Asmar (@MelanieAsmar) February 14, 2019

The district also offered a compromise on the “longevity” raise for educators with 10 years of service in the district. It has to do with educators who wouldn’t be able to cash in their longevity because they’re already at the highest lanes.

A compromise: If educators can't get "longevity" raises (for 10 years of service) because they can't move a lane, they will get a $1,500 raise in base pay. Union had proposed $2,000 in base pay. District originally proposed $2,000 one-time cash payout.
— Melanie Asmar (@MelanieAsmar) February 14, 2019

Another proposed compromise from the district: incentives for teachers working in Title I schools and in hard-to-fill positions would be $2,250. District's previous proposal was $2,500.
— Melanie Asmar (@MelanieAsmar) February 14, 2019

But the two sides have not come to an agreement on a crucial point: retention bonuses for teachers in the district’s 30 “highest-priority” schools. The district’s proposal keeps those at $3,000.

The union is going to meet to discuss the new proposal. But the mood remains positive, with teachers clapping, Melanie reports. “This is big,” Gould said.

One reason the union has pushed to end the retention incentive is because it believes putting that money into base pay will do more to keep teachers.

But if the district is offering a salary schedule the union can live with, along with the highest-priority incentive, members might not mind keeping the incentive after all.

“The district has absolutely met us their halfway,” said Rachel Sandoval, a teacher at Godsman Elementary School in southwest Denver, who has followed the negotiations closely. “We’re going to have to meet them at some point.”

3:58 p.m. What teachers say about the issue on the table right now

In the library basement, the mediator has just let observers know that the union and district are each meeting to discuss contract terms right now. The official word: “I have the parties upstairs working really really hard on some things.”

While we wait for them to return, take a look at our newest story, about what teachers across the district say about the bonuses and incentives that make up the biggest remaining sticking points.

“I’ve never worked anywhere where they couldn’t tell me how much I’m making,” one teacher told us about the bonuses she has received for working at a high-poverty school. “It was weird to me.” The story features 10 teachers’ perspectives.

3:18 p.m. Attendance is holding steady

This just in from Denver Public Schools:

By the numbers, as of noon today: Teacher attendance is 42%; student attendance is 75%; bus ridership is 5,539; students received 21,477 breakfast meals.
— Denver Public Schools (@DPSNewsNow) February 13, 2019

Those numbers are very similar to what the district shared on Monday, suggesting that families and teachers haven’t wavered since the strike’s first day. But there’s a big asterisk: “This is a joke,” one educator tweeted in response. “I know this is an average but student attendance is way below 75% at the school I work at. Yesterday it was 50% at best.”

2:56 p.m. A first-person perspective

A core issue in the Denver teachers strike is that the district’s salary-and-bonus system has left many teachers with inconsistent pay and less ability to plan for the future.

We just published a First Person essay from one of those teachers, Charlie Gaare, who says she changed her plans for growing her family because of how she’s paid. Check it out here.

2:08 p.m. Canines for K-12

Today is heavy on policy details and if you’re like us, you might need to rest your brain while the district and union pause their negotiations. We’ve got the right content for you: a roundup of the dogs of the Denver teacher strike. See the whole thing here.

1:55 p.m. “We know it’s important to you”

This afternoon’s negotiations are filled with signs that the Denver teachers union is eager to reach a deal with the district over teacher compensation. Here’s the latest from Melanie:

In the past 50 minutes, it feels as though the district and the union have moved closer than ever. The union accepted much of the district’s proposed language around how teachers complete “professional development units.” The union also agreed to the district’s idea of giving teachers a raise for 10 years of service. Even more significant: Union negotiators said they’d be open to the idea of providing incentives to teachers who work in “highest-priority” schools. The district wants to give teachers who return to those schools year after year a $3,000 retention bonus. Up until today, the union had rejected that idea. Instead, it wanted to use that money to increase the salaries of all teachers. “We are open to the incentive because we know it’s important to you,” lead union negotiator Rob Gould said. “And we’re willing to entertain your ideas if we can get the base salary schedule that our teachers need.”

The two sides are now caucusing, or holding internal discussions.

1:33 p.m. Mixed results for “highest-priority” incentives

The Denver district says giving teachers at certain schools more money is essential to ensuring that they are staffed with strong teachers. But the incentives that have been in place since 2015 — and that are being discussed at the bargaining table right now — haven’t made that happen. From our story last week:

The district began offering an incentive to teachers at 30 “highest-priority schools” in 2015. These schools have high rates of students living in poverty, students who switch schools from year to year, special education students, and English language learners. At nine of the 28 schools that have consistently received the incentive, teacher retention has been higher each year than it was in 2015. But at six schools, retention has been lower each year than it was in 2015. At the remaining 13 schools, retention has gone up and down during that time period.

One thing district and union officials are coming to terms on right away: not calling the schools “hard-to-serve,” a common shorthand for schools that have many needy students and high teacher turnover. After union negotiators criticized the term, interim Denver schools chief Susana Cordova said she agreed. “It is offensive to start from a deficit approach,” she said.

1:19 p.m. It’s happening

For the first time since the strike started, negotiations have turned to pay incentives for teachers at the Denver district’s “highest-priority” schools. The district wants to give teachers at those schools an extra $3,000 a year, but the union wants the bonuses eliminated entirely in favor of increasing base pay for all district teachers.

This is among the final remaining details standing between negotiators and a deal, but it’s a big one — and it stands for in a longtime ideological debate in the education world.

1:15 p.m. A buoyant post-lunch mood

District and union officials are back at the negotiating table after a break to caucus (the union) and have lunch (both sides). The union’s lead negotiator, Rob Gould, got a rock star’s reception from the observers, who are almost all district teachers on strike, according to Melanie. Cordova and an audience member cracked jokes with each other. And there’s also news:

Big news: Union is accepting district's idea around giving lane changes -- a.k.a. raises -- for longevity (10 years of service). Gould on why they accepted the language: “I think all of us would like to get to this today.”
— Melanie Asmar (@MelanieAsmar) February 13, 2019

Many had hoped the strike would end after today, and Gould seems determined to reach a deal with the district, saying that he’s not prepared for another night with little sleep.

11:48 a.m. Energy on the picket line, and excitement about a possible resolution

Our reporting team is getting the message loud and clear from teachers on the picket lines today: They’re committed to the fight but excited for the strike to end. See this video of North High School English teacher Megan Ross that Eric filmed for an example:

What's the mood like on the #DCTAstrong picket line on Day 3? North High School English teacher Megan Ross gives her take. #DenverTeacherStrike #DenverTeachersStrike pic.twitter.com/p38ni7wocD
— Chalkbeat Colorado (@ChalkbeatCO) February 13, 2019

The mood appeared similar at Trevista at Horace Mann, one of 30 “highest priority” schools where teachers get pay incentives the union wants to eliminate. Teachers at highest-priority schools joined the strike at a slightly lower rate on Monday. Second-grade teacher Emily Kil told Eric that she and her colleagues are as committed to the strike as they were on Monday.

“It is hard on Day 3. You’re a little more physically tired,” Kil said. “But mentally we’re still in the fight and we’re hoping that it’s going to end today.

11:15 a.m. So about those incentives …

While the union caucuses, or meets in private, to discuss the district’s offer, we’ll take the opportunity to note again that some issues that had seemed like major sticking points haven’t come up this week. Those are the size of bonuses for teachers at high-poverty schools, and whether teachers who return year over year to 30 schools designated as “highest-priority” should get any extra pay at all.

Are union and district officials getting easy disagreements out of the way first and saving the tough stuff for last? If that’s the case, it’s hard to imagine the strike ending quickly.

Or are these incentives not actually that contentious? That would be surprising, given how union and district officials have talked about them in the past. At some point in the not-too-distant future, we’ll know the answer to these questions — and how much teachers in these categories of schools will be paid under ProComp going forward.

10:55 a.m. Claps and snaps as negotiations open

Negotiations are underway. Here’s an early dispatch from Melanie:

First up today: The district brought a new proposal that elicited clapping and snaps of approval from some teachers in the audience. The biggest hit? That the 45 hours required to complete a “professional development unit” — training courses that can be cashed in for raises — could include time during or outside the school day. The union is caucusing to consider the proposal.

Want to hear what satisfied union supporters sound like? Check out this video posted by a local TV reporter:

THE SOUND OF PROGRESS!

The snaps and clapping coming from @DenverTeachers members as @DPSNewsNow explains their latest proposal. A sign that the DCTA likes what they’re hearing from DPS and we are closer to a deal. #DenverTeachersStrike #DPSstrike pic.twitter.com/DyWdfMtIZq
— Shawn Chitnis (@shawnchitnis) February 13, 2019

10:44 a.m. A cake for Cordova

A few union supporters showed up to negotiations this morning bearing a supermarket sheet cake iced with a message for Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova: “You can eat it too!”

The cake is a reference not to Marie Antoinette and class warfare but to an exchange Cordova had with lead union negotiator Rob Gould Tuesday night.

As the two sparred over whether teachers should be allowed to complete training courses during school hours, Gould asked, “You’re saying that we can’t have our cake and eat it too?” Cordova responded: “I thought we were in the business of creating a new recipe for a different cake.”

10:37 a.m. Your morning teacher strike earworm

Here’s another snippet from this morning’s pickets: a video of spirited teachers gathered across the street from North High School. We challenge you not to get the Twisted Sister cover stuck in your head.

Energy not flagging at 38th and Speer across from North HS. #DenverTeacherStrike #DenverTeachersStrike pic.twitter.com/buqv3Idwol
— Chalkbeat Colorado (@ChalkbeatCO) February 13, 2019

10:35 a.m. A parent’s view

Just a reminder that schools are operating with threadbare staffs and offering instruction that’s limited at best. The union says the situation underscores how essential teachers are, while the district is focused on maintaining stability and security for students. The dynamic has left students and their families making tough decisions about whether to attend.

“My Junior just left school to ‘do real work’ (ie study AP History) because the sub handed them worksheets,” Aimee Giese tweeted this morning. “My son is also negativ[ely] affected by #DenverTeachersStrike because the media rooms are closed so he can’t work on his AP Art projects (which by the way, is where he’s applying for college).”

10:08 a.m. A compromise

As Melanie waits for bargaining to start, here’s a reminder of one area where the union has ceded some ground: around the extra training hours required for teachers who want to move “lanes” and increase their pay. When talks opened on Tuesday, the district wanted all of the hours to happen outside of the regular workday, and the union wanted teachers to be able to complete “all or part” of those hours while they’re already at school. Last night union negotiators compromised to “part.”

10 a.m. Back in the basement with Rocky

Negotiations are supposed to open any minute. Melanie Asmar will share up updates from the basement of the library. Here are the first two: First, the crowd of union supporters has been joined by a scaly ally: Rocky, a class lizard who accompanied a teacher to today’s negotiating session.

Plus, Melanie reports that Tuesday’s burrito and pizza odors have been replaced by the smell of hot coffee — a necessity after last night’s talks ended just 10 hours ago.

9:15 a.m. A sunny day on the picket line

If there were any fears that energy might flag among striking teachers, this morning’s picket lines should put them to rest. We’re seeing social media posts from across the city featuring red-shirted educators and their allies with megaphones, signs, and songs. Here’s one example, filmed by a teacher outside Greenwood Elementary School:

The Montbello march is on the move! Headed to Chambers and Gateway. #DenverTeachersStrike #strike @DPSNewsNow @DenverTeachers #montbellostrong #teacherstrike pic.twitter.com/CUGFP5H9U7
— Autumn Jones (@faithful_writer) February 13, 2019

Want us to see your pictures? Tag @ChalkbeatCO when you post them!

8:30 a.m. No official attendance or participation data yet

How many teachers joined picket lines on Tuesday? How many students made it to school? There’s no official data yet, though the word from the district is that conditions on Day 2 were “about the same as Day 1.” (As a reminder, just over half of teachers participated in the strike’s first day, according to the district, and three-quarters of students attended school.) The numbers matter because they’re a useful barometer of how much stamina the union has and how confident members of the public remain about safety at schools.

8:15 a.m. Checking in on immigrant teachers

Remember how Denver Public Schools warned schools that it would report teachers who joined the strike to immigration authorities? The district apologized and said the warning was an error, but our reporters found that the episode is still having an effect on at least some of the 128 teachers whose visas are dependent on their employment.

Here’s what an teacher from Venezuela told us on Tuesday: “I would prefer to be outside [picketing]. … I want to make my voice heard. But it’s scary. I don’t know what could happen, and it’s my family that is at risk.” Read the whole story here.

Bonuses for teachers at high-poverty schools are on the table. Here’s what Denver teachers have to say.

2019-02-13T22:01:52+00:00

Bonuses for teachers at high-poverty schools have represented one of the key disagreements between the Denver teachers union and the school district — though it seemed Wednesday the two sides might be on the verge of compromise.

The union has argued for fewer and smaller bonuses, and for putting significantly more money into base pay for all teachers. Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova sees maintaining certain bonuses as a fundamental issue of equity, a key tool in keeping teachers at challenging schools.

So why do so many teachers on the picket lines believe those at high-poverty and better-off schools should be paid more similarly? For one, they don’t believe the bonuses work.

The data from 28 Denver schools that receive a highest-priority bonus, which the union had been fighting to eliminate but said on Wednesday it would be open to keeping, is decidedly mixed. In other U.S. districts, some studies have found that bonuses can improve retention, with stronger effects for larger bonuses than those that are on the table in Denver.

Participation in the strike has been lower at schools that receive the highest-priority bonuses, according to attendance numbers provided by the district. Some of those teachers believe they should make more for taking on work their colleagues won’t. But there are also plenty of teachers who get these bonuses walking the picket line and willing to give them up.

“We are open to the incentive because we know it’s important to you,” lead union negotiator Rob Gould told district negotiators Wednesday afternoon. “We’re willing to entertain your ideas if we can get the base salary schedule that our teachers need.”

We talked to teachers from all over the district about how they see these bonuses. Here’s what they had to say.

Marianna Lucero, a teacher at Goldrick Elementary, a high-poverty school in southwest Denver

Lucero gets the highest-priority bonus but feels like the district’s pay system is hard to predict — and not enough to live on.

Lucero and her husband are living with her mom for now because the $1,400 rent they were paying before was too much. She just earned a master’s degree and now has to also worry about student debt.

“I don’t want to rely on that,” Lucero said of the bonus. “Plus with the community gentrifying and changing so much, that bonus can go away.”

Mary Jane Sliter, a math teacher at South High School, a large, comprehensive high school serving a diverse student body:

Before working at South, Sliter earned $10,000 in bonuses each year at Excel Academy, a small school serving a high-poverty population, though not the incentive for highest-priority schools. She says she’s a perfect example of why bonuses haven’t solved Denver’s retention problems. She loved her students, but at a small school, too many things were “falling through the cracks.” Between working toward her master’s and parenting a toddler, it was simply too much.

She walked away from $7,500 of that $10,000 to take a job at South. She still gets $2,500 for working in a hard-to-staff position, secondary math. Her life is less sustainable financially — but more sustainable emotionally.

“It was a decision to either give up the stipend or give up teaching,” she said.

“I don’t think it’s having the desired effect,” she added, referring to the bonus. “After five years (at Excel), I was one of just two teachers who was still there. They need better working conditions, smaller class sizes, more mental health supports.”

Becky Rowland, a middle school science teacher at McGlone Academy, a high-poverty school in northeast Denver:

Rowland qualifies for a number of bonuses, including a retention bonus if she returns to McGlone, where she’s in her first year with Denver Public Schools. But she thinks every teacher works “extra hard” and would rather have higher base pay than more in bonuses for teachers in schools like hers.

“I’ve never worked anywhere where they couldn’t tell me how much I’m making,” Rowland said. “It was weird to me.”

Betsy Maletz, a teacher at Steele Elementary, a highly-rated, low-poverty elementary school in southeast Denver:

Maletz transferred to Denver from the suburban Adams 12 school district because she heard about the ProComp incentives.

“Now I feel dinged,” she said. She said she’s seen her salary decrease as one bonus, for top-performing schools, went down.

Maletz said she has worked in high-poverty schools before, but said it requires a different skill set.

“Susana only addressing high-priority schools alienates us,” she said. “They’re trying to pit us against each other, but we’re all in agreement that all teachers need to be valued and honored.”

Karmen Kirtley, a math teacher at South High School:

Kirtley was on staff at Manual High School, one of the city’s most challenging schools, when it was closed. Now she’s a teacher at South, a diverse school that doesn’t receive the highest-priority bonus. As a math teacher, she does receive a bonus for being in a position that’s hard to staff.

Kirtley isn’t opposed to giving some teachers a bonus, but only on top of a reliable salary.

“We want a base that every single person can live on,” Kirtley said. “If you want to give me $2,500 on top of that, OK, but I’m not counting on it.”

Alejandro Arceo, a first-year math teacher at Lake Middle School, a high-poverty school in northwest Denver:

Called to contribute more to society — maybe spark a light in a student to pursue a science or math career — Arceo left a far better-paying engineering career to become a teacher.

At Lake, 94 percent of the students qualify for government-subsidized lunches and many have experienced deep trauma, Arceo said.

“Educators in this school, we experience a different environment day to day,” he said. “Teaching is one those jobs, it is impossible to leave it home or leave it at work. It takes a toll on you.”

But Arceo does not think the incentives Lake teachers receive for working in a highest-priority school are solutions to improve teacher recruitment and retention, and foster equity.

“It is no secret that at a school like Lake, it’s a tough school,” he said. “Yes, the incentives do help. But the conversation is much more complex than just money. The incentive doesn’t help alleviate the stress we experience day to day.”

Lindsay Bienz, who teaches English learners at Lake Middle School:

Bienz said the bonus might draw some teachers into the school, but “it definitely doesn’t keep them.”

“If teachers don’t want to be at a school, they are not going to stay if they are paid an extra thousand dollars. One of my hardest things about being at Lake — I love the school and I love the kids — but my friends leave every year. I’ve had to lose my colleagues every year. It’s hard.”

Stability in leadership and more resources would help more, she said.

Jackie Arriaga, who teaches history and English learners at West Leadership Academy, one of the smaller schools that replaced former West High School:

Arriaga has worked for Denver Public Schools for 30 years and laughs as she says, “I’ve seen it all.”

“We qualify for the highest-priority bonus,” she says, “But it’s something like $30 a paycheck. Nobody notices that. I hate when they say it’s a tough school. It’s not a tough school. It’s an under-resourced school.”

William Anderson, a social studies teacher at Manual High School in northeast Denver, which qualifies for the highest-priority incentive:

Anderson said the bonus has nothing to do with who chooses to stay at Manual.

“That’s not the thing that’s keeping me here by any means,” he said on the eve of the strike. “That’s not what gets me up in the morning when it’s zero degrees and you have to go teach kids.”

Instead, he said, “it comes down to the culture of the building, the administration. The support teachers have is huge.”

Geoffrey Stokes, a special education teacher at Cheltenham Elementary School in northwest Denver, which also qualifies for the highest-priority incentive:

Stokes said the incentive system didn’t factor into his decision to work at Cheltenham, because it was too confusing. The district’s pay system, he said, “sounded like an infomercial or a pyramid scheme.”

But he has noticed the incentives now, and he believes they show the district’s values.

“It’s a nice little cushion. Those rough days, you’re like, ‘I’m just going to go to Stapleton,’ but that does come with a loss of money,” he said, referring to the more affluent new neighborhoods in northeast Denver.

What has kept him at Cheltenham for four years is the passion for the work.

“At a school like this, you always feel like there’s unfinished business.”

Erica Meltzer and Eric Gorski contributed reporting to this article.

Denver’s unstable teacher pay has forced teachers to make big sacrifices. For me, that has meant delaying having a child of my own.

2019-02-13T21:54:27+00:00

I became a foster parent two years ago, when I realized I couldn’t afford to have my own children.

The small stipend and Medicaid that accompany a foster child make it just barely possible to afford daycare and be a mother and a teacher in Denver Public Schools.

It’s a blessing to do foster care, but it comes at a cost of sacrifice and grief that not everyone can handle. Sometimes I wonder if I can. I’ve had five children live in my home, and I have said goodbye to all five of them.

My dreams were different when I started teaching in Denver eight years ago, after six years elsewhere. My base salary was lower than it is today, but for years I received $7,200 in bonuses for being in a high-performing school where my students saw their test scores grow quickly. For the first four years, those bonuses masked a salary too low to support my dreams of a family.

Over the last four years, these bonuses have been whittled down to the $1,000 I received this year thanks to changes to the ProComp system. The amount on my W-2s would be almost identical to what it was eight years ago if I didn’t tutor and work the district’s freshman academy most summers. Meanwhile, Denver’s cost of living has skyrocketed.

I kept thinking it was eventually going to get better. Like the frog in the boiling pot, I didn’t realize how bad it was until it’s become almost too late.

Today, as a teacher with 14 years of experience and a master’s degree, both the union’s and the district’s proposals give me at least a $12,000 raise. That is how badly they have underpaid me for the past eight years.

You wonder why Denver teachers want to strike so ardently? We have missed out on between $5,000 and $20,000 of income we could make in neighboring districts — money that could be paying for our children’s college, having children, paying for healthcare, or buying a home in the district in which we teach. I currently live in Aurora, so I cannot even vote in the elections that affect my job.

To be clear, I am not a victim. I choose teaching in Denver because I love our community and its kids so much. But it’s painful to reflect on the fact that I would have made different choices if I had more financial flexibility over the last several years. In essence, because I love professionally working with kids and watching them grow, I have risked my own desire to have children of my own.

The union’s proposal allows me to earn realistic raises without having to sacrifice even more. It sees my contribution and the tabling of my own ambitions as enough. Their proposal allows me to make a life.

Denver Public Schools has experimented on our pay for the past 20 years. Along the way, its teachers have given away our own milestones to help our students grow and be successful. We give up our own families and our own time and our own lives to help other people’s children. We have done it passionately, but we cannot do it any more without the recognition of the love and sacrifice staying in DPS has wrought upon each of us personally.

If Denver believes in caring for its students, it cannot continue to neglect its teachers. We deserve our own joy to be able to really contribute to that of our students. Please stop paying me like my job matters less than a middle manager in central offices.

I have earned a family and a home and a life in Denver. My love and commitment to this communities’ children deserves more. I deserve more.

Charlie Gaare is a high school teacher in Denver Public Schools and a foster parent with Denver County.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

Photo Gallery: Dogs of the Denver teacher strike, plus one lizard

2019-02-13T20:57:41+00:00

Denver is known as a dog town, so it’s no surprise that four-legged friends were well represented on the picket lines during the Denver teacher strike. The lizard … the lizard was a surprise.

Got a good photo of a Denver teacher strike dog? Or any other teacher strike companion animal?

Send it to co.tips@chalkbeat.org and we’ll add it to our gallery.

Emily Barthel, a Denver teacher, secures a strike sign on her dog Fern.

Stitch, a lab mix, strikes with Denver teachers on Tuesday.

Wrigley marches with teachers from southwest Denver schools.

Ziggy got his bandana especially for teacher solidarity.

Louie, the doodle, walked with Denver teachers at Schmitt Elementary Monday morning.

Cinca sports a union shirt during the Denver teacher strike.

Rocky is a class lizard. He came to negotiations Wednesday.

This dog joined teachers at Teller Elementary making signs.

Bailey walked the picket line at Beach Court Elementary School.

Denver teachers to strike for a third day, but superintendent sees ‘pathway’ to a deal

2019-02-13T07:40:00+00:00

A Denver teacher strike heads into its third day after negotiators for the Denver school district and teachers union spent 13 hours trading proposals in the basement of the city’s central library.

They did not succeed in reaching a deal to end the work stoppage. But Denver Public Schools Superintendent Susana Cordova called it “an incredibly productive day. We can certainly see a pathway to getting to an agreement.”

Both sides offered proposals, and then spent hours reviewing what each other had proposed. The reviews were conducted out of view of the teachers who packed the library’s basement auditorium to watch. By 11 p.m., the sizable crowd — which spent the morning chanting so loud, the library politely asked them to hush (no bullhorns or drums, please) — had dwindled to just 20 or so teachers.

Later that evening, Cordova and union president Henry Roman sent an unusual joint statement to Denver Public Schools parents and other community members — indicating the two sides may be closing in on a deal.

“Today, Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association worked in good faith to find common ground,” the statement read. They characterized the proposals as moving the two sides closer together and said they need “a little more time to resolve the outstanding issues.”

Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association are negotiating how to revamp ProComp, Denver’s complex pay system that offers teachers bonuses and incentives on top of their base pay. The union wants to shrink the size of the bonuses and use the money to boost teachers’ base salaries. The district agrees with boosting base salaries, but is fighting to keep certain bonuses more robust.

The difference is philosophical: District officials believe offering incentives to teachers who work at high-poverty schools helps attract and retain good educators where students need them most. Union officials argue that the way to keep teachers is to offer them stable pay, not bonuses that can come and go each year if, say, a school’s population changes.

Adding yet one more complication to the negotiations, a conservative education advocacy group threatened to file a lawsuit if whatever deal the two sides reach doesn’t conform to its interpretation of a 2005 tax measure that generates $33 million a year to pay for those bonuses.

But Tuesday’s negotiations did not center on the bonuses. Instead, both sides offered revisions to the salary schedule that moved their offers closer together.

The district added a “lane,” bringing the total number of lanes in its proposal to seven. The union’s proposal has eight. That represents significant progress; a year ago, the district’s proposal had four lanes, while the union’s had 12.

Lanes, which represent a teacher’s level of educational attainment, are important because educators get a pay bump each time they move up a lane. The first lane is for educators who have a bachelor’s degree and the last lane is for those who have a doctorate. The disagreement between the two sides is how many lanes should be in the middle.

Right before the two sides broke for the night, the union presented a counterproposal. It keeps eight lanes but arranges them in a way that’s closer to the district’s proposal. Instead of being separated by increments of 15 credits, the union’s latest proposal separates the lanes by increments of 18 credits. The district’s proposal separates the lanes by increments of 20 credits.

The two sides plan to return to the negotiating table at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Although many educators say they’ll strike until they get the deal they want, there are signs that even the short strike is already taking a toll.

Hayley Gunter, a special education teacher at Schmitt Elementary in southwest Denver, said she is planning to return to the classroom Wednesday.

Asked why, she said, “simply because I can’t afford these unpaid days.” A special education teacher, Gunter said she also worries students’ individual education plans aren’t being met while their teachers are not in the classroom.

Although striking teachers at some schools reported that some in their ranks returned to classrooms Tuesday, the district said teacher attendance was comparable to the previous day’s 56 percent. The union has challenged those figures as low, and said “even more educators” joined picket lines on Tuesday. It did not provide a precise number, as it did the previous day.

Picketing with her colleagues Tuesday outside Dora Moore Elementary School, first-grade teacher Emily Hetzler described mixed feelings among teachers as the strike wore on.

“A lot of people are saying, ‘I don’t know if I can keep going after today. I can’t afford to be missing work after today,” she said. “So I think there’s this mix of feeling very optimistic and excited, and still seeing the support of all the teachers in the district who are out here fighting for what they know is right. But it’s also setting in: We’re not getting paid. We’re away from our students, and how much longer can we keep doing this?”

Three of the 19 teachers who were out on strike Monday returned to Dora Moore on Tuesday, and at least two more are expected to return Wednesday, Principal Karen Barker said. Four teachers never left their classrooms this week.

Eliza Eaton-Stern, a teacher at Denver Green School, spent hours Tuesday as part of the throng of educators in red T-shirts who watched the negotiations from the audience. Before she left, she expressed hope the two sides would come to a resolution soon.

“All we really want,” she said, “is for this strike to be over so we can get back in the classroom.”

Yesenia Robles, Eric Gorski, and Erica Meltzer contributed reporting for this article.

Day 2 recap of Denver strike: Everything you need to know about picketing, bargaining, legal threats, and the view from schools

2019-02-13T07:13:00+00:00

Denver school district and teachers union leaders ended a long day of bargaining late Tuesday night without a deal but with a rare display of shared optimism.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association began a strike Monday, its first in 25 years, over disagreements with Denver Public Schools about how much teachers are paid and how much bonuses for incentivizing where teachers teach should matter.

Talks between the union and district began at 10 a.m. at the Denver Public Library’s central branch and concluded about 11 p.m.

Catch up on the history of the pay system, ProComp, here and the current sticking points here. And if you missed our full complement of stories Tuesday, you can learn about immigrant teacher sitting out the strike out of fear, jockeying to sway public opinion over the issues at stake in the district, membership gains in Denver’ teachers union, and a call to better fund schools.

Our reporters were all over Tuesday’s other developments, too. Below, you can catch up on everything you need to know — including a Twitter trending topic we never thought we’d see.

Phew.

We’ll do it all again Wednesday.

12:13 a.m. A show of unity

This joint statement from Denver schools superintendent Susana Cordova and union president Henry Roman just landed in the inboxes of Denver Public Schools parents and community members:

“Today, Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association worked in good faith to find common ground on ProComp. We exchanged proposals that are moving us closer and are hopeful that we will get to an agreement soon. However, we need a little more time to resolve the outstanding issues,” and will resume negotiations at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

This is the first statement of its kind as the union and district have spent a lot of time sparring in weeks of contentious negotiations. Clearly, the sides are closing in on a deal, and there’s a good likelihood this ends Wednesday.

Our ace Denver Public Schools reporter Melanie Asmar makes sense of a marathon bargaining day in this story.

11:10 p.m. Calling it a night

And that’s a wrap.

Thirteen hours of negotiations, much of it deep in the weeds of what kind of additional education and training teachers should be able to use to get raises, ended on a cautiously optimistic note late Tuesday.

Superintendent Susana Cordova — as she has before — said she thought the two sides made progress.

The two sides are calling it quits for the night. Susana: “I think it was an incredibly productive day. We can certainly see a pathway to getting to an agreement.”
— Melanie Asmar (@MelanieAsmar) February 13, 2019

The district and the union return to the bargaining table at 10 a.m. Wednesday, with the district planning to present a counterproposal as soon as possible.

Teachers, meanwhile, will be back on the picket lines.

8:26 p.m. Planning underway for Day 3

As the strike’s long second day winds to a close, teachers and their supporters are planning for Wednesday. (It’s predicted to be partly sunny and nearly 60 degrees — great weather for a winter picket.) A post on the Fair Pay For Denver Teachers Facebook group is connecting supporters with schools to “adopt” by sending coffee and other strike essentials.

“We got hand warmers, water, donuts (a lot), granola bars, and fruit today,” wrote one teacher. “And it made me march farther and chant louder.”

How long the strike will last is an open question. Most major teacher strikes in the last two years have lasted between five and nine school days, although there are ways that Denver is in a different position. And some teachers who joined pickets on Monday have already returned to the classroom or will soon.

Some teachers say they are committed to staying on strike if the union and district are not able to reach an agreement quickly.

“We’d rather come in sick than write sub plans, we wait all day to pee, we can wait out the most obstinate/challenging students,” one teacher wrote on the Fair Pay page. “We got this!”

But others are less confident. “I will be honest a number of us aren’t sure if we can sustain this for an extended time,” another teacher wrote. “I am one person with one income, no roommates, no other [income] sources.”

Other teachers voiced a similar sentiment today. We spoke with Emily Hetzler, a first-grade teacher at Dora Moore Elementary, just as picketing wound down Tuesday morning outside the stately brick edifice that is Denver’s oldest school building.

“A lot of people are saying, ‘I don’t know if I can keep going after today. I can’t afford to be missing work after today,” Hetzler said. “So I think there’s this mix of feeling very optimistic and excited (that a deal might be reached soon), and still seeing the support of all the teachers in the district who are out here fighting for what they know is right. But it’s also setting in: We’re not getting paid. We’re away from our students, and how much longer can we keep doing this?”

8:12 p.m. A war of words

Our bureau chief Erica Meltzer just published a new story documenting efforts by people on both sides of the pay dispute to win over public opinion. “A teacher strike is more than a labor dispute between employees and management,” she writes. “It’s a morality play — with audience participation.” Read the entire story here.

8 p.m. A late night at the library

Here’s one way that the strike is changing Denver: The central library is supposed to be closing right now — that’s why negotiations between the district and teachers union happening there were scheduled to end for the day at 8 p.m. But talks are still moving forward, so the library will stay open later than usual.

6:30 p.m. A “PDU” roller coaster in negotiations

After a calm morning and some actual jokes in the middle of the day, negotiations took a tense turn late this afternoon. The union and district are still sparring over how teachers can earn raises. Here’s a summary of the last couple of hours from Melanie, who’s been along for the ride all day:

The district came back with a new proposal. The most major change? Another “lane” on the salary schedule, which would give teachers another opportunity for a raise. That brings the total number of lanes on the district’s proposed schedule to seven. The union’s proposal has eight. But the proposal did not get a warm reception from the union. One big reason: it still included language that would require teachers to do 45 hours of study outside the regular work day to complete a training course known as a “professional development unit.” The union wants teachers to be able to put in that time during the regular work day. The requirements for these training courses are important because, under both sides’ proposals, completing a certain number would allow teachers to move a lane and get a raise. “Why are you requiring more work from our teachers?” lead negotiator Rob Gould asked. Cordova admitted that the district had spent the bulk of its hour-and-a-half caucus focused on other parts of its proposal, such as the additional lane, and had paid less attention to the 45-hour requirement for the training courses. The tone of the negotiations became more tense. “We’re professionals,” said Greg Ahrnsbrak, a physical education teacher at Bruce Randolph School and a member of the union bargaining team. “And it just feels like there’s absolutely no trust here that we’re going to behave like professionals.” The union went into caucus to consider the district’s proposal.

6:02 p.m. A trending topic

This has got to be a first. “ProComp” is trending on Twitter, at least for some users based in Colorado. (As with much on the internet, Twitter uses an algorithm to serve up content designed to target users’ interests.) “This is deeply, deeply weird,” Denver teacher Eliza Eaton-Stern tweeted.

5:50 p.m. “Not haveing the teachers was dreadful”

It’s been such a busy day that it’s taken until now to add this photo that a Denver parent shared from her first-grader’s class at University Park Elementary School today.

Angela Rathbun, who volunteered to assist the substitute assigned to the class while the regular teacher is on strike, said she took pictures after noticing that students were addressing the strike on the vocabulary worksheets the district provided.

“I felt it was important to take these photos to document how the kids are feeling about the strike,” Rathbun told Chalkbeat, “and to show their teachers that they are appreciated and missed.”

4:15 p.m. A union counterproposal

More details on the union counterproposal that came after a three-hour break in negotiations. From Melanie:

The union has offered several changes. Among them: allowing educators to complete the training courses known as “professional development units,” which allow them to get raises, during their regular work day, as opposed to requiring them to do that training outside of the work day. The district had some technical questions and then requested a break to look over the counterproposal. Of note: The tenor of negotiations is more collaborative today than it has been in recent sessions. There is less tension and frustration at the table.

Still no discussions about bonuses and incentives for teachers at high-poverty schools that had appeared to be the meatiest sticking points going into the strike.

3:52 p.m. A second lawsuit looms

On Monday, advocates for students with disabilities filed suit against the Denver district, charging that those students would be harmed by a strike. Now, a conservative organization is threatening a second legal challenge. From Melanie:

A conservative education advocacy organization has hired a lawyer and is prepared to file a lawsuit if the district and teachers union reach a deal that “violates Denver voters’ intent” when they passed a tax increase to fund the performance pay system known as ProComp, according to a press release sent by the group, Ready Colorado, on Tuesday afternoon. Ready Colorado president Luke Ragland said in a statement that “it is clear the union is trying to undermine the goals and voter intent of ProComp.” “The teachers union is trying to overturn the will of the voters, demanding the redistribution of funds approved to support high-poverty schools away from the neediest students,” Ragland said. “That is not what Denver voters signed off on.” It’s worth noting that both the union and the district have attorneys who have reviewed their proposals. Leaders on both sides have said what they’re proposing meets the spirit of the ProComp ballot language.

We weren’t around in 2005 for that ballot initiative, so here’s some coverage from the time if you want to gauge voters’ intent for yourself.

3:02 p.m. Susana Cordova’s no good, very bad job transition

It’s hard to believe, but Denver’s schools chief has been on the job only for six weeks. The school board named Susana Cordova, formerly deputy superintendent, as the sole finalist to replace longtime superintendent Tom Boasberg in December.

The strike is Cordova’s first big test, and some union members and allies say she’s falling short. Yesenia Robles has more:

When Cordova was named superintendent, she touted her experience as a teacher in the district and wanted to let everyone know she would be different from her predecessor, whose relationship with teachers was fraught. But dealing with a strike on her sixth week on the job seems to be putting an early strain on her relationship with teachers. Several signs on the picket lines across the city reference her specifically, and teachers say they are finding it hard to trust her. They have questioned her description of her offers in negotiations, for example, as well as how she characterized conditions inside schools during the strike. Now, one post titled “REOPEN THE SUPERINTENDENT SEARCH!!!!” on a public Facebook group Tuesday is asking whether the strike could cost Cordova the job. Part of the question revolves around the fact that the district hasn’t signed a contract with her yet. One was on the school board’s agenda just as teachers were voting to go on strike. The board, which supported her appointment unanimously, is unlikely to revisit its decision to hire Cordova. Still, the public discussion could make her path to win support from teachers steeper than she anticipated.

2:52 p.m. Talks resume, finally

The 30-minute break turned into a more-than-three-hour hiatus but union and district officials are now back at the bargaining table. They appear to be in good spirits. Rob Gould, the union’s top negotiator, said he thought the union had put together a strong counterproposal after this morning’s talks. And he answered a cutting question from his members with what sounds like a joke:

Crowd starts chanting: "Where's the distriiiiiiict?" Answer from Rob Gould: They were coming down in the elevator right behind us.
— Melanie Asmar (@MelanieAsmar) February 12, 2019

2:03 p.m. The case of the paused negotiations, solved

Talks between the Denver district and its teachers union broke for lunch more than two hours ago. Why haven’t they resumed? Melanie just tweeted an answer:

Announcement from a teacher: The union bargaining team apologizes for the delay, says they are working really hard on a counterproposal. #DenverTeacherStrike
— Melanie Asmar (@MelanieAsmar) February 12, 2019

1:45 p.m. The scene from inside Abraham Lincoln High School

Video shot by students inside Denver high schools on Monday appeared to show chaotic conditions — a narrative that national far-right media outlets immediately amplified in an effort to discredit the teachers union.

Here’s a video from today that shows an orderly display of solidarity.

Julia Aguirre, the Abraham Lincoln High School senior who shared it with Chalkbeat, wrote this about the demonstration and what happened next:

Today we conducted a sit in school wide to visually demonstrate we have always stood with our teachers and we always will. We then marched up to the second floor chanting: “Education is our right, this is why we have to fight!” We marched in hopes of getting more students to join and they did. After we joined our teachers in the front of our school we came back to class so show we really do just want a better education. Not only do we want our teachers back, but we need them.

1:25 p.m. A poetry interlude

While we wait for negotiations to resume (Melanie reports that pizza has replaced burrito as the background fragrance), we want to direct you to a poem that a Denver teacher, Joseph Bolz, posted to Facebook this morning. In the poem, Bolz outlines the many reasons he cried on the strike’s first day: because of the cold weather, because he missed his students and classroom, because he knew some teachers who wanted to picket could not. “I cried because of the sheer beauty of it all,” Bolz wrote. “To see so many hearts with a single goal.”

12:50 p.m. Teacher strikes go to Washington

Jahana Hayes, the 2016 national Teacher of the Year who was elected in November to Congress, brought up teacher strikes on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives today. She didn’t mention Denver specifically but did underscore a point that many Denver teachers have been making this week.

“If they think teachers are striking for salaries alone, then they don’t get it,” Hayes said. “That’s not how this works.”

At least two Democratic presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have explicitly endorsed Denver teachers.

12:15 p.m. Technical tweaks dominate morning negotiations

Here’s another dispatch from Melanie. Her last line will make you hungry:

This morning’s negotiations have been pretty technical. The district presented a new proposal for how teachers can change “lanes” on the salary schedule and get raises. The union has long advocated for allowing teachers to use training courses, called “professional development units,” to get raises, similar to how they would use college credits or advanced degrees. Last week, the district presented a proposal that would allow that. On Tuesday morning, district officials offered tweaks in response to union pushback. Union negotiators peppered district officials with questions about the tweaks, then took a break to meet privately to discuss them. Teachers in the audience used the break to stretch their legs, eat lunch, and run out to grab coffee. The row we’re sitting in smells like Chipotle burritos.

Nothing yet about the bonuses and incentives for teachers at high-poverty schools that make up many of the sticking points between the union and district.

12:09 p.m. Freebies for Denver teachers

Denver teachers on strike are benefitting from more than community goodwill right now. Local businesses are also showing their support by offering freebies for local educators. Fitness studios, coffee and pizza shops, wedding planners, and, yes, craft breweries have all volunteered their products and services. Here’s a Facebook thread tracking the offers.

11:05 a.m. The view from social media

Teachers and their allies across Denver have flooded Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat with pictures from their pickets. We can’t possibly share them all, so here’s one that Erica Schenck, a teacher, shared of her school’s all-female science department on Instagram this morning.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by erika schenck (@akires) on Feb 12, 2019 at 7:40am PST

10:46 a.m. National union leaders are back on the picket line

Representatives from the National Education Association, the national teachers union of which the Denver union is a chapter, are in town to picket with local teachers. Here’s what NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia tweeted this morning:

It's day two, educators are standing up for students, and students are showing solidarity! Go, fight, win! @DenverTeachers @ColoradoEA #DCTAstrong #RedForEd pic.twitter.com/e1R36nU7Nl
— Lily Eskelsen García (@Lily_NEA) February 12, 2019

Our Erica Meltzer spoke Monday with Eskelsen Garcia, who said ProComp has caused “chaos” in Denver. “There is not one school district in the country that is going to look at Denver and think, ‘Oh, I think I’ll try that,’” she said.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association helped design the ProComp pay system without the support of the national union that Eskelen García now heads.

10:25 a.m. Why you can watch Denver’s teachers contract talks

From Melanie:

In Colorado, teacher contract negotiations happen in public, which is different than in most states, where bargaining is a closed-door affair. It’s been that way since 2015, after Colorado voters passed a ballot initiative requiring the open-door sessions. That’s played out in Denver in a very high-profile way. For the past couple of years, Denver teachers have been packing bargaining sessions, first for the master contract and now for the ProComp agreement. And they don’t just watch passively. Teachers boo if they hear something they don’t like, snap if they hear something they do, and regularly shout out their opinions. When the union bargaining team entered the room Tuesday, the crowd went wild, giving them a standing ovation and starting a now-familiar cheer: “If they won’t pay us, shut it down!”

The dynamic is a boon for union members and their allies, who have more visibility now than under the old way of negotiating. That’s not what the right-wing Independence Institute anticipated when it advanced the open-meetings ballot initiative. “Transparency is good for everyone,” Jon Caldara, the institute’s president, told Chalkbeat in 2014. “If this is such an advantage for the unions, why are they against it?”

10:22 a.m. Aw, shucks!

Our reporters have been working relentlessly for weeks, and especially over the last few days, to cover this locally disruptive, nationally significant, potentially life-changing teacher strike, so it’s nice to know that our efforts are paying off with readers. Here’s one who not only acknowledged and shared our reporting but also, recognizing that local news comes with a cost, contributed to support it. Thank you, Andrew! And if you’re so inclined, here’s how you, too, can donate to Chalkbeat.

I just donated $500 to @ChalkbeatCO for their amazing, balanced, timely, comprehensive coverage of the the DPS/DCTA dispute. There are some smart, hard working people keeping the rest of us informed. #goodjournalism
— Andrew Hudson (@ahjobslist) February 12, 2019

10:05 a.m. What you need to know as negotiations resume

Some essential background from Melanie Asmar:

The district and union are negotiating how to revamp ProComp, the district’s complex teacher pay system of bonuses and incentives. on top of their base salaries. The district’s last offer, made on Saturday afternoon, would add $23 million to teacher pay next year and $55 million over three years. The money would come from cutting 150 central-office positions, eliminating bonuses for top administrators, and anticipated state aid increases, according to schools chief Susana Cordova. That gets closer to but not does reach the union’s demand: $28 million more next year. The two sides also disagree on how to divvy up the money. The union wants to shrink the size of bonuses and incentives and pump more money into teachers’ base salaries, arguing that stable pay would do more to keep teachers than bonuses that can come and go. The district sees the bonuses as key to attracting and retaining teachers at high-poverty schools. The district’s Saturday offer included something the union found particularly objectionable: increasing the size of bonuses for teachers at 30 “highest-priority schools” to $3,000, from its previous proposal of $2,500. The union wants to eliminate that particular bonus altogether.

We can expect to hear more about the highest-priority schools during negotiations today.

10 a.m. A big crowd and an empty table to start negotiations

Union supporters convened at the Denver Public Library as negotiations resumed on the teacher strike’s second day.

The Denver Public Library’s basement auditorium is packed with strike supporters wearing red, while a bargaining table has been assembled as negotiations resume. Melanie Asmar is at the library, where unlike in school district buildings, the wi-fi is reliable and social media isn’t blocked. That means you can follow her on Twitter for updates.

9:05 a.m.: New attention for “innovation schools”

One side effect of the strike is that teachers and parents across Denver are paying attention to “innovation schools,” dozens of schools that the district runs but frees from many rules. They’re often described (including by us!) as having “charter-like flexibility” — but unlike charter schools, their teachers are members of the local union. That came as a surprise to at least one strike ally who posted in an active Facebook group — but was quickly rebuffed by people who said their innovation schools were on the picket line today.

8:44 a.m.: Strike fund swells

As national attention has turned to the strike, the GoFundMe launched to build a strike fund — a fund that can support union members who go without pay during the day — has swelled. On Monday morning, the fund had about $26,000. Today, that number is up to $33,000. The donors include at least one craft brewery.

8 a.m.: A big question today

One thing we’re watching: Exactly how many teachers are joining the strike. The district reported Monday that 56 percent of teachers did not come to work; on Tuesday, it upgraded that estimate to 58 percent, without sharing why the numbers changed. It also said that a majority of teachers did not participate at 30 “highest-priority” schools where the union’s plan would eliminate special bonuses. Will those numbers hold up on the strike’s second day? If not, the union could potentially face a situation where less than half of members are participating — a potentially critical blow to maintaining public support.

7 a.m.: 76 percent of students in school Monday

The Denver district just released attendance data from Monday, when it said 76 percent of students showed up to school. That rate wasn’t unexpected, since the district and union both initially encouraged families to send their children to school, but it doesn’t capture the significant numbers of students who left early. Some parents posted on social media that they would not be sending their children back to school today.

Immigration fears keep some Denver teachers in their classrooms

2019-02-13T04:25:58+00:00

Despite assurances from school district officials that they would not be reported to immigration officials for participating in the Denver strike, immigrant teachers working on visas remained in their classrooms this week instead of joining colleagues on picket lines.

Multiple sources with first-hand knowledge told Chalkbeat that some immigrant teachers are too afraid to strike. One teacher who fits that definition spoke to us on the condition of anonymity.

Any worries teachers already had about striking were inflamed when a Denver Public Schools human relations official sent an email to schools in late January saying that the district would have to report any striking teachers with H-1B and J-1 immigrant visas to immigration authorities.

After the email leaked on social media just a few days after a strike vote, district officials said it was wrong, and apologized. But to many educators, the damage had been done.

One immigrant teacher, who asked that her name and school be withheld for fear of repercussions, said she has too much at stake to take any risks.

A Venezuelan citizen who has lived in the United States for years, she is in the process of applying for residency and has young children, she said. With a political and humanitarian crisis unfolding in her home country, being forced to return is a frightening prospect.

“I would prefer to be outside” picketing, she said in an interview. “I want to make my voice heard. But it’s scary. I don’t know what could happen, and it’s my family that is at risk.”

The teacher said the first day of the strike was hard, and she struggled not to cry.

“I was here out of fear, but I wanted to be with my companions,” she said.

Of the district’s approximately 5,300 educators, 128 of them are here on H-1B and J-1 immigrant visas, the district says. But the district is not tracking whether those teachers have gone out on strike, said Anna Alejo, DPS’s chief communications officer.

Alejo said that with limited resources during the strike, the district is only tracking overall teacher attendance, student attendance, transportation staff attendance, and school meals served.

Counting how many immigrant teachers came to work or walked a picket line also would probably not help the school district regain trust and recover from its mistake.

Chalkbeat was able to confirm other examples of immigrant teachers who stayed in their classrooms this week. We are not identifying the sources of that information or the schools with the immigrant teachers because we were unable to reach the teachers to ask whether they’d be comfortable with that. By identifying the schools, we would also possibly identify them.

The immigrant teacher who spoke to Chalkbeat said she personally knows several other immigrant educators who made the same decision she did, for many of the same reasons.

“We were coerced” to not strike,” she said. “We don’t trust DPS.”

The school district tried to move quickly to limit fallout from the letter, with Superintendent Susana Cordova appearing at a news conference alongside school board members.

“This was wrong,” Cordova said then. “I cannot begin to express how shocked I was to learn of this message, and how deeply sorry I am for the anxiety and fear this has caused our educators, our families, and our community.”

Cordova said that in preparing for a potential strike, district officials asked a law firm specializing in immigrant visas whether a strike might have negative impacts on immigrant teachers, “and how we could take the appropriate steps to protect them if they choose to strike.”

The law firm advised the district it would have to notify the U.S. Department of Labor of the strike, and Cordova said that message was “misinterpreted” by human resources staff.

Cordova sent yet another email to the community about the email on Feb. 4, stating that the district needs to rebuild trust and that she had met personally with many immigrant educators. The district even set up a hotline for teachers to report immigration-based intimidation.

Alejandro Arceo, a first-year math teacher at Lake Middle School in northwest Denver, said none of those efforts could restore the trust that had been lost.

“The fact that email was first sent and it was a threat, that caused a lot of damage, regardless of the follow-up apology,” Arceo said Tuesday as he joined other striking teachers waving signs to passing motorists on Federal Boulevard. “We are talking about the livelihood of people. We are talking about the paperwork, the visa, their legal status in the country. You don’t play with those kinds of things.”

Behind the Denver teacher strike, a union that’s grown substantially in recent years

2019-02-13T04:04:54+00:00

Denver’s teachers union is wielding one powerful weapon in its strike against Denver Public Schools: growing membership.

For years, only about half of eligible educators chose to join the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. The union in Jefferson County was bigger, even though the district is smaller.

But in the last two years, Denver union officials say, membership has swelled to 3,800. That means 72 percent of eligible teachers, nurses, counselors and others are now choosing to pay $70 a month to belong to the union.

The membership surge makes DCTA the largest local teachers union in the state, president Henry Roman said.

Many forces have coincided with the membership growth, including the union’s pay dispute with the district that is the immediate cause of the strike, a national teacher activism movement, and a U.S. Supreme Court decision that both threatens unions and gives them new opportunities to organize.

Locally, an internal caucus has for years been pushing the Denver teachers union to be more aggressive and progressive in an effort to attract younger members. That effort has paid off, according to educators who have been with the district for decades.

“I’ve seen a resurgence in the union being a very popular thing for younger teachers,” said Dave Hammond, band director at Denver School of the Arts for 25 years. “It was always there but not as strong as it is now.”

Union leaders have ramped up efforts to get Denver teachers to join, adding a staff member whose job is to work with teachers in “innovation schools” and dropping indications that it might begin engaging educators in non-unionized charter schools.

In recent weeks, as a strike grew increasingly likely, Denver union leaders emphasized that only members could vote on a strike — and then made it possible to sign up on the spot as the vote was taking place. Union officials said 250 teachers had joined that way.

One big test for the expanded membership is the degree to which members participate in the strike. So far, the numbers from the district and union haven’t made that clear.

The district reported Monday that 2,631 out of 4,725 teachers — or about 56 percent — didn’t show up to work. That would represent 70 percent of the union’s current membership.

The union challenged the district’s numbers on Monday, saying that 3,769 out of 5,353 Denver educators — not just teachers but also school nurses, counselors, and others — were on picket lines on Day 1 of the strike. That would have put strike participation at 100 percent of union membership. (Some non-union members may have decided to join the strike.)

At Chalkbeat’s request, the district Tuesday provided a revised count for Day 1 that included those nurses, counselors, and other “special service providers” — and it rose to just 2,791. A spokeswoman cautioned the numbers may not provide the full picture because those staff were prioritizing support for students with special needs over reporting their own attendance.

The union and district haven’t yet offered participation numbers from the strike’s second day.

The murky numbers have drawn attention from longtime observers of teachers union dynamics. Mike Antonucci, a self-appointed watchdog who frequently criticizes teachers union leaders, wrote on his blog that the participation rates in Denver’s strike stand out.

“This divide is a significant difference from the other walkouts,” Antonucci wrote. “We should know more about it.”

What is clear is that the strike could help the union continue to grow, particularly if the ultimate deal reflects the union’s goals.

“Teachers unions are striking and winning. It provides a very viable way to show members, we have value and we can win,” Bradley Marianno, a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who studies teachers unions. “If successful, this type of activism can really rally members.”

Sarah Darville contributed information to this report.

As the Denver district and teachers union battle over pay, the public has its say

2019-02-13T03:16:00+00:00

A teacher strike is more than a labor dispute between employees and management. It’s a morality play — with audience participation.

Many parents are seizing the chance to take the teachers’ case to elected officials. At the same time, those siding with the district on a key aspect of its pay policy are also trying to sway public opinion.

Denver Public Schools teachers have been on strike since Monday seeking higher pay and changes to a system of bonuses they say has made their compensation too unpredictable.

A post on a public Facebook page called Fair Pay for Denver Teachers calls on parents to write to Superintendent Susana Cordova and Denver school board members, and to copy members of the media. Union supporters are encouraging parents to describe chaotic conditions in their children’s schools during the strike, and to plead with the district to meet the teachers’ demands so that they’ll return to their classrooms.

“I am the mother of a kindergartner at University Park Elementary,” Molly Casey wrote in a letter to the district that was shared with Chalkbeat. “She attended school yesterday and came home anxious and upset. Going back to school today was upsetting for her. I know that is not how you want our children to feel. Please settle with the teachers and pay them what they are worth.”

In another letter, signed Bridget M., a fourth-grader at Park Hill Elementary wrote that she misses her teacher and would like things to get back to normal.

“I would like to tell you about my day at school today,” she wrote. “It was not very exciting or educational. We watched movies and played games, even though those things are fun it was very boring. I would like to say also we were wondering about the Valentine’s Day parties, how will those turn out, will we even have them?”

“Please pay the teachers fairly,” she concludes.

But what does “fairly” look like?

District officials have agreed to increases in base pay but want to keep more teacher compensation in the form of bonuses, particularly for teachers at high-poverty schools where turnover is high. The union wants fewer bonuses, with the difference put into higher base pay. They believe that will do more to keep teachers in hard jobs.

In an op-ed in The 74, Landon Mascareñaz of A+ Colorado, a group that supports many education reform policies, argued that Denver teachers were seeking to increase their pay at the expense of students of color in high-poverty schools.

Mascareñaz pointed to a letter signed by some civil rights groups in support of the incentives and questioned why union leaders didn’t go to an event at Manual High School to talk about how the two sides’ proposals would address longstanding inequities in Denver Public Schools. (It’s worth noting that other organizations that often speak up for students of color did not sign the letter or have sided with the teachers union because they see the equity question differently.)

“In a startling reveal of the union’s valuing equality over equity, it wants significantly lower incentives for teachers who work in high-needs schools,” he wrote.

In a blog post, Van Schoales, also of A+ Colorado, argued that rather than take money from incentives to boost pay, the Denver district should dramatically increase bonuses for teachers at high-poverty schools. And in an op-ed in The Denver Post, former mayor Federico Peña and Denver Scholarship founder Timothy Marquez argued that both sides risk violating the deal they made with voters back in 2005, when they approved a special tax to fund the bonus system, which is known as ProComp.

Meanwhile, the letters from parents to the district keep coming.

“There was a kindergartner who asked me to call his mom so that he could go home within the first 30 minutes of the day and then several times after that,” parent Molly Garcia, who is also a paraprofessional not covered by the teacher contract, wrote to the school board in yet another letter shared with Chalkbeat. “There were kindergarteners asking if they could have some actual work to do. There were kindergarteners asking if their teachers would be back tomorrow. There were kindergarteners telling me they were bored. There were kindergarteners acting out more than they usually do.

“We NEED our teachers. They know how much WE value them, I just wish the district would value them too.”

Denver teachers are stepping up. It’s time for Colorado voters to do the same.

2019-02-12T22:14:28+00:00

I’m a Denver social studies teacher, and I am striking today with my colleagues as we fight to make teaching in Denver schools a sustainable career.

Yes, it must be noted that Denver Public Schools is top-heavy, and more of the district’s funds should be directed toward professionals who have direct contact with students. But amid this pitched battle between district and union, it’s also important to realize that our current moment does not exist in a vacuum.

Twice in the last six years, we’ve watched ballot initiatives that would have significantly increased Colorado education funding fail. Amendment 73, which lost last fall, was projected to raise $1.6 billion a year. Much of this revenue would have gone to local districts, which could have boosted teacher salaries and added programming for students.

Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights played a significant role in creating this situation, through its draconian limits on our representatives’ ability to raise additional needed funds and its requirement that ballot measures effectively be presented to the public with the costs as a headline and the benefits as a footnote.

But there are other forces at work here, too. Last year, the state’s Chamber of Commerce and business-oriented lobbying groups celebrated the demise of Amendment 73, the latest attempt to bring Colorado’s education funding to an appropriate level — even as some business leaders have expressed concern over the lack of fully prepared graduates.

The result? Denver Public Schools’ and the teachers union’s proposals are currently separated by $5 to 8 million. While our state’s $345 billion economy booms, we are fighting for scraps.

It shouldn’t be this way. An investment in teachers is an investment in our students, and in our civic and economic future. This is challenging, essential work that requires us to contend with competing answers to a recurring question: What is the purpose of schooling? As teachers, we work to balance many answers, from teaching our subject matter to instilling work skills, modeling interpersonal skills, developing citizens, and cultivating creativity.

As a social studies teacher, I’m driven to help my students understand the world as it is while also giving them the tools to reimagine it. So as my colleagues and I strike, I hope my students and my neighbors will think about what education activist Margaret Haley said 115 years ago.

“A grave responsibility rests on the public school teachers and one which no fear of opposition or misunderstanding excuses them from meeting,” she said. “It is to organize for the purpose of securing conditions that will make it possible for the public school, as a democratic institution, to perform its proper function in the social organism, which is the preservation and development of the democratic ideal.”

This is why we are organizing, today and in the future. We deserve pay that is commensurate with the demands of our work and a level of education investment that reflects the vital importance of our schools.

When the district and the union reach an agreement, which I am confident will happen soon, we will be closer to that goal — but we will not be there yet. Whereas teachers in West Virginia and Arizona were able to pressure their legislators to raise pay statewide, Denver teachers are stuck negotiating with a district starved of funding from above. Our state cannot endure this neglect forever.

The next time education is on the ballot, I hope Coloradans will invest in our students and our future.

Peter Wright is a teacher at Denver’s Northfield High School, serving students from Stapleton, Park Hill, Montbello, Green Valley Ranch, and beyond.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

3 of 4 students showed up to school on Denver teacher strike’s first day

2019-02-12T16:09:15+00:00

More than three-quarters of Denver students showed up for school on the first day of their teachers’ strike Monday, according to Denver Public Schools.

The attendance rate was far higher than on the first and second days of Los Angeles’s recent teacher strike, when less than a third of students came to school.

Denver’s relatively high attendance rate is not unexpected, since the district and union both have encouraged students to go to school. In contrast, the Los Angeles district early on urged families to make alternate child-care arrangements.

The district did not release school-by-school attendance figures that would illuminate whether some schools had more families join teachers on the picket line or fewer families confident in their students’ ability to remain safe.

The attendance rate also does not reflect the fact that many students appear to have left after the school day started. In some cases, high school students walked out to show solidarity with their teachers, while in others parents picked up their children after growing concerned about conditions inside poorly staffed schools.

“My 7-year-old didn’t last more than a couple of hours before coming to me completely stressed out and overstimulated, begging to go home. My 10-year-old said today was basically a ‘lazy day’ and that they didn’t accomplish any learning,” Molly Garcia, a parent who works in a district kindergarten class, wrote Monday night on a Facebook forum about the strike. “They won’t be going back to school until the strike ends.”

‘Giant classrooms’ and a principal teaching band: Inside a middle school on the first day of the Denver teachers strike

2019-02-12T03:10:57+00:00

At Skinner Middle School in northwest Denver, the “classroom” for the entire seventh-grade is a first-floor auditorium with wooden seats. It’s typically used for school assemblies and Shakespeare, but today it’s dedicated to math and language arts.

Downstairs in the gym, students squint over pre-packaged literacy curriculum directing them to read a paragraph about Susan B. Anthony and answer questions citing evidence.

The school’s executive principal, holding a flute in one hand, stands at the front of another classroom teaching a combined beginning band and concert band class fingering and rhythms.

This was what school looked like Monday morning in a large comprehensive middle school that saw 38 of its 39 teachers join with colleagues across the city going on strike in a dispute with Denver Public Schools about how much teachers are paid and the factors that determine their paychecks.

Students across Denver reported mixed experiences in schools as the strike began. Some high school students walked out to join their teachers on picket lines, while some students reported crowded classrooms, marathon attendance-taking sessions, and other disruptions.

After initially refusing media requests to be inside schools, citing the potential disruption, district officials agreed Monday morning to grant limited access to one school for a print/digital reporter, photographer, and TV crew, on the condition that students and staff not be identified. (Chalkbeat as the print/digital representative agreed to share its notes with other media.)

For school leaders like Grant Varvaris, the Skinner Middle School principal, the strike poses logistical and teaching challenges. The school invited students to spend part of the morning writing letters and drawing pictures to be delivered to their teachers outside on the picket lines, sharing messages like “we love you and we miss you, and we also understand why you are doing it.”

Activity coordinators broke up the monotony of hours sitting with “brain breaks,” leading students doing physical activities, like playing frisbee or tag outside.

The “giant classrooms,” as Varvaris describes the auditorium and gym, are working so far, he said. About 75 percent of the school’s roughly 625 students attended class Monday, and it would typically be about 95 percent. About 75 adults were in the building, down from the usual 100. Administrators, non-teachers union staff like cafeteria workers, seven district central office staff, and nine substitutes were on hand.

The gymnasium during third period had an adult-to-student ratio of about 1:10.

“I feel like it’s different than normal,” Varvaris said. “I know the kids are safe. I do know that our learning is impacted a little bit. I’m not going to pretend everything is as good as our 38 teachers who deliver great lessons. I feel a little bit just nervous because it’s just different, but I think our adults and kids are working really hard to make it work.”

That all but one Skinner teacher joined the strike stands out considering the school district said about 56 percent of Denver teachers did not show up Monday. Union officials released their own numbers showing that more than 71 percent of all employees covered by the union contract — teachers, nurses, counselors, and therapists — signed in or were counted on picket lines.

Some parents joined picketing parents with signs of their own outside Skinner, including Mary Harmon, who has two children at Skinner and one at North High School.

Harmon cited a litany of concerns that has her siding with the teachers union: that the district is top-heavy with administrators, and that after 15 months the district couldn’t make an offer acceptable to teachers.

Late Monday morning, she was sitting in a chair outside the main office waiting for Varvaris.

She wanted to know whether students were working on lessons prepared by their classroom teachers instead of what she called the “busywork” of district-prepared curriculum.

Varvaris replied that it was the curriculum district staff prepared for the strike, and told her that no, her son did not have to work on it.

Before the meeting with the parent, Varvaris said he wants to support his teachers and support anyone who walks through the door, without taking sides during a challenging moment.

“What we have said is we are a family when it starts,” he said, “and we’ll be a family when it’s over.”

National union leader: Denver should serve as a warning for districts considering performance pay

2019-02-11T23:24:05+00:00

In town to support the Denver teachers strike, National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García said the labor unrest should serve as a cautionary tale for other districts that want to pay teachers in bonuses and incentives.

“For anybody who thought, let’s try this and see how it works, I want you to hear the people shouting over here,” she told Chalkbeat, standing near the picket line outside South High School Monday morning. “There is not one school district in the country that is going to look at Denver and think, ‘Oh, I think I’ll try that.’ No. They should have stopped this and changed this years ago, and they didn’t. And this is the result.”

The Denver teachers strike, which started Monday, may be the first in the country to turn not just on the issue of higher pay but more specifically on the kind of pay-for-performance systems that have long been part of the education reform toolbox.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association helped design the ProComp pay system without the support of the national union that Eskelen García now heads. In the years since, the incentives and bonuses have become a source of deep frustration for many teachers who have lost bonuses for small changes in test scores, demographics, or school ratings calculated by the district.

Now, Denver Public Schools and the union are at odds over how the system should work. Observers all along the education policy spectrum are watching the Denver strike closely to see where the district and the union ultimately land — and how the system once hailed as a national model will look after the strike concludes.

The teachers union wants the district to increase base pay significantly and reduce the amount of compensation that comes from bonuses. The district has agreed that bonuses should be more predictable — and that base pay should be higher — but it wants to keep larger bonuses for teachers in high-poverty schools, in particular for those deemed “highest priority.” Superintendent Susana Cordova has described this as a question of equity for the students in those schools, who face many challenges and deserve teachers who stay.

The retention data from these schools is decidedly mixed, and many teachers on the picket lines say the bonuses simply don’t work. At the same time, the district reported lower participation in the strike at schools where teachers get those bonuses.

Eskelsen García said it is significant that Denver teachers are not shouting for a particular percentage pay increase, but to “stop the chaos that this has caused.”

“We’re looking at a completely different issue here than anywhere else in the country,” she said.

Students describe crowded classrooms and chaos in Denver schools on first day of teacher strike

2019-02-11T22:02:16+00:00

Students across Denver had mixed experiences in their classrooms Monday as their teachers went on strike, but for the most part, it was far from a normal day.

At high schools, students described crowded classrooms, large groups and chaotic schedules. Many walked out of their schools and joined teachers on the picket lines instead.

Nicole Aguiler, a 10th grader at South High, said deans brought the students into the auditorium at the start of the day and then released them from school as they went to their walkout to show support for their teachers.

“They are with us for more than half the day,” she said. “They teach us and care about us. They should get paid more.”

Later, video emerged of students dancing in the hallways at East High School. The video was provided to The Denver Post by a student journalist at the school.

The Denver district and the teachers union have been negotiating the district’s complex teacher pay system, ProComp. The disagreements have exposed deep philosophical divides about how teachers should be paid, but the dispute also comes with a backdrop of heightened teacher activism nationally and built-up frustration locally about several school reforms.

District officials had been planning for weeks as the possibility of the strike became apparent, and said this weekend they were prepared to keep schools open to ensure students kept learning. They deployed about 1,400 central office employees to various schools to help keep order, and in some cases, to help teach. The district sent schools boxed lesson plans and packets of worksheets.

Students who walked out from Lincoln High said their worksheets didn’t match the classes they’ve had, and in some cases seemed to them like eighth-grade work.

As of midday Monday, district officials didn’t have final counts of how many students had attended at least some school, but said they did serve more than 19,600 breakfasts Monday morning. A district spokesperson said the district usually serves about 31,600.

Student submitted this view from inside South High this morning, before the walkout. Packed auditorium. #DenverTeacherStrike pic.twitter.com/eBLmg4xAB3
— Yesenia Robles (@YeseniaRobles) February 11, 2019

Ayanna Thatch and Bailey Schwartzkopf, both seniors at South High, were chanting and holding signs just outside the school for their teachers Monday morning after walking out. They said administrators at the school knew that students planned to walk out in support of teachers and did not stop them.

Bailey said it didn’t sound like there was much of a plan for the day.

Seniors who stayed in school the rest of the day said they spent half of the day in the gym.

One mother, RB Fast, said she was going to pick up her daughter from school, Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy, a K-12 in southwest Denver, once she heard that all the sixth-graders were doing that day was playing in the gym. But her daughter asked her not to because “it was too fun.”

“I was under the impression from the district that they were going to deploy enough subs that it would be, not normal, but still close to normal,” Fast said. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

Across town, at the Denver School of the Arts, serving students from sixth grade through 12th grade, students said they were grouped by grade level.

“All hell broke loose,” said Luke Poirier, an eighth-grader at the school. “There were people everywhere … it was awful.”

Eighth-grader Lulu Kahn said the only way she knew where to find the classroom she had been assigned was through texts from her friends.

In their large groups, just taking attendance took 45 minutes, DSA students said. After attendance, the teachers told them they could just talk while the teachers figured out what was going on.

They were going to be given work to do on their Chromebooks, but some students walked out just after 8 a.m. instead to join their teachers.

Nancy Nieves sent her 6-year-old, a student at Doull Elementary, to school despite her complaints Monday morning. Nieves didn’t want her daughter to have an absence on her record.

“She likes her teachers a lot,” Nieves said. “She told me she wanted to be with her teacher and help her.”

But after school her daughter said she had a great day drawing hearts and making bracelets.

“Of course she’s going to be happy as long as she’s playing games and things, but she’s not learning,” Nieves said. “We really need our teachers. It’s only fair they get a wage that values their work.”

Chalkbeat’s Erica Meltzer and Ann Schimke contributed to this report.

‘I deserve more’: Denver teachers strike over pay for first time in 25 years

2019-02-11T15:12:59+00:00

Denver teachers took to picket lines for the first time in 25 years Monday, braving frigid temperatures to demand across-the-board raises and a more predictable pay system that is less dependent on complicated bonuses.

“It’s about pay, but it’s also about respect,” said Ryan Marini, a social studies teacher and football coach at South High School. “We lose great teachers every year.”

The Denver teachers union is fighting for a major revision to ProComp, the district’s complex teacher pay system, once hailed as a model. The dispute reflects deep philosophical differences in how teachers should be paid, as well as pent-up frustration with a host of education reform policies, and has attracted nationwide attention, including a visit from the president of the National Education Association.

Still, opinions among Denver educators were mixed, with some teachers staying in their classrooms.

Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association are set to return to the bargaining table at 10 a.m. Tuesday in search of a resolution that could bring the strike to an end. The two sides gave differing accounts of the size of Monday’s strike. The district reported 2,631 out of 4,725 teachers — or about 56 percent — didn’t show up to work.

But the district count didn’t include nurses, counselors, and other educators who also belong to the union. The Denver Classroom Teachers Association counted 3,769 out of 5,353 Denver educators on the picket lines Monday, which would put strike participation at 70 percent.

“We got a word for that in hip-hop,” said teacher Gerardo Muñoz, who was one of two emcees for an afternoon rally on the steps of the Capitol. “We call that steady mobbin’.”

Participation in the strike is an important indicator of how many teachers support the union’s position. The district believes its offer, which increases base pay while still maintaining more robust bonuses and incentives, is a good one, and it has been trying to make that case directly to teachers and the general public. Significant participation in the strike increases the union’s leverage at the bargaining table both by making it harder to keep schools open and by showing that the union speaks for most — if not all — teachers.

Meanwhile, inside schools, the experience varied widely — from student walkouts in support of teachers at several high schools to classrooms the superintendent described as “very calm and quiet.” The district said it deployed approximately 1,400 central office staff and 400 substitute teachers to cover for those who walked out, sometimes grouping students by grade to deliver lessons.

“It was a hot mess,” said East High School sophomore Quinn Biannucci, who walked out of school after waiting in line for 20 minutes to get her schedule — and only moving five feet.

Across town at Abraham Lincoln High School, 15-year-old Adrina Trejo reported being in a packed classroom with 34 other students and handed a packet of work that “didn’t even relate to what we’ve been working on,” she said. “We would rather be learning with our teachers.”

The last attempt to reach a deal on ProComp came to a dramatic end Saturday when the union rejected the district’s latest offer, which would have invested more money in teacher pay but also upped the size of an incentive for teachers in “highest-priority” schools.

A Denver preschooler gives a striker a high five while walking the picket line with his mother, a Denver teacher.

This incentive has been one of the biggest sticking points in negotiations. The district sees it as key to attracting teachers to schools with high rates of poverty, students with special needs, and English language learners. The union wants to scrap the incentive and use the money to increase the salaries of all teachers, arguing that stable pay is what makes teachers stay.

On the picket line, teachers said ProComp has failed them. Aaron Lowenkron said the only reason he can live in Denver, at 40 years old, is because he gets financial help from his parents

“I used to feel shame about that,” said Lowenkron, a math teacher at East High School. “But how many teachers in Denver say the same thing?”

Shannon McElhany, a teacher at Schmitt Elementary School, said she is considering leaving Denver. Even with two other jobs, teaching yoga and working for a catering company, she hasn’t been able to afford to buy a house in the city, where the median home price is nearing a half million dollars. The average Denver teacher salary, inclusive of bonuses and stipends, is $62,095 this year, according to the district. The average base salary is $57,723.

“I hold two degrees, and I’ve been rated ‘distinguished’ for the past three years,” McElhany said, referring to the district’s teacher rating system. “I think I deserve more.”

Denver Public Schools officials noted that fewer teachers were absent Monday at the 30 “highest-priority” schools that get the bonus the union wants to eliminate. According to the district, 507 of 1,139 teachers in those 30 schools did not report to work. That’s 44 percent of teachers who weren’t at their jobs, which is lower than the districtwide percentage.

Tory Tripp is a math teacher at Manual High School, one of the 30 “highest-priority” schools. She did not strike Monday. Part of the reason, she said, is that she agrees with the district philosophy that teachers who work in high-poverty schools deserve more pay.

“Striking is such a sacrifice for your personal finances, for taking away instruction from kids, and I didn’t think that the union’s proposal was worth it to strike,” Tripp said.

Teachers who went out on strike were not paid.

The district did not have a count Monday of how many students attended school. But officials provided some numbers that suggest attendance was lower than normal. For instance, the district served 20,386 breakfasts Monday morning, down from the usual 31,600.

All schools were open Monday, with the exception of preschool classes. The district canceled those last week in anticipation of not having enough qualified staff to cover them.

The strike has some parents worried about what will happen in the classroom without regular teachers in place. When Maria Claustro dropped off her granddaughter early Monday at Schmitt Elementary in southwest Denver, she made a point of walking into the office — even though district employees stood outside school greeting students.

“I asked them to call me if anything changes or if they’re not having classes,” Claustro said. She’s not happy about the strike, but said, “it’s their right to ask for a fair wage. I think they are asking what’s fair.”

Jennifer Nguyen, a mother of four, also expressed concern. At Schmitt, she said, “the original teachers know how the kids are learning, know if students are misbehaving or need extra help on math. The new people today don’t necessarily know all of that.”

Asked how long the strike could go on before it became a problem, Superintendent Susana Cordova said it already was.

“It’s a problem now,” she said. “It’s a problem today.”

Cordova did not say whether the district would offer a new ProComp proposal Tuesday, noting that she’d already committed to cutting $20 million over the next two years from the district’s central office to fund pay increases for teachers, as well as for custodians, bus drivers, and other employees.

“The goal of negotiations is for us to get close to the middle,” Cordova said. “DPS is way past the middle in terms of what we’ve offered thus far.”

But at a rally Monday afternoon, the union made it clear the district hasn’t gone far enough to give teachers what speakers called a clear, transparent, and professional pay scale.

“For 15 long months, we have shouted this injustice from the rooftops,” said Rachel Sandoval, a fifth-grade teacher at Godsman Elementary School and a union board member, referring to the amount of time the two sides have been negotiating. “Can you hear us now?”

Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova on eve of strike: ‘This is an issue of equity’

2019-02-11T12:00:48+00:00

Barely a month since taking charge of Colorado’s largest school district, Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova is reckoning with a teachers strike.

Teachers are set to start picketing Monday after union members voted to strike, the governor turned away a district request to step in and delay it, and a final flurry of negotiations failed to unlock a compromise over ProComp, the district’s complicated pay-for-performance system that is the subject of negotiations.

We sat down with Cordova on Sunday as her staff prepared for the walkouts. We talked about the district’s latest proposal, its determination to keep schools open, the size of the district’s central administration staff, and how what is happening in Denver is connected to teacher activism nationwide and the local community’s feelings about Denver’s education reform efforts.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Saturday night, you brought a new proposal to the table with deeper cuts to district central staff and elimination of executive bonuses, with the money going to increase bonuses for teachers in “highest priority” schools. The union wants to do away with those bonuses and use that money to raise base pay for all teachers. Why make this move, and why did you call it significant?

A: ProComp was initially designed to try to motivate the behavior we need to address the biggest problems in our system. And the biggest problems are closing the opportunity gap and teacher retention in the highest priority schools. So much of what we are doing in our proposal is trying to emphasize equity. At the end of the day, the most important thing we can do with our proposal is reward teachers in their base salaries and in the kinds of jobs we know we need to close the gaps we have. Our proposal, along with the incentives, also pays a significant base pay increase for everyone.

I want to say it over and over and over again that this is an issue of equity. And equity isn’t equal. And I don’t believe it’s in our city’s best interest to take money out of the hands of teachers working in higher poverty places to spread around the city so everyone gets an increase.

Q: How confident are you in your ability to keep schools open during the strike?

A: We’re going to approach this as thoughtfully as possible. Our No. 1 priority is the safety of our students. If at any point we are concerned about safety, we will make the decision to close a school. That is something we won’t compromise on.

Q: Along with tapping your regular pool of substitute teachers and trying to expand it, the district told central administration staff to be all-hands-on-deck and ready to go into schools. Some of these employees are the very same people who would lose their jobs in the cuts to central office you’ve proposed. How do you have those conversations?

A: It’s really challenging. Probably one of the hardest things I am having to do right now is talking to people who are really dedicated people who care about kids, to ask them to go cover in schools and then come back to the possibility that their job is going to be eliminated.

Whether you think a strike is the right thing or the wrong thing, there is no one who thinks it’s not the best thing to have grownups taking care of students. I am incredibly proud of the people who have reached out to me to tell them how focused they are on kids.

Q: Taking the context of the current negotiations out of it, is the central office too big? Does it need to cut?

A: Part of what I applied on was this concept of, “I think we need to have a bigger impact, and that doesn’t necessarily mean we need to be the size of the team that we are.” This is a good time to reevaluate how we can make an impact.

Q: These negotiations are about ProComp, but is this also about something more?

A: Yes, I think we are in the middle of a national moment. Teachers in Denver as well as in other places are feeling frustrated, disrespected, undervalued. I think that’s terrible. I went into teaching myself with a real passion to make a difference in the world. I know that’s true of our teachers as well. I don’t think for the most part teachers are going into the job for the money. Money matters. And certainly, a part of this is about the money. But it’s also about a lot of those other things that are happening. My hope would be that once we are past these negotiations, we will be able to sit down and engage in a collaborative way so that here in Denver, that storyline can feel different.

Q: What do you think has fueled that movement? Political winds nationally? What else?

A: There are national contextual aspects and very local contextual aspects. The political climate we have nationwide is a climate that has provided far greater divisions than it has brought people together. If you look at Denver, L.A., and potentially Oakland (where a strike also could be in the offing), these are primarily liberal, Democratic places. That feels a little bit different here. Some of the local context here is, I think teachers and parents are really frustrated with the lack of opportunity to collaboratively engage around the improvement of our schools. I said that when I was applying: It is something that frustrated me as a member of DPS, both before I was on (previous superintendent) Tom Boasberg’s cabinet, and when I worked for Tom. I have deep roots in the city. I am a DPS grad, a DPS parent, and I plan to be a DPS retiree at some point. I am not going away from Denver. I understand why people feel frustrated – they feel like they don’t have a voice in their schools. Part of the reason I wanted to be superintendent is I wanted to change that. I know people are frustrated with how things have worked over the past 10 years.

Q: Some people are frustrated because they don’t feel heard, and also because they don’t like what the district’s done. You’ve been a part of this, you have been in many district roles. How much of the frustration among teachers now and among community members who support them is with Denver’s reforms or direction?

A: Certainly, while I was applying for the superintendency, I heard from lots of people who are very frustrated around the reforms. But we’ve also heard from people who really love their school and their school is a direct manifestation of what those reforms have looked like. Innovation schools. The kind of choices we have. Montessori. IB. Expeditionary Learning. The opportunity to find the right fit for your kid. We also hear from parents how much they appreciate that. Not everybody speaks with one voice on that. I do think a lot of what we are seeing now is some of the pent-up frustration of the folks who have not been as satisfied with what reforms have produced.

There are many, many things we can point to as big improvements over the last 15 years. Graduation rates are up. Remediation rates are down. Dropouts are down. Enrollment is significantly higher. We were a district where for many years you might like your elementary school, you might like your high school, but you pulled your kids out for middle school. And middle schools are thriving in many, many parts of the city. A lot of that is sort of the chicken-egg — the schools are better, the neighborhoods get better, the neighborhoods get better, the schools get better. A lot of that is what’s happened. And that has not been the experience of all communities in the last 15 years. So even though our black and our brown children are performing significantly higher than they were, they have not accelerated at the same pace as their white peers or their peers who don’t qualify for free lunch. We have big, big work to do on that.

Q: Some district reform efforts have slowed down. The school closure policy is on hold. The last two calls for new quality schools have not called for any new schools. Is that because of changing circumstances, or does it say something else?

A: We’re just not growing at same pace. We saw rapid expansion of schools of all kinds: charter and district schools during a time when enrollment in our city was dramatically increasing. That is not where we are. We are going to be in a position where we are going to have to think differently about our schools. One of the things we shared with our board of education in our budget forecast, within the next five years we expect that we’ll have 20 schools that are under 200 kids if we do nothing now, based on the neighborhood changes. You can’t run a school on a budget you get for 200 kids. At under 200 kids, you don’t even have enough funds to have a teacher at every grade level. We’re in a different environment. So I think we’re going to have to look at what reforms look like in this context in a different way. We have a very large and troubling gap. We need reform. It’s going to need to look different.

Q: What do you think that will look like?

A: My hope is that we’re going to be working on that in collaboration with our teachers and our community.

Editor’s note: We have requested a similar interview with Henry Roman, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association.

Ten things to watch as Denver teachers go on strike

2019-02-11T04:55:04+00:00

The negotiating room is dark. Makeshift lesson plans are ready to be unpacked from boxes, if they haven’t been yet. Bullhorns and picket signs are at the ready.

Denver teachers will go on strike Monday morning for the first time in a quarter century.

It’s a big development not just in the ongoing dispute between school district and union leaders over how much and how teachers are paid, but also in the history of Denver Public Schools.

National attention will be focused on Denver, as it was on Los Angeles, Oklahoma, and West Virginia in recent months. Here are the things we’ll be watching as the strike begins:

How many teachers will walk out?

It’s hard to say. The teachers union’s lead negotiator told us dues-paying membership has swelled to about 3,800. That’s roughly 72 percent of the 5,300 teachers and special service providers covered by the district’s ProComp agreement that is at the center of the dispute — a big increase in membership that had been stuck at about 50 percent for years.

Teachers don’t have to be union members to strike. Some members may stay in their classrooms because they disagree with their colleagues, can’t afford to lose a paycheck, or are worried about their immigration status. Non-union member educators may walk out in solidarity with striking teachers, or find it too hard to cross a picket line.

One reason it’s hard to get a handle on how may Denver teachers support a strike: Union leaders refuse to say how many people voted to walk out. The Denver Classroom Teachers Association said 93 percent of those who participated voted “yes,” but did not disclose the number of ballots cast.

We’ve asked the school district for daily updates on teacher attendance during the strike. We’ll keep you posted about what we learn.

Will the district manage to keep schools open?

We have no idea — and the district probably doesn’t, either. There are a lot of things that won’t be known until bells ring Monday morning.

Probably the biggest wild card is student attendance. If attendance is close to normal, it will pose a big challenge to district officials committed to keeping doors open.

Other open questions: Will the district round up enough substitute teachers and central office staff to keep schools running? Will those in the district sub pool — many of them retired teachers— cross a picket line? What about other employees who are essential to keeping schools open: paraprofessionals, support staff, janitors, and cafeteria workers?

The district has made clear that its roughly 1,400-employee central office staff should stand ready for deployment to schools as substitutes or, if they aren’t licensed, hall monitors or lunchroom workers. Not only that, but the district has said that failing to do so could result in corrective action, which could include getting fired. These, by the way, are some of the same people who will lose their jobs because of cuts the district has proposed to pay teachers more.

The district has been getting reports from principals with projections about how many teachers might strike. The bottom line is that how schools are able to handle the strike will vary by school. The Denver district will be relying on principals to make the right calls on keeping doors open.

What will student attendance be like?

As we said above, it’s a crucial piece to keeping schools open. The union has changed course on its messaging. A union FAQ document from mid-January urged parents to send students to school with the logic that schools will be forced to close if they’re unsafe, “a demonstration of the essential labor performed by educators.” Some teachers distanced themselves from that, and union President Henry Roman eventually backed off, too. After Gov. Jared Polis declined to intervene in the dispute, clearing the way for a strike, Roman urged parents to make the decision “they believe to be in the best interest and well-being of their children.”

During Los Angeles’ recent strike, attendance was higher in high-poverty schools, where parents have less flexibility at work and may not be able to be with their children. In Denver, district officials say they’re planning to send more personnel to high-poverty schools.

What will school be like without teachers?

First off, many students and parents will experience a most unfamiliar morning drop-off — teachers who usually are inside getting classrooms ready instead will be outside on sidewalks marching with picket signs. Denver police initiated conversations with union leaders to make sure everyone knows the rules. Any picketing must take place on public sidewalks, not on school property.

DPS’s curriculum team has prepared material for use in classrooms: stand-alone units aligned to content areas and grade levels in English and Spanish. The district has sent two days’ worth of material to start, and Superintendent Susana Cordova said the district has more ready online and will reassess after a couple of days. An English language development unit covers food groups, with group work for students. A sixth-grade science section on freshwater use in the U.S. asks students to make predictions about estimated water use.

District officials have been clear that school during the strike will not be normal. Some classrooms may be combined. Classes may move to auditoriums. Schools with specialized programs — Montessori, Expeditionary Learning, International Baccalaureate — may find the pre-packaged curriculum lacking.

At least initially, we won’t be able to give you a firsthand account of what the school day looks like during the strike. The school district refused our request, and those from other media, to observe inside schools, saying it would be disruptive at a sensitive time.

Will older students turn to activism?

We’ve already seen Denver students speak out in support of teachers. An estimated 1,100 students at seven Denver high schools staged sit-ins, information sessions, marches, and other demonstrations during a school day two weeks ago, showing solidarity with teachers.

So it would come as no surprise if we see more as the strike begins. Or rather, if we see it in shaky video that ends up on some national news network. Everyone these days has a camera in his or her pocket and social media accounts on which to share videos and still pictures. The Denver Post found one middle school that will collect students’ phones during the strike, but schools also do this as a regular practice. A district spokeswoman told us each school has its own cell phone policy, and the district doesn’t expect them to change this week.

What will families with preschoolers do?

While DPS is telling families that schools will be open and operating on regular schedules Monday, there’s one exception: district-run preschools. Cordova announced late last week that the district will be unable to keep its preschools open, leaving parents of 3- and 4-year-olds scrambling. Those who can will take off work or lean on relatives and friends.

Meanwhile, state regulators have said they can grant emergency waivers to allow non-district preschools with extra room to take some of those students, and some Denver preschools have raised their hands. Parents searching for licensed child care options during a teacher strike may call Colorado Shines Child Care Referral at Mile High United Way at 1-877-338-2273 or text “child care referral” to 898-211.

How will students who rely on subsidized school meals eat?

The district has underscored that meals will continue to be served at schools with large numbers of students in need. Preschool students will still be able eat at school if they are accompanied by a parent. About 65 percent of DPS students qualify for free and reduced-price lunch.

The city of Denver also said it will have meals and snacks available at its recreation centers and libraries. The Denver Classroom Teachers Association, following the lead of other local unions during a strike, has announced plans to open community food banks at four sites where it will collect and distribute non-perishable food from 7 a.m. to noon:

Northwest – Denver Firefighters Local 858: 12 Lakeside Lane
Northeast – IBEW Local 111: 5965 E. 39th Ave.
Southwest – National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 47: 5151 W. First Ave
Southeast – Unite Here Local 23: 5303 E Evans Ave., # 302.

Will charter schools be a target of pickets?

The current dispute has been focused on how much Denver teachers are paid and how they’re paid. But make no mistake: The energy the teachers union has harnessed also grows out of a long-simmering frustration with Denver’s brand of education reform, which includes closing low-performing schools and replacing them with other types of schools the district believes can do a better job. That includes charter schools. Our rough count shows DPS with 99 traditional district-run schools, 60 charter schools, and 50 innovation schools, which are operated by the district but don’t abide by all aspects of the teachers union contract.

The strike gives union leaders a chance to make charters an issue (in other cities, including LA, charter school growth was a major aspect of the dispute). Denver’s policy of welcoming charter schools to use space in underutilized buildings that are home to district-run schools is a highly unusual practice for a U.S. school district — and gives pickets a potential target.

The head of DSST Public Schools, the district’s largest charter-school operator, wrote to parents voicing concerns about how a strike would affect its students and families, but didn’t specifically cite concern over pickets. District officials have assured charter school operators that the district is doing everything in its power to ensure that it’s business as usual at district campuses.

What happens next with negotiations?

Union negotiators made clear when they walked away from the negotiating table Saturday night that they won’t be returning until Tuesday. That means all of the attention Monday will focus on picket lines, what happens in schools, and whether the district can manage to keep them open.

Teachers are ready — emotionally, practically, strategically — to strike. Imagine being asked to vote on whether to walk out of a classroom of students you are responsible for. You vote yes. You prepare yourself, you figure out what to tell your students what to expect, you decide what message is best for your picket sign. It’s hard to walk back from that.

But a deal has to be reached at some point. The start of the strike should be a game-changer for negotiations.

How long will the strike last?

Probably no more than a few days. That’s our best guess given the length of recent strikes elsewhere (Pueblo and LA both lasted a week) and how close the two sides are compared with disputes in other cities. Then there’s this practical consideration: Teachers who strike don’t get paid — and a strike fund can only go so far. The district put more on the table late in its attempts to avert a strike. Even though the union dismissed the move, it does get the sides closer.

Denver union rebuffs district’s request to keep talking, both sides prepare for strike Monday

2019-02-10T22:15:00+00:00

Denver schools superintendent Susana Cordova and her top negotiators spent a few hours Sunday sitting alone at a bargaining table after union officials rebuffed their request to keep talking less than 24 hours before the planned start of Denver’s first teachers strike in 25 years.

Negotiations halted Saturday evening when union bargainers walked away from negotiations, saying they’ll strike Monday and talk again Tuesday at the earliest.

That dramatic moment seemed to be the end of it, but the district notified the media on Sunday morning that it would be back at 9:30 a.m. and ready to resume. Cordova said the union did not respond to the invitation. Union negotiator Rebecka Hendricks told Chalkbeat the union believed little progress was being made and that everyone needed a cooling-off period.

That the two sides didn’t meet again is not surprising: Denver Classroom Teachers Association leaders have made clear that the time for talking is over for now.

Both sides instead spent much of Sunday preparing for the strike, with the school district trying to match substitute teachers to anticipated needs and taking other steps in a bid to keep schools open, and the union’s strike captains planning to meet to discuss their plans.

The strained negotiations over ProComp, the district’s complex teacher pay system, has exposed deep philosophical divides about how teachers should be paid. But the dispute is about more than that: it comes with a backdrop of heightened teacher activism nationally and pent-up frustration locally among opponents of Denver school reforms dating back more than a decade.

On Sunday morning, the room in a district building that had been crammed with red-clad teachers during intense bargaining sessions took on a dramatically different feel.

Cordova and three district staff members sat alone huddled over laptops in one corner of a square table. The only other people in the room were reporters.

Cordova said the union’s decision not to come back to the table was “incredibly disappointing” given that this will end in a deal and there was still time to potentially avert a strike.

“The most important thing we can do is get to work,” she said. “I am not sure I understand why they think we should wait until Tuesday. They don’t even want to meet tomorrow.”

On Saturday night, the district offered what Cordova framed as a significant proposal: eliminating performance bonuses for executive staff and cutting even deeper into administrative expenses — eliminating 150 central office jobs — and pouring the money into boosting bonuses for teachers working in schools identified as a highest priority to $3,000 from $2,500.

The union, however, advocates for eliminating that bonus altogether and using the money to boost the base pay for all district teachers. Union leaders believe the best way to attract and retain teachers is to offer them a competitive, stable salary, instead of bonuses that could come and go depending on a school’s demographics or other factors outside of their control.

District officials have been seeking to draw a starker contrast between those divisions, and Cordova continued Sunday when talking to the media.

“I want to say it over and over and over again that this is an issue of equity,” she said in an interview with Chalkbeat. “And equity isn’t equal. And I don’t believe it’s in our city’s best interest to take money out of the hands of teachers working in higher poverty places to spread around the city so everyone gets an increase.”

Cordova said the district has taken significant steps forward in negotiations and the union has not.

Hendricks, the DCTA negotiator, said Cordova made the district’s last offer sound good at first, but it “didn’t move us forward at all.” She said the union had good reason to skip what felt like a publicity stunt on Sunday.

“The negotiations have been very emotional for both sides,” said Hendricks, a math teacher at Emily Griffith High School. “I think a cooling-off period would do some good in terms of moving negotiations forward a little bit more productively.”

No one knows exactly what to expect when teachers form picket lines outside schools Monday.

The district says it has been gathering information from principals about how many teachers they expect to walk out, although it’s impossible to know for sure until the strike begins.

As of 8:45 a.m. Sunday, the district had fielded 2,024 requests from schools for substitute teachers, said Debbie Hearty, the district’s human resources chief. Of those, 284 assignments had been made and accepted from the district’s sub pool, which has been bolstered in preparation for the strike, she said. DPS officials are paying subs $200 a day, twice the usual rate.

The district also has 1,400 central office staff ready to substitute-teach if they’re licensed, or fulfill other tasks like monitoring hallways and lunchrooms if they’re not.

Student attendance is key to the staffing puzzle. If many parents keep their children home, not as many substitutes and support staff will be needed.

Cordova noted that during the recent Los Angeles strike, student attendance was higher in high-poverty schools, where parents are far less likely to have flexible schedules and be able to get off work to care for their children. District officials expect a similar dynamic in Denver, where 65 percent of students qualify for government-subsidized lunches, one measure of poverty.

Melanie Asmar contributed to this report.

Denver teachers will strike Monday after negotiations end without a deal

2019-02-10T04:01:56+00:00

Denver teachers will strike on Monday after school district and union leaders failed to reach an agreement in a last-ditch bargaining session Saturday.

This will be the first teacher strike in 25 years in Colorado’s largest district, and likely the first in the country to turn on the issue of incentive pay for educators.

The Denver school district offered what Superintendent Susana Cordova called a significant proposal, just minutes before Saturday’s bargaining session was originally scheduled to end.

She said she had decided to eliminate performance bonuses for executive staff and cut even deeper into administrative expenses, eliminating 150 central office jobs. Teachers cheered the announcement, standing and clapping.

But when she said the money from the executive’s performance bonuses would be put into increasing a bonus for teachers working in schools identified as a highest priority to $3,000 — a bonus the teachers union has been trying to decrease — the mood in the room changed again.

And when the district’s attorney, Michelle Berge, explained the proposal by referring to “tough concessions for a lot of us, but for those of us who just took a big pay cut…” teachers jeered, cutting her off and saying it wasn’t true.

“Nothing else matters if that’s what their attitude is,” one teacher in the crowd said.

The union team spent more than an hour and a half reviewing the district’s proposal, which officials said would invest more money into teacher pay over the next three years. Ultimately, Henry Roman, the union president, said it seemed to him the district “deliberately constructed a proposal” that seemed to significantly change things, when it did not.

Cordova said she was extremely disappointed that the union wasn’t willing to continue negotiating.

“This is the most important thing we can be doing right now,” Cordova said. She added that this dispute will end in an agreement sooner than later, and questioned why there was a need to wait.

Union officials asked Cordova to agree to the concepts they wanted to change: offering a salary schedule with more opportunities for teachers to earn raises by changing “lanes” on the schedule, and allowing teachers to use in-district training to do that. If she could not agree to those concepts, union officials said it was a waste of time to stay.

Cordova pleaded with the union negotiators to stay as long as it took to reach an agreement, and said she would need time to consider the union’s counterproposal, but she refused to agree to anything specific in the moment. She also criticized what appeared to her like several million dollars in new costs in the union counterproposal.

“We brought millions of dollars to the table today,” Cordova said. “What you’ve effectively done is you’ve increased the cost to make us further apart.”

Saturday’s negotiations repeated a pattern that has occurred several times during bargaining, with district leaders making what they see as significant concessions, only for members of the bargaining team to dismiss them as too little — or as not as good for teachers as they might appear on the surface.

The district’s last offer on Saturday night would put an additional $23.5 million into teacher salaries next year. The union’s last counterproposal did not have a price tag associated with it, but previous union proposals have not come lower than $28 million.

In the end, Rob Gould, the union’s lead negotiator said if the district really needed more time, “they can have until Tuesday.”

Teachers clapped and cried, and emptied the room within minutes. The union is now preparing to start a strike on Monday morning. Union leaders said they would consider returning to bargain on Tuesday.

The district and the union are not negotiating their master contract this year, but rather how to revamp ProComp, Denver Public Schools’ system of bonuses and incentives that teachers receive on top of their base pay. The union wants to shrink the number and size of incentives, and significantly boost teachers’ base salaries.

The district wants to keep certain incentives more robust. Cordova has said she thinks extra pay is key to attracting and retaining good teachers at high-poverty schools. But the data on teacher retention at schools where teachers currently get a “highest-priority” incentive is mixed.

In explaining the district’s proposal Saturday, Cordova said she had completed her evaluation of each department in the district and now said the district would cut 150 positions to save the district about $20 million. She promised the cuts would not be made to employees such as janitors or teacher’s aides, but said the central office employees that would be cut are still some who interact regularly with schools. She said the impact will be noticeable.

That new money would go into slightly higher base salaries for teachers than previously proposed.

Union leaders characterized their time as wasted. Friday’s bargaining session and the first three hours Saturday had been spent discussing details of how teachers might get salary increases with credits from the district’s teacher training, or “professional development units,” but the big district proposal Saturday overlooked the details from those discussions, they said.

District officials say one of their concerns is that if they allow teachers to get raises too easily by accumulating credits from district training, too many teachers would be getting salary increases each year and costs would balloon.

Union negotiators don’t think that concern is realistic. Gould, the union’s lead negotiator, estimated that under the district’s plan it would take teachers 300 hours of training outside of the work week to get a raise in one year.

“Your concern is that everyone is going to run right out and do five PDUs per year,” Gould said. “Teachers are already stretched to the max. There’s no possible way.”

To ease child care crunch in a Denver strike, Colorado regulators will waive certain rules

2019-02-10T00:44:39+00:00

Preschools with a little extra room may be able to get emergency waivers to accept early childhood program students from Denver Public Schools in the event of a strike, the Colorado Department of Human Services said.

Denver school district administrators announced Wednesday they would be closing programs serving 3- and 4-year-olds if Denver teachers go on strike Monday because more stringent state rules have made it hard to hire enough substitutes. That could affect about 5,000 children and their parents.

Parents searching for licensed child care options during a teacher strike can call Colorado Shines Child Care Referral at Mile High United Way at 1-877-338-2273 or text “child care referral” to 898-211.

The Colorado Department of Human Services announced Saturday that it will consider waiver requests from licensed child care providers who have enough space and staff to safely accommodate additional children in their facilities. The waivers, which require approval from the department, would allow the providers to temporarily have a higher ratio of children to adults than is typically permitted.

“The Division of Early Care and Learning’s top priority is the health and safety of children,” officials said in an email. “The impending teacher strike may place a hardship on parents and present a safety risk to children, if parents are unable to stay at home to care for their children or find a new, trusted caregiver during the strike.”

More often, such emergency waivers are granted during natural disasters or when an individual child care center has to close for fire or mold, displacing those students.

The city of Denver is also offering extended services and hours at rec centers and libraries to serve children whose parents choose not to send them to school in a strike. Denver Public Schools has said it will keep school open for older children.

As a strike nears, differing perceptions about progress toward a deal on teacher pay

2019-02-09T05:22:44+00:00

Returning to the bargaining table three days before a planned teacher strike, the Denver school district and teachers union spent four hours Friday night debating one particular area of disagreement: whether teachers should get raises for completing training courses.

This technical issue will influence how quickly teachers can boost their salaries as well as the long-term costs of the teacher pay system. In a sign of the distance still to be bridged, the two sides had very different perceptions of how much progress was made.

Denver Public Schools Superintendent Susana Cordova said she was happy with the discussion and felt like the two sides “made really big movement.”

But Denver Classroom Teachers Association President Henry Roman said in a statement that “very little progress was made.” He noted that teachers are ready to strike Monday if an agreement is not reached before then.

The two sides agreed to continue negotiating Saturday at 1 p.m.

The tenor at the bargaining table was more collaborative than in the past two sessions, which ended with the union flatly rejecting the district’s proposal and walking out. But the feeling from the teachers in the audience, who occupied every chair and sat cross-legged on the carpet, was just as frustrated and fed up as it has been for more than a year.

“What do we want? Fair pay!” they chanted during breaks. “When do we want it? Yesterday!”

The district and the union are negotiating how to revamp ProComp, Denver Public Schools’ system of bonuses and incentives that teachers receive on top of their base pay. Friday was the first time the two sides had met since Gov. Jared Polis decided on Wednesday he would not intervene in the dispute, thus clearing the way for a strike.

Both the district and the union want to simplify ProComp, but they disagree on the details.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association has long proposed allowing teachers to use “professional development units” to change lanes on the salary schedule and boost what they earn, the same as teachers would use college credits or advanced degrees.

Denver Public Schools officials have expressed worry about what that would cost. On Friday, the district presented a new proposal that would allow teachers to get raises for completing training courses, but not as quickly as the union wants.

Denver teachers do an average of one professional development unit per year. Under the district’s proposal, teachers who use professional development units as the sole means to boost their pay — as opposed to earning college credits or an advanced degree — would have to wait seven years to turn those professional development units into a raise.

“That’s a very long time for people to wait,” union lead negotiator Rob Gould said.

The union had several other concerns with the proposal as well, including that it took 15 months of negotiating for the district to entertain the idea of using training courses to change lanes.

“This is a conversation we should have had six months ago,” Gould said. “You have 48 hours until a strike and you now bring up this conversation. It’s disheartening.”

Cordova asked union negotiators whether they would be willing to put “guardrails” around the type of training courses that could count toward raises, with an eye toward keeping the cost of raises down and making sure the courses are rigorous. Professional development units involve teachers identifying an area they’d like to improve, studying how to do that, trying new techniques in their classroom, and reflecting on how they worked.

“The questions are: financially sustainable and rigor,” said Debbie Hearty, the district’s human resources chief. “How do we do that? And we’re really curious to figure that out with you.”

Union negotiators argued their proposal already includes safeguards, including that teachers could only use professional development units to change one lane per year.

The Denver district believes incentives keep good teachers at hard schools. The data is mixed.

2019-02-09T02:09:40+00:00

Four years ago, only 41 percent of teachers returned to Cheltenham Elementary, a high-poverty Denver school whose brightly decorated chain link fence runs along gritty Colfax Avenue.

Then Denver Public Schools began offering monthly incentives to teachers at Cheltenham and 29 other high-poverty schools, as well as retention bonuses if they returned the following fall. This year, 80 percent of Cheltenham teachers came back.

District officials have pointed to Cheltenham as proof that paying teachers more to teach in challenging schools works. The idea is at the heart of a heated labor dispute that has driven the Denver teachers union to the brink of its first strike in 25 years.

The data is mixed. The district began offering an incentive to teachers at 30 “highest-priority schools” in 2015. These schools have high rates of students living in poverty, students who switch schools from year to year, special education students, and English language learners.

At nine of the 28 schools that have consistently received the incentive, teacher retention has been higher each year than it was in 2015.

But at six schools, retention has been lower each year than it was in 2015. At the remaining 13 schools, retention has gone up and down during that time period. This suggests a variety of factors beyond the bonuses contributed to changes in retention.

Denver schools that get the highest-priority incentive

This table shows the percentage of teachers retained each year at the 28 schools that have consistently gotten the “highest-priority incentive” since the district began offering it in 2015.

School	2014-15 to 2015-16	2015-16 to 2016-17	2016-17 to 2017-18	2017-18 to 2018-19
Abraham Lincoln High School	73%	75%	68%	78%
Bruce Randolph	74%	60%	78%	74%
Castro Elementary School	83%	79%	53%	63%
Charles M Schenck (CMS) Community School	84%	71%	78%	67%
Cheltenham Elementary School	41%	61%	62%	80%
Collegiate Preparatory Academy	53%	54%	61%	74%
Cowell Elementary School	66%	61%	66%	74%
DCIS at Ford	48%	65%	57%	58%
DCIS at Montbello	76%	58%	68%	67%
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Early College	58%	74%	68%	69%
Goldrick Elementary School	48%	37%	59%	59%
High Tech Early College	61%	71%	61%	67%
International Academy of Denver at Harrington	39%	22%	67%	62%
Knapp Elementary School	73%	82%	74%	78%
Lake Middle School	68%	71%	79%	39%
Manual High School	68%	77%	70%	88%
Marie L. Greenwood Academy	79%	80%	68%	81%
McGlone Academy	82%	88%	88%	74%
Munroe Elementary School	75%	80%	76%	70%
Noel Community Arts	69%	52%	65%	52%
North High School	72%	71%	82%	87%
Oakland Elementary School	56%	58%	48%	67%
Place Bridge Academy	80%	83%	71%	77%
Schmitt Elementary School	55%	34%	67%	48%
Swansea Elementary School	84%	71%	77%	79%
Trevista at Horace Mann	43%	64%	60%	56%
West Early College	59%	60%	71%	77%
West Leadership Academy	92%	73%	83%	85%

Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association have been negotiating for 15 months over how to revamp the district’s pay-for-performance system, which offers bonuses and incentives on top of teachers’ base salary. The district is fighting to keep more robust incentives, including a $2,500 retention bonus for teachers at the highest-priority schools. The extra money, district officials say, will keep good teachers where students need them most.

The union wants to use that money to further increase the salaries of all Denver teachers. The way to get teachers to stay, union leaders say, is by offering them stable and competitive pay, not by giving them bonuses that are dependent on whether their school is on a certain list.

Mike Cammilleri is a fifth-grade teacher at Cheltenham Elementary. He’s also the school’s “dean of fun,” a job that entails emceeing the weekly assembly, a rowdy gathering that ends with the students chosen as “leaders of the week” running around the auditorium in capes.

Incentives, Cammilleri said, have nothing to do with why he teaches at Cheltenham.

“I would be incredibly skeptical of anyone who said that a teacher would work at a high-poverty or high-priority school for the money,” Cammilleri said. “It’s honestly laughable.”

Instead, he said he’s driven by a passion for working with students who have greater needs — and motivated to stay by the opportunity to work for a principal he believes in.

Principal Felicia Manzanares came to Cheltenham in 2016. Earlier this week, Denver Public Schools posted a quote from her on its Facebook page. “Our teachers who are willing to lift up our most vulnerable students deserve higher incentive pay,” it said. The quote, coupled with Cheltenham’s retention statistics and an assertion that incentives are key to closing the district’s test score gaps between more and less privileged students, set off a firestorm in the comments.

“PAY OUR TEACHERS,” one commenter wrote. “ALL OF THEM.”

While Manzanares stands by her quote, she said the incentive pay is the last thing she mentions when she interviews potential teachers to work at Cheltenham.

In addition to noting the school’s positive culture and progress, she tells teacher candidates about the very real physical and mental health struggles many Cheltenham students and their parents deal with, and shares unfiltered data on student discipline. She has them sit and observe in several places around the school, including the front office, where those struggles are often starkly visible.

“When we’re loading a child in an ambulance and we’re all looking at each other and taking deep breaths, we’re not … saying, ‘We make more to be here,’” Manzanares said.

But not all teachers are quick to dismiss the incentives. Barb Lorenz has taught at high-poverty schools in Denver for 32 years and has been at Cheltenham for the past 10. She receives several bonuses and incentives, in addition to a stipend for coaching other teachers. All of it adds about $13,000 a year to her pay, a difference she said has allowed her to help pay her children’s college tuition and kept her family from living paycheck-to-paycheck.

“Incentives have made me stay,” Lorenz said of Cheltenham.

Kindergarten teacher Laura Luscinski put it a slightly different way. While she said all teachers deserve higher pay, teachers at schools like Cheltenham should get an extra boost.

“It sweetens the pot to come back to a school where there is so much trauma and there is that compassion fatigue,” said Luscinski, who has taught at Cheltenham for five years.

Despite the mixed data, Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova said she believes incentives are an important way to attract and retain teachers at challenging schools. If the district had more money, Cordova said she’d push to make the “highest-priority” incentive even bigger than the proposed $2,500, rather than get rid of it altogether as the union wants to do.

The union proposal maintains certain other incentives, though some are smaller than the district wants.

“The data is the data on where we are with it,” Cordova said, adding that, “we feel really deeply that we can’t go backward on the work we’ve done in this space.”

Some civil-rights and community groups have joined the district in framing these bonuses as an important equity issue for the students of color and those from low-income families who make up the majority of Denver students. Others have sided with the teachers union and argued that more services for students and teachers, rather than incentives, would make those schools more attractive places to work.

Cordova noted the incentive isn’t the only way Denver is trying to improve conditions in high-poverty schools. The district provides more per-pupil funding to those schools and helps pay for more teacher coaches, which is important given that high-poverty schools tend to have more novice teachers than schools that serve a wealthier student population.

“These are all ways we’re trying to move the needle,” she said, while acknowledging there is still work to do. That work, she said, includes collaborating with teachers on what else the district can do to encourage more teachers to come and stay.

Teachers in the schools where retention has gone down every year since the district began offering the highest-priority incentive have some ideas. Nicole Fetter, a middle and high school history teacher at West Leadership Academy, said smaller class sizes and more mental health support for students would go further than any monetary bonus ever could.

Jess Schneider, an English teacher at Noel Community Arts School, said the same. In her view, having worked at a school where jobs have been cut and teacher retention has sunk from 69 to 52 percent, the incentives are not working.

“If anything,” Schneider said, “it’s sometimes used as an excuse to allow the same issues to continue to happen at schools like mine. There’s this rhetoric of, ‘You knew what you were getting into when you worked at high-priority school.’”

Denver rec centers, libraries will offer extended hours and services to children during strike

2019-02-09T00:06:42+00:00

The city of Denver is announcing it will expand hours and services at recreation centers and libraries to provide another option for parents who choose not to send their kids to school during a teacher strike.

Denver Public Schools has said it will attempt to keep schools open and is planning to deploy more than 1,400 central office employees along with regular substitutes to fill in at various schools. But whether or not to send children to school will likely be a personal choice for parents.

According to Friday’s announcement, all city recreation centers will open at 8 a.m. during a strike, and will expand their meal services to offer lunch as well as additional snacks.

Libraries will open by 10 a.m. during a strike and will also serve students snacks. Libraries are also preparing additional programming during a teacher strike.

All Denver children between the ages of 5 and 18 have free access to all Denver recreation centers with their MY Denver Card.

The city’s announcement Friday also touted the Boys and Girls Clubs as an option for children, but some of those clubs are based in schools, and will have to close if the district decides to close those schools. A spokeswoman for the organization said if that happens, the clubs will look at how else they might provide services for children who are members.

Mayor Michael Hancock is also encouraging city departments and other businesses to be flexible with employees in accommodating for their child care needs.

Parents of special education students weigh whether to send kids to school during a strike

2019-02-08T23:41:29+00:00

Parents of students with special needs face tough choices about whether to send their children to school during a Denver teacher strike.

Some parents have already decided to keep their children home from school next week because of worries about safety, lack of consistency, and the possibility that hard-won progress could be lost. Other parents, though perhaps anxious about how their children will fare at school during a strike, don’t have the option to keep them home.

District officials said they plan to prioritize the most vulnerable special education students in allocating staff during a strike, particularly students who are deaf, blind, medically fragile or attend center-based programs — self-contained classrooms for students with more intense needs. Officials also said school leaders have already compiled information for substitute special education teachers and that those subs will work to follow students’ special education plans.

Nelson Boyle, whose sixth-grade daughter is on the autism spectrum but attends class with general education students, said he doesn’t plan to send her to school if there’s a strike, both for her own safety and that of other students.

“If she gets agitated, she’s big enough she could throw a chair, or a desk, or knock something over,” he said.

He fears that substitute teachers won’t know that something as simple as being called “sweetie” or “honey,” instead of being addressed by her name, can trigger his daughter’s frustration. Plus, calming down in the midst of a meltdown may be tougher for the 12-year-old without her usual team in place — the special education teacher and school counselor among them.

Boyle, a lawyer, said he “totally” supports teachers’ right to strike, but wishes both the district and union would give special education teachers “a free pass to cross the picket line and ensure the safety of all the kids in the school.”

District officials said in an email Friday that in addition to focusing on the needs of the most vulnerable special education students during a strike, they will put a premium on student safety in covering for staff members, such as nurses and counselors, who hold non-teaching jobs but are part of the teachers union. Staff members such as paraprofessionals, sign language interpreters and Braillists — specialists who write or transcribe Braille — are not part of the teachers union and will continue to serve the students to whom they are assigned, the email said.

Boyle said he and his wife will also keep their fifth-grade daughter, who is a typically developing child, home from school during a strike. In part, it’s because her sister will be home already, but also because they worry about safety if special education students at their fifth-grader’s school lack their usual support. Boyle said the girls’ grandparents, who live locally, will help watch them while they’re out of school.

Danielle Short, whose first-grader, Micah, has Down syndrome, said the decision to keep him home from Denison Montessori School during a strike was “pretty easy.”

“He struggles with transitions and changes … He’s very sensitive,” she said. “I don’t want him to learn bad habits by being in a chaotic situation.”

She said Micah is motivated by getting attention, and that substitute teachers who don’t know him well may correct inappropriate behavior or otherwise devote attention to it, inadvertently fueling the problem.

In addition, when he’s anxious or uncertain, Micah sometimes swats at classmates or adults.

Short, who gets most of her income from being a certified nursing assistant for her son during the mornings and evenings, plans to stay home with Micah next week. Her 16-year-old daughter, a typically developing student, will attend high school as usual, she said.

Keely Buchanan, whose two sons have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, plans to spend $500 to send them to a child care center in Centennial if there’s a strike next week.

She’s used the center a few times during school holidays or teacher work days and said she’s comfortable with the small class sizes there.

Sending her boys, a first-grader and third-grader, to school when things could be chaotic is “too much of a gamble,” Buchanan said. “I think they would lose a lot of the successes they’ve built in the last few months.”

In addition to having special education plans, the boys have separate behavior plans as well as special plans designed for gifted students. One also receives medication at school every day.

Buchanan, who helps run a consulting business that helps parents navigate Denver’s school choice process, said part of her decision not to send her kids to school stems from knowing that she has the ability to pay for private care. She hopes holding out her sons, who she knows are more challenging than other students, will make it easier for students who don’t have a choice but to be in school during a strike.

Boyle, Short and Buchanan all said they sympathize with Denver teachers.

Buchanan said, “If my kids were neurotypical I would absolutely send them [to school] to show my support for the teachers.”

Short said as the parent and primary advocate of a student with special needs she knows how much teachers are asked to do, especially when it comes to serving students like her son.

“I can feel their stress,” she said. “I just wish the district would focus on finding ways to be collaborative with teachers and really show how respected they are as professionals.”

Why civil rights groups are split over impending Denver teachers strike

2019-02-08T04:55:36+00:00

A half-dozen civil rights and community group leaders united Thursday to rally behind pay incentives for teachers in high-poverty Denver schools, aligning with the school district in the most contentious piece of a pay dispute with its teachers union.

A statement from the coalition, delivered as Denver is on the verge of its first teachers strike in 25 years, said shifting more money to teachers’ base salaries — the union’s proposal — would heighten inequalities in a school district already suffering from enormous achievement gaps.

The statement stood out for another reason: those who did not sign it. Several prominent local civil rights groups that have banded together in the past did not participate, a reflection of both differing opinions and the difficulty of balancing the interests of teachers and families.

A similar dynamic has played out across the country as teacher activism has heightened, with groups like the NAACP siding with unions against charter schools, others promoting charters and other reforms as benefiting students from poor families, and still other groups sitting it out.

Papa Dia, executive director of the African Leadership Group , which works with immigrant families in Denver and Aurora, said he and other signatories sought to build a bigger coalition. He said he was surprised more groups did not sign on, but also could understand why.

“It could be that they are torn apart,” said Dia, who would not identify groups that declined to sign. “It is difficult to be put in a position of choosing one way or another because teachers are a part of the community, a part of our family. For us, it is important to ask both sides to figure out a way to come to agreement for the sake of our children.”

Dia said the coalition’s overriding interest is to keep schools open, citing students who rely on free and reduced-price meals served at schools, high schoolers preparing for SATs, and working parents who have to choose between a paycheck or being at home with their children.

Leaders with the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Colorado Latino Leadership Advocacy and Research Coalition, FaithBridge, and Transform Education Now also signed the statement.

A number of those groups are friendly to education reform initiatives, including charters. Transform Education Now, for example, organized parents who supported an unsuccessful effort to bring the KIPP charter school network to the struggling Adams 14 district.

The coalition’s statement says that while implementation has been imperfect, the district’s ProComp pay-for-performance system — the subject of the current negotiations — reflects “our community value to better support our students who face the challenges of growing up in poverty, and who experience the current and historical legacies of racism.”

“We are concerned that a redistribution of ProComp funding into base teacher salary will shift resources from schools in high-need communities to those in more affluent neighborhoods where there are already far greater resources,” the statement says.

Dia said that although the coalition’s position on incentives is in line with the school district’s, he is not in position to say whether the district’s overall proposal is “really a good fit for teachers.”

The district and union, aside from being about $8 million apart, are at odds over both incentives for teachers in high-poverty schools and incentives for teachers who work at 30 “highest-priority” schools. The union wants to reduce the former and eliminate the latter.

Civil rights groups whose names don’t appear on the statement include the Urban League of Metropolitan Denver, the NAACP, Together Colorado, and Padres y Jóvenes Unidos. Chalkbeat could not reach representatives of every group for comment.

The Colorado NAACP has weighed in on the side of teachers along with other members of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a coalition of progressive religious and community groups.

Joyce Brooks, state education chair for the Colorado NAACP, said coalition members looked at both sides’ proposals before coming to a decision, and she believes the focus on incentives misses the point. More robust mental health services, community partnerships, and extracurricular activities would do more to improve conditions for students and teachers at schools with higher needs, she said.

“Without those additional resources going into those schools, whatever you pay them more (in incentives) doesn’t make up for that lack of resources,” she said. “(Teachers) who have stayed talk about having new teachers every year or teachers leaving in the middle of the year.”

“There are other resources needed far more than this incentive, and the incentive does not make that much difference,” she said. “Let’s make a really attractive package for teachers. This is not an attractive place to work, and I believe part of that is working conditions, as well as the cost of living.”

Together Colorado, a faith-based, multiracial civil rights group that champions a number of issues, decided not to sign the statement, Executive Director Mike Kromrey said.

“It’s a very complicated issue, and our folks did not feel ready to weigh in to that,” he said.

The organization’s board chair, Sharon Bridgeforth, elaborated, saying that Together Colorado believes both in economic justice and a liveable wage, and that all children should thrive in schools.

“As an organization, we know that for teachers, it’s difficult and scary for them to strike,” Bridgeforth said. “But in most cases, workers only strike when they feel their backs are against the wall. We believe change often requires tension, and think strikes are a healthy way to express and ultimately resolve the tension.”

“Tension is good,” she said. “That is how we are looking at it right now.”

Erica Meltzer contributed information to this report.

1,400 central office employees will be deployed to Denver schools in a strike

2019-02-08T04:19:34+00:00

Denver Public Schools is preparing for a teacher strike Monday, even as district administrators and union teachers plan to return to the bargaining table Friday to see if they can find a last-minute deal.

What does that preparation look like? The district is hiring more substitutes and deploying central office staff. Here’s a breakdown, by the numbers, of who might be striking, who will be working, how many kids will be affected, and what it will cost. All numbers come from the school district.

5,353

The number of teachers and “specialized service providers,” a category that includes nurses, counselors, and others, who are covered by the pay agreement being negotiated by the district and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. They are the ones who would strike — though it’s not mandatory they walk off the job. Teachers can choose whether or not to strike.

1,400

The number of employees who work at the district’s central office who will be deployed to schools during a strike to work as substitute teachers, supervisors, and in other roles.

1,200

The number of substitute teachers the district had in its substitute pool before the union voted to strike. These substitute teachers could be called up to serve in classrooms in the event of a strike.

300

The number of additional substitute teachers the district has hired since the strike vote.

$200 to $250

The daily amount of money the district has said it will pay substitute teachers during a strike.

147 The number of district-run schools that would be affected by a strike. (Charter school teachers are not part of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. Charter schools would operate normally.) 71,000

The number of students in grades K-12 who attend district-run schools.

21,000

The number of Denver students who attend charter schools.

4,714

The number of students in district-run preschool classes. The district has said it will cancel preschool classes during a strike because stricter state regulations make it more difficult to find substitute teachers for 3- and 4-year-olds.

$2 million

The amount of money the district normally spends per day to pay all of its teachers and specialized service providers. Teachers and others who go out on strike will not be paid.

$400,000

The estimated cost per day of a strike. The $400,000 includes the money to pay substitute teachers, the cost of materials and lesson plans for those substitutes to teach, and the loss of preschool tuition revenue. The families of preschool students who pay tuition won’t be charged for the missed days.

With the pressure on, Denver school district, teachers union to resume pay talks

2019-02-07T23:18:11+00:00

Negotiations between the Denver school district and teachers union will resume Friday evening even as both sides brace for a strike that could start Monday.

Gov. Jared Polis announced Wednesday that he would not intervene in the labor dispute between the two sides, clearing the way for teachers to walk off the job. At the same time, he called on the district and the union to seize an “11th-hour opportunity” to reach a deal before a strike would begin Monday.

Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association confirmed Thursday that they’ll sit down at the bargaining table at 5 p.m. Friday in the Acoma facility, 1617 S. Acoma St.

Like other bargaining sessions, this one will be open to the public in accordance with state law. The last two sessions ended with the union rejecting district offers without making their own counterproposals.

Denver Public Schools and the teachers union have been negotiating the terms of the ProComp agreement, which governs bonuses and incentives that teachers earn on top of their base pay, for 15 months. The two sides are separated not just by several million dollars but by deep philosophical disagreements about how teachers should be paid.

The Denver school board held a press conference Thursday to encourage the two sides “to continue negotiations in good faith.” Reading from a prepared statement, board members said they were pushing for an agreement that increases teacher pay and “reflects our values,” including “attracting and retaining lifelong educators to high-needs subjects and schools.”

While the school board will have to approve whatever agreement the district and the union eventually reach, its members are not involved in negotiations or the details of financial modeling. Instead, they deal with big-picture policy questions.

One of the fiercest disagreements between the district and the union is whether to pay teachers at “highest-priority” schools a $2,500 annual incentive. District officials believe the incentive would help attract and retain good teachers at schools where students need them most. Union officials would like to use that money instead to increase the salaries of all teachers.

Board President Anne Rowe said the district’s proposal reflects the board’s values and the will of the voters who passed a tax to fund ProComp in 2005. But, she added, “I do think there are places where the district, along with the DCTA as a partner, can come together.”

Board members affirmed teachers’ right to strike and also noted the impact that a work stoppage could have on students and parents who may struggle to find child care. The district has announced it will cancel all preschool classes in the event of a strike because stricter state regulations make it more difficult to find substitute teachers for 3- and 4-year-olds.

“The stakes are high,” board member Jennifer Bacon said.

Melanie Asmar contributed to this report.

Denver’s district-run preschools could be closed next week. We have answers to your questions.

2019-02-07T23:11:21+00:00

If Denver teachers strike Monday, hundreds of district preschool classrooms will close because of a shortage of qualified substitutes. We’ve got a rundown of the questions parents are asking as they scramble to find back-up care. If you have a question we missed, let us know and we’ll try to find an answer. And if you’re comfortable sharing how you’ll handle child care for your preschooler during the strike, we’d love to hear from you. Email co.tips@chalkbeat.org.

How many students will be affected by preschool classroom closures if Denver teachers strike?
About 5,000 3- and 4-year-old students who attend half- and full-day preschool in 220 district classrooms. The preschool closures will continue throughout a strike.

Why will schools be open for older students but not preschoolers?
Unlike K-12 classrooms, preschool classrooms are governed by child care licensing rules, which have strict specifications about things like class size, student-teacher ratios, and teacher background checks. Denver district officials say completing the required background checks, including fingerprinting, through the state’s Department of Human Services for 220 substitute preschool teachers is impossible by next week.

Will classes be canceled for district kindergarteners who are served in mixed-aged classrooms with preschoolers?
No. Kindergarteners will still be able to attend class because they are not covered under child care rules the way preschoolers are.

Can preschool students still take advantage of school meals even if they’re not attending class?
Yes. They can come to campus just to eat breakfast or lunch at school, but will have to be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Will parents who pay preschool tuition be paid back for any days missed because of the strike?
Yes. District officials said preschool parents will be credited for tuition paid during the strike.

Will Discovery Link, the school’s before- and after-school child care program, be able to provide care for affected preschoolers?
No. Denver district officials said the Discovery Link program, which is not available at all schools, won’t be able to accommodate affected preschoolers.

What will paraprofessionals working in the district’s preschools do if their classrooms are closed during a strike?
District officials said preschool paraprofessionals will be reassigned to work with students in other grades during a strike.

What options do preschool parents have if they need care for their children during a strike?
Currently, there aren’t many formal options for families seeking emergency child care next week. We’ve heard from parents who plan to pay for short-term slots in private child care centers and others who will rely on friends, neighbors, or relatives for help. Some will undoubtedly take their children to work with them, or work from home if possible.

Some Denver area child care centers may receive permission from the Colorado Department of Human Services to increase their capacity and expedite enrollment processes in order to accept Denver preschoolers affected by the strike. Call the Colorado Shines Child Care Referral at Mile High United Way at 1-877-338-2273 or text “child care referral” to 898-211 to find a child care center. Denver district officials also recommend calling their Family Helpline at 720-423-3054 from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

How far apart are the Denver district and union on teacher pay? Here’s a breakdown

2019-02-07T03:10:09+00:00

Minor. Small. Limited.

Those are the words Gov. Jared Polis used Wednesday to describe the outstanding differences between the teacher pay plans proposed by the Denver school district and teachers union, as he announced he would not intervene to stop a teacher strike.

But if you’ve been watching the district and the union negotiate over the past 15 months, and hearing teachers boo district officials and shout “Shame!” at the superintendent, “minor” is perhaps not the word that would come to mind.
Denver teachers want more money for teacher pay, and a more predictable salary structure that beefs up their base salaries and shrinks the size of bonuses and incentives.

Denver Public Schools officials have agreed to increase base salaries, but are fighting to keep certain incentives more robust than what the union has proposed.

So how far apart are the two sides, exactly?

The Office of State Planning and Budgeting has provided a helpful breakdown. We’ve synthesized it below, along with our own understanding of the two sides’ proposals.

The district and the union agree:

That teachers should be paid more. To that end, the district is proposing adding about $20 million to the more than $400 million it already spends on teacher compensation. The union’s proposal calls for adding an additional $28 million.
On moving back to a traditional “steps and lanes” salary schedule, where teachers get raises based on years of positive evaluations and their own education. Currently, the steps and lanes schedule is used only to set teachers’ starting pay.
On paying a $750 annual bonus to teachers in 10 “distinguished schools.” The criteria for deciding what makes a school distinguished would be agreed upon by both sides, but it would no longer be largely based on state test scores.
On paying a $2,500 annual incentive to teachers who work in hard-to-fill positions, such as special education, secondary math, or English language acquisition.
On offering all teachers an annual $1,000 tuition reimbursement or loan repayment, with a maximum $6,000 reimbursement over a teacher’s career.

The district and the union disagree:

On the size of an incentive for teachers who work at high-poverty schools. The district has proposed a $2,500 annual incentive. The union has countered with $1,750, with the difference going to increase the base salaries of all teachers.
On the existence of an incentive for teachers who work at 30 “highest-priority” schools. The district wants to pay those teachers an extra $2,500 annually. The union does not. Instead, it wants to use that money to increase the base salaries of all teachers.
On the number of “steps” and “lanes” the salary schedule should have. The lanes are the most contentious. Lanes represent a teacher’s education level — for instance, if a teacher has a bachelor’s degree or a master’s degree plus 30 credits. The district’s proposed salary schedule has six lanes. The union’s proposed schedule has eight lanes, which would give teachers more opportunities for raises.
On the ways in which teachers could move between lanes. The district has proposed allowing teachers to move a lane — and get a raise — if they earn a certain number of college credits, an advanced degree, an advanced license or certification, or for 10 years of continuous service with the district. The union’s proposal does not include a lane change for 10 years of service, but it would allow teachers to change lanes for completing training courses.
On the starting base salary for teachers. The district has proposed $45,500 for the 2019-20 school year. The union has proposed $45,800.

State budget officials have estimated the union’s proposal would cost $28.4 million in the first year, while the district’s proposal would cost $20.8 million.

Denver teachers set to strike over pay dispute after Gov. Polis declines to step in

2019-02-07T02:50:00+00:00

Teachers in Colorado’s largest school district are preparing to strike on Monday after Gov. Jared Polis announced he would not intervene in a pay dispute between the Denver school district and the teachers union.

Even before Polis revealed his decision publicly Wednesday, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association tweeted: “February 11th, We strike for our students.”

Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova reiterated that the district will keep as many schools open as possible in the event of a strike, but said about 5,000 preschool students, the majority of them from low-income families, would have to stay home because it would be harder to find substitute teachers due to stricter state regulations on preschool.

This would be the first strike by Denver teachers in 25 years. It comes amid a national wave of teacher activism that has seen educators in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona and most recently Los Angeles walk off the job to demand higher wages and better working conditions.

In Denver, teachers are also driven by pent-up frustration with a pay-for-performance system they feel has failed to deliver on its promises, as well as with the broad swath of education reform policies that system represents.

But before teachers take to the picket lines, the two sides are tentatively scheduled to return to the bargaining table Friday to see if there is any way to bridge what Polis cast as “small, limited differences.” Legally, Denver teachers could have started their strike Thursday, but by announcing a Monday start date, the union leaves room for more negotiations, which Polis said represents an “11th-hour opportunity” to reach a deal.

“The differences between the two sides are minor, and they will be bridged in a contract,” Polis said, standing between two white boards that laid out the areas of consensus and dispute in the district and union proposals. “The question is, can that contract be delivered before a strike?”

Rob Gould, a Denver teacher and the union’s lead negotiator, said he agrees the two sides can bridge their differences, “but the district has to be willing to bridge them.”

“We wanted to give the district one last effort to meet the needs of our teachers,” he said of the brief window before a strike starts.

Asked whether the district would put more money on the table, Cordova pledged to “continue working on what we can do,” adding that she hopes the union does the same. She expressed frustration that the union did not offer counterproposals during the last two negotiating sessions.

Negotiating, she said, involves “trading proposals back and forth. We think that’s really important. That’s how we’ll get closer and closer together.”

The union wants less money to go into bonuses and more money to go toward base pay. The district has offered to put more money into teacher compensation and create more stability in the bonus system, but it has held firm on offering larger bonuses to teachers at high-poverty schools and certain schools deemed “highest priority.”

Each side believes their proposal will do more to keep good teachers at the challenging schools where they are needed most.

Standing on the steps of the Capitol in the swirling snow at a union press conference, second-grade teacher Septima Bruce said she is “sick and tired” of watching students lose good teachers who are driven out of the district by unpredictable pay.

“We deserve better,” said Bruce, who teaches at Hallett Academy, an elementary school in northeast Denver. “We demand better. We will strike until we receive better.”

Polis stressed repeatedly that teachers need to feel valued and rewarded by whatever deal is reached, a sentiment also expressed by Joe Barela, head of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, whom Polis said ultimately made the decision not to intervene at this time.

“We want to get to a point where both sides feel happy and teachers feel rewarded and like they were listened to,” Barela said.

Barela said the structural problem of keeping teachers in challenging schools, where turnover is high and many teachers are just starting their careers, extends beyond the scope of these negotiations and will take more time to solve.

He said the district and the union seem so close that he feared outside intervention would “insert a wedge” and cause the two sides to dig in or move further apart.

Earlier this week, Barela called the last attempt at bargaining “political theater.” On Wednesday, he said he hoped to see more fruitful conversations going forward.

State labor officials or Polis could still change their minds and intervene if a strike goes on for too long or if negotiations don’t seem to be in good faith. Intervention could range from mediation or fact-finding all the way to binding arbitration, which Barela called a “last resort.”

If teachers do strike, Cordova acknowledged the situation for students will not be “normal.”

“It’s never normal when you go into school and your teachers aren’t there,” she said. “When we have large numbers of substitutes, it never feels normal. Obviously, there will be disruptions. If we have teachers on a picket line, that’s a disruption in terms of how kids even enter into a building.”

For kindergarten through 12th-grade classes, the district has been recruiting substitute teachers to fill in, and delivering to schools boxes of lesson plans for them to teach.

Some of those substitutes will likely be employees of the district’s central office, who have been ordered to deploy to schools to fill both instructional and non-instructional roles. Employees who refuse could face corrective action, which could theoretically include being fired.

Union organizers had previously urged parents to send their children to school in the event of a strike to force the district to close schools to underscore the value of teachers’ labor. If certain staffing ratios cannot be maintained or safety issues arise, schools may have to close.

On Wednesday, union President Henry Roman told parents to check with their children’s schools and make the decision “they believe to be in the best interest and well-being of their children.”

Gould, the union negotiator, said he plans to send his own children to school, but that he’s concerned about the potential for high ratios of children to adults and lack of structured activity.

“If it gets to that point, we hope they do close schools,” he said.

Read the full letter from Colorado Department of Labor and Employment Executive Director Joe Barela to the Denver school district and teachers union explaining the decision:

No school for district preschool students if Denver teachers strike

2019-02-07T02:14:56+00:00

If Denver teachers strike next week, classes will be canceled for about 5,000 preschoolers who attend district schools.

Superintendent Susana Cordova announced the decision Wednesday afternoon during a press conference. It will affect 3- and 4-year-olds in 220 classrooms scattered throughout the city.

Lisa Roy, the district’s executive director of early education, said a variety of logistics make the prospect of hiring hundreds of qualified substitute preschool teachers impossible on a short timeline. Staff working with preschoolers are subject to rules governing child care, which are stricter in some ways than rules for K-12 teachers.

“I feel for the families,” Roy said. “I hope they’re able to come up with viable, safe options for the littles during this time.”

Emergency child care can be tough to find for any family, but may be especially hard for low-income working families. About 70 percent of the district’s preschool students qualify for free or reduced-price school meals, a proxy for poverty.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks in finding substitute preschool teachers is that they must be fingerprinted and undergo background checks through two state departments — the Colorado Department of Education and the Colorado Department of Human Services. For 220 teachers, the process wouldn’t be done by Monday, Roy said.

Background checks through the Colorado Department of Human Services take seven to 10 business days if there are no arrests on record or extenuating circumstances, department officials said. Roy said she submitted her own fingerprints and background check materials to the department a couple weeks ago, but since she’s still waiting for the results, she would not be allowed to be alone with preschool children during a strike.

Officials from the Department of Human Services said they talked with Denver district leaders about waiving two state preschool rules during a strike — the class size cap of 20 students and the teacher-student ratio requirement of 1-to-10. The waivers would only be granted for classrooms with a qualified staff member, such as a paraprofessional, and another district staff member who has the background checks and training required by state and federal law.

Roy said paraprofessionals working in the district preschool classrooms do have the credentials needed to serve as lead teachers, but their union contract — separate from what district teachers work under — doesn’t allow them to take that role.

Roy said Wednesday evening that the district would send home information about cancellations during a strike to preschool families soon.

Correction: A previous version of this story said background checks through the Colorado Department of Human Services take four to eight weeks on average. That is only the case when an individual has charges on their record. Most background checks take seven to 10 business days.

Denver district, union meet separately with Gov. Polis as he weighs intervention

2019-02-06T02:33:08+00:00

Representatives of the Denver school district and the teachers union met separately Tuesday with Gov. Jared Polis as the Democratic governor weighs whether to intervene in a pay dispute between the two sides.

A brief statement from Denver Public Schools described a “productive conversation” and said Polis “is continuing to push both sides to talk.” Denver Classroom Teachers Association officials also met with Polis and had no comment as they left, The Denver Post reported.

The meetings came at the request of state labor chief Joe Barela to “discuss the path forward” and to review an informal analysis by state budget officials of each side’s proposal.

Barela on Monday sent a sharply-worded letter to DPS and DCTA officials, criticizing the most recent teacher pay bargaining session last Thursday as “political theater.”

DPS has asked state labor officials to intervene in the dispute over how — and how much — to pay the district’s educators. The union wants the state to stay out of it. Union members voted last month to go on strike, but the action has been on hold while Polis decides whether to get involved.

Union members and their supporters plan to gather Wednesday afternoon outside the Colorado State Capitol to deliver letters to Polis asking him not to intervene.

Polis has until Monday to decide whether to intervene, which could delay a Denver strike by as much as 180 days.

On Thursday, union leaders rejected the latest district offer, which called for investing $50 million more into teacher pay over the next three years. The offer represented movement by the district in the form of an additional $3 million for teacher pay in the 2020-21 school year, plus two additional years of cost-of-living raises.

Union negotiators called the offer a waste of time.

How a once-promising merit pay system led Denver teachers to the brink of a strike

2019-02-06T00:25:04+00:00

Jeff Buck was the very first teacher to sign up for Denver’s revolutionary pay-for-performance system in 2005. More than 13 years later, he is one of a dozen teachers sitting in a conference room at an obscure school district building, trying to unravel what the system has become.

ProComp — “professional compensation” — was supposed to recognize and reward good teachers. It was hailed around the nation as a model for getting districts away from traditional pay structures that prize longevity more than results, and, remarkably, it had the support of Denver’s teachers union.

But educators eventually grew disenchanted. Many said their paychecks went up and down in ways that were hard to predict or even understand. All the while, living in Denver became less affordable. Beyond those pocketbook concerns, many came to see ProComp as part of a series of education reform policies that, in their view, damaged the school system they were intended to save.

Now Denver Public Schools is on the brink of its first teacher strike in 25 years. ProComp sits at the center of the dispute between the district and the teachers union, and Buck is part of the union negotiating team arguing for Denver to pay its teachers “like every other district does.”

Educators in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Los Angeles have gone on strike for higher pay in the last year, but Denver may be the first teachers strike to turn primarily on the question of pay for performance, a key policy in the education reform toolbox.

How did a pay system that once seemed to hold so much promise bring teachers to their breaking point?

“What we got given is a system of Wall Street-style bonuses that mask the erosion of our salaries,” said Buck, a high school math teacher who went door-to-door in 2005 to sell voters on the tax that funds ProComp. “People have finally figured that out. It’s why people are angry.”

Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova has acknowledged that ProComp needs to change, and the district’s pay proposal puts more money into base pay, reduces the size of many incentives, and aims to make the remaining ones easier to understand. She has drawn a line in the sand, though, on $2,500 incentives for teachers at high-poverty and “highest-priority” schools.

Cordova frames this as a fundamental issue of equity, with the bonuses a necessary tool to keep good teachers in challenging schools where students need them the most. The research behind this assertion is decidedly mixed, but for ProComp’s remaining defenders, this point is key. The compensation system enables the district to express its values, with the end goal of raising student achievement for the students of color and those from low-income families who make up the majority of Denver’s 93,000 students but who lag behind their white and middle-class peers on test scores, graduation rates, and college readiness.

The origins

According to a book written by some of the architects of ProComp, the idea to revolutionize how Denver teachers are paid can be traced back to a report called “What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future.” Compiled by a now-defunct advocacy organization, the report found that recruiting and retaining quality teachers were the best ways to improve student learning.

The finding made an impression on the leaders of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and on a former Denver teacher named Phil Gonring, who in the mid-1990s was working on education projects for a local philanthropy called the Rose Community Foundation. (The Rose Community Foundation is a financial supporter of Chalkbeat.)

With grant money from Rose and support from union leaders, Denver Public Schools started a ProComp pilot program in 1999 that eventually included 16 schools. The pilot paid teachers bonuses for meeting student performance goals.

DCTA lead negotiator Rob Gould, middle, addresses Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova, not pictured, during continued negotiations between teachers and administrators.

Other districts around the country had experimented with merit pay, too. But Denver’s pilot stood out for having the support of the teachers union, if not the support of every teacher. Most unions vehemently oppose merit pay, favoring a “steps and lanes” structure that rewards experience and gives teachers raises for earning master’s degrees or doctorates.

That the Denver union was helping design a performance pay system made its leadership pariahs at meetings of the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, a Denver school board member told the New York Times in 2005.

Margaret Bobb, a teacher at a ProComp pilot school, pushed her colleagues to sign on. Bobb did not love the idea of pay for performance. Rather, as a science teacher, she saw the pilot as a way to test whether it was viable. Plus, teachers got paid to do it.

“I told my faculty … ‘I’ll take that extra money and put it away as my strike fund, so when we vote on ProComp, we’ll vote it down and I’ll have money to support a strike,’” said Bobb, who retired from the district last year. “I was naive. I did not understand … that when you do a pilot in education, it’s not a science experiment to see if it’s going to work or not. It’s just a little test to see how you’re going to implement it.”

The pilot program caught the eye of other philanthropic organizations, including the local Daniels Fund and the national Broad Foundation. Eventually, a task force of district staff and union teachers, including Buck, began designing a system that could be rolled out to all district schools. In addition to bonuses for student performance, it promised salary increases for teachers who completed training and applied their new skills in the classroom, and incentives for things like working in a hard-to-fill position or a high-poverty school.

To fund it, ProComp backers asked Denver voters to approve a $25 million annual tax increase, adjusted annually for inflation. (The tax is expected to generate $33 million this year.) Before the election, they sought union support.

Young teachers were excited about the chance to raise their pay by earning bonuses. Veteran teachers were wary of a new system.

It took a sophisticated campaign run by political consultants and funded by philanthropies to turn meager union support — early polling showed only 19 percent of teachers were in favor — into a victory. In the end, 59 percent of union members voted in favor of ProComp. In November 2005, Denver voters approved the tax increase by a similar margin.

ProComp was optional for teachers back then. By Dec. 31 of that year, the press reported that 735 of Denver’s more than 4,000 educators had signed up.

A big change

The first iteration of ProComp allowed teachers to earn permanent salary increases for meeting certain criteria. A 2005 Denver Post article gives some examples: a $999 raise if a teacher’s students made substantial progress on state reading and math tests, a $666 raise for taking a training course, a $333 raise for meeting two objectives a year tied to student achievement.

But in 2008, the system underwent a significant change that many teachers blame on then-superintendent Michael Bennet, who is now a U.S. senator. The change increased the size of one-time bonuses, but diminished permanent raises for teachers who’d been with the district 14 years or more — a move that favored newer teachers over more veteran ones.

The union reluctantly agreed to the changes.

“This was the best deal that we could get for our members,” the teachers union president at the time told the Rocky Mountain News. “There were compromises on both sides.”

The limit on salary building turned out to be a significant blow to ProComp’s reputation with teachers. Another qualm teachers have with the system is that the size of the bonuses can fluctuate from year to year, making their paychecks unpredictable.

For example, the bonus given to teachers at “top performing” schools with high test scores, and “high growth” schools where students showed progress, shrunk this year from $2,400 to $1,000.

The reason why illustrates another issue with ProComp. In the early days, the tax generated more money than the district spent, which built up a fund balance. But as the district grew and more teachers joined ProComp, the opposite became true. To get ProComp back in the black, district officials said they and the union agreed to shrink the size of the bonus for teachers at “top performing” and “high growth” schools.

Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova listens to a packed room of teachers during a brief resumption of negotiations between the district and the teachers union.

The criteria for earning incentives can also be frustrating for teachers. If a school’s demographics or rating change, even by a small amount, teachers can lose that money — something union leaders say is driving educators out of Denver Public Schools.

“Teachers don’t want money and incentives they could lose at any moment,” Jess Schneider, an English teacher at the district-run Noel Community Arts School, said at a union rally in December. “We want reliable, predictable, and sustainable pay.”

Special education teacher Maren Jorgensen told Chalkbeat last year that the loss of certain bonuses and incentives meant she was making less money in her eighth year of teaching than she had in her first. She said she planned to leave Denver Public Schools for a teaching job in Minnesota, where she’d be making $22,000 more per year.

The average Denver teacher salary this year is $62,095, according to the district. That includes base salary, ProComp incentives, and other stipends.

Not all teachers oppose the bonuses. Alison Corbett teaches at a high-poverty high school in far northeast Denver and earns several thousand dollars in bonuses each year, including a retention bonus for staying in her position. She said that while the extra money isn’t the reason she took the job, she agrees in principle that teachers who work at tougher schools, with students who are more likely to have experienced trauma, should be paid more.

“It feels like an acknowledgement, a nod of the head,” Corbett said.

Does ProComp work?

On its face, it seems as though doling out more money to good teachers who have harder jobs should attract and keep them in those roles. But University of Colorado education Professor Allison Atteberry, who has extensively studied ProComp, said it’s not that simple.

“There’s these, basically, economics-based theories about why this should help, and then there’s the reality of what happens on the ground — and they’re not really meshing,” she said.

In recent research, Atteberry found that student achievement increased more in Denver Public Schools than in neighboring districts since ProComp started — a phenomenon she said can’t be explained away by demographic shifts within the district or other factors.

Other research has established a link between effective teachers and higher student achievement. Atteberry found that under ProComp, Denver did a better job attracting and retaining teachers deemed effective — as measured by their students’ year-over-year academic growth — than other districts. That is evidence that ProComp worked by at least one metric.

But Atteberry could find no evidence that Denver teachers were more likely to work in high-poverty schools under the system. Her paper is still undergoing peer review.

Earlier research by Eleanor Fulbeck of the American Institutes for Research found ProComp bonuses were associated with fewer teachers leaving the district. But the effect was more modest for high-poverty schools — a 7 percent reduction in turnover compared with a 30 percent reduction for the district as a whole — which, she wrote, suggests the extra money does not offset “more substantial issues,” such as the working climate in those schools.

That is significant because Denver Public Schools officials have argued that the high-poverty incentive is critical to closing test score gaps between more and less privileged students, and to keeping good teachers in challenging schools. Yet research finds less impact for those teachers.

Sharyn Kline, a 2nd grade teacher at Park Hill Elementary school wears pins on her lanyard as she sits in a packed room to listen to continued negotiations between DPS teachers and administrators.

More recently, the district has pointed to findings that retention is up 4 percent at schools where teachers receive a “highest-priority incentive,” and that principals feel the bonuses are important recruiting tools. Research in other states shows pay incentives do improve retention, but that modest incentives produce only modest improvements.

Atteberry noted that although studies show ProComp has had some positive effects, it doesn’t mean teachers’ frustration with their pay is unwarranted.

“Somehow all of that money has left teachers feeling undervalued instead of more valued,” Atteberry said of the bonuses and incentives. “It’s a shame.”

A proposed shift

Both the district and the union are now proposing shifting the way ProComp works, while still honoring the intent of the tax increase voters approved in 2005. The limits on salary-building for teachers with more than 14 years of experience would disappear, and the size and number of bonuses would shrink to put more money into teachers’ base pay.

Both sides want to go back to a traditional “steps and lanes” system of raises based on teacher longevity and education. Currently, the district uses “steps and lanes” only to set teachers’ starting salary, with raises dependent on completing certain training and other factors.

Cordova, who became superintendent last month after 30 years as a teacher, principal, and administrator in Denver, has acknowledged that ProComp needs to change.

“I think ProComp was incredibly innovative and groundbreaking at the time — and it’s complicated, it’s hard to follow, and I think it’s hard for teachers to understand what their salary is going to be like,” she said at a forum in December.

But while the district and the union agree on the concept, they differ sharply on the details. The union’s proposal has more “lanes” than the district’s proposal, which means teachers would have more opportunities for raises. They’d also have more ways to earn those raises, because the union wants training courses to count toward lane changes.

The district’s proposal reserves more money for incentives, including a $2,500 retention bonus for teachers who return to work at one of 30 schools deemed “highest-priority.” The union wants to spend that money to increase the base salaries of all teachers.

An estimate released Monday by the Colorado Office of State Planning and Budgeting found the union’s proposal would cost about $8 million more than the district’s in the first year the new system would be in effect. But the labor dispute is about more than money or even philosophy. It’s rooted in a lack of trust that teachers say stems from more than a decade of school reform experiments, of which ProComp is an especially tangible example.

“They keep moving the cheese,” said Bobb, the recently retired teacher who participated in the ProComp pilot. “The cheese gets moved every freaking year. That’s why teachers have just reached this breaking point of, ‘Quit yanking us around.’”

Erica Meltzer contributed to this report.

Decrying ‘political theater,’ state labor chief urges Denver district, union to find common ground

2019-02-04T23:50:00+00:00

Criticizing the most recent teacher pay bargaining session as “political theater,” the head of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment urged the Denver school district and its teachers union Monday to work harder to find common ground — even as he expressed skepticism that the two sides would reach a deal.

“While much of the public focus in this contract dispute has been on teacher salary levels, upon closer examination, it has been our observation that most of the points of contention are predicated on philosophy disagreements other than teacher pay,” state labor chief Joe Barela wrote in a letter to the two parties.

He added that, “Moving negotiations forward seems highly unlikely until both parties can get to a common starting point.”

Denver Public Schools has asked state labor officials to intervene in the dispute over how — and how much — to pay the district’s educators. The Denver Classroom Teachers Association wants the state to stay out of it. Union members voted last month to go on strike, but the action has been on hold while Colorado Gov. Jared Polis decides whether to get involved.

Polis has until Feb. 11 to decide whether to intervene, which could delay a Denver strike by as much as 180 days. The letter from Barela requests that the district and the union each meet with the governor early this week “to discuss the path forward,” and to review an “informal analysis” by state budget officials of each side’s proposal.

Union negotiators called the offer a waste of time.

“The offer you have brought today is an example of your inability to listen to our educators,” lead union negotiator Rob Gould told Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova and her team.

He reminded them teachers had voted to strike. “From this day forward, you will have no choice but to listen,” Gould said.

After talks ended that night, union supporters demonstrated behind Cordova and shouted “Shame!” as she spoke with reporters.

Barela said the tenor of that meeting was not encouraging.

“Last Thursday night’s negotiation turned into political theater at its worst, not meaningful negotiations,” he wrote. “This trend is very troublesome and weighs heavily on the state’s decision to intervene or not.”

Barela’s letter says Polis “supports workers’ rights, including their right to strike.” It also notes that Polis “joined Pueblo teachers on the picket line” when they went out on strike last year. State labor officials did not intervene in that strike, despite a request from the district.

One difference between Pueblo and Denver: the Pueblo teachers union had already engaged in what Barela called “an objective effort to arrive on mutual facts” with the district when teachers went out on strike. The fact-finding process has not yet occurred in Denver, and Barela noted that state intervention could bring that about.

“One reason the state may be compelled to intervene is that the state would be in a better place to ensure a process is designed to resolve disputes within the scope of the contracts at hand,” he wrote.

A statement from Denver Public Schools said district officials “believe that it would be better for everyone to get to an agreement before a strike,” and says officials would like to engage in “productive negotiations” about areas of disagreement.

But the Denver Classroom Teachers Association said Barela’s assertion that state officials would be better positioned to resolve the dispute was “misguided.”

“Denver teachers do not want the state to intervene in a strike because state officials cannot appreciate the full measure of concerns we have with the way DPS pays its teachers” and other educators, union president Henry Roman said in a statement.

At issue is a Denver Public Schools system known as ProComp that pays teachers and other educators bonuses and incentives on top of a base salary for things such as high student test scores, and working in a hard-to-fill position or a high-poverty school.

The disagreement between the district and the union is part financial and part philosophical. The union wants to shrink the sizes of the bonuses and put more money into base salaries, which it says are more predictable than bonuses that can vary from year to year and school to school.

The district agrees with raising base salaries, but wants to reserve more money for bonuses. For example, district leaders believe incentivizing good teachers to work in high-poverty schools is key to closing test score gaps between more and less privileged students.

Attached to Barela’s letter was a memo from the Colorado Office of Planning and Budgeting that analyzed the district and union proposals. State budget officials estimate the district’s proposal would cost $20.8 million in its first year, whereas the union’s would cost $28.4 million.

The memo highlights areas of agreement and disagreement between the two sides. Among the areas of agreement: a $750 incentive for teachers in “distinguished schools;” a $2,500 incentive for teachers in hard-to-fill positions, such as special education and secondary math; and a desire to significantly increase how much money the district spends on teacher pay.

However, the two sides disagree on the size of an incentive for teachers who work at high-poverty schools. The district has proposed $2,500, while the union has countered with $1,750. They also disagree on whether to offer an incentive to teachers to work at schools deemed “highest priority.” The district would like to offer those teachers an additional $2,500, while the union wants to spend that pot of money to increase the base salaries of all teachers.

Another “major issue in dispute,” the memo notes, are the mechanisms teachers can use to earn base salary raises. In addition to college credits, advanced degrees, and advanced licensure or certification, the union has proposed allowing teachers to earn raises for completing training courses. The district has rejected that proposal as too costly on the assumption that 80 percent of teachers could earn raises each year if that were allowed.

State budget officials pushed back on that assumption. In their estimation, based on how it works in other districts, only 10 to 20 percent of teachers would earn raises each year under the union proposal, at a cost of up to $2.8 million annually.

Budget officials said there appeared to have been “no substantial discussion” between the district and the union about what types of training could be used to earn raises. Having agreement on that could bring the two sides closer to a deal, or at least to shared financial assumptions, the memo said.

Read the full letter and budget memo below.

Democrats for Education Reform was behind text campaign seeking to prevent teacher strike

2019-02-04T05:05:01+00:00

Democrats for Education Reform was behind a text message campaign urging Denver residents to write Gov. Jared Polis and Denver school board members in support of a key aspect of the district’s pay proposal and in opposition to a teachers strike, the group’s Colorado state director confirmed.

The messages purported to be from a group called “Support Students, Support Teachers,” but public records searches do not turn up any organization with that name.

An email obtained by Chalkbeat that was sent last Monday by Will Andras of DFER Colorado notes the texts sent through Phone 2 Action — an Arlington, Virginia-based company that offers “advocacy software,” including mass texting services — were meant to “engage community members around protecting the equity incentives,” a reference to bonuses for teachers at high-poverty schools, a policy on which the district has held firm.

Jennifer Walmer, head of the Colorado chapter of Democrats for Education Reform, confirmed that DFER was responsible for the messages.

“I want to make it really clear we are not taking sides,” Walmer said Sunday. “We fundamentally believe teachers should be paid more and that those serving in our highest poverty schools deserve extra incentives. Our efforts were focused on pushing both sides back to the table to avoid a strike and school closures (caused by a strike) that will negatively impact Denver kids.”

Walmer acknowledged that Support Students, Support Teachers is not an official organization. Asked why DFER was not transparent about its role and why the other name was used in the texts, Walmer said that disclosure is not required, and emphasized that others in the community share the same concerns about teacher pay and a strike’s implications.

She said DFER had the ability to pull the campaign together, and chose to send the text after Thursday night’s talks between the district and the union collapsed.

“This is not us against the union,” she said. “This is not us and the district. This is about us and a broader coalition and fundamental beliefs, and trying to do everything in our power to avert a strike.”

The district and the union are negotiating how to revamp Denver’s teacher pay system, known as ProComp. Union members voted to strike to pressure the district to meet their demands, but the two sides are currently in a holding pattern as they wait to see if Polis will intervene. The district wants intervention, which could delay a strike by as much as 180 days while state labor officials try to bring the sides closer together, while the union does not.

Union supporters have also been using text messages to ask people to tell Polis to stay out of the pay dispute and allow a strike to go forward. That message, though, more clearly identifies who is behind it. The link lists the Colorado Working Families Party as the source of the letter and allows recipients to see other campaigns the group has supported.

The Working Families Party works to help progressive Democrats win primaries and pull the party to the left. Its funding comes from labor unions as well as individual members, and the group has lent its support to the Denver Classroom Teachers Association.

“Working Families is proud to put our name on anything we do, and we wonder why these other folks didn’t feel the same way,” said Wendy Howell, deputy director of the Colorado branch.

Erica Meltzer and Eric Gorski contributed to this report.

Mystery text messages urge Denver residents to tell Gov. Polis to block a teacher strike

2019-02-03T00:05:38+00:00

Denver residents are receiving text messages from a group calling itself “Support Students, Support Teachers” that urge them to write Gov. Jared Polis and Denver school board members in support of a key aspect of the district’s pay proposal and in opposition to a strike.

The text message contains a link that takes readers to a pre-written letter, but nothing on the site describes who is behind it. A search of public records, social media, and sites that track political and advocacy spending found no group called Support Students, Support Teachers.

The letter both urges Polis to intervene to prevent a strike and advocates that the district keep larger bonuses for teachers at high-poverty schools, a key point of disagreement between the Denver school district and the teachers union.

Supporters of both the district and the union position are using text message campaigns to drum up support. The district has asked state labor officials and the governor to intervene, a move that could block a strike for up to 180 days. The union has asked the state to stay out, which would clear the way for a strike. Polis has until Feb. 11 to make a decision, but could act sooner.

The two sides are negotiating the terms of the ProComp system, which gives teachers incentives and bonuses on top of their base pay for things like working in a high-poverty school or having students with high test scores. Such pay-for-performance systems are often supported by education reform advocates and opposed by teachers unions.

In Denver, the union is arguing for smaller bonuses, with the difference being put into base pay, while the district maintains that larger bonuses help attract and keep teachers at challenging schools.

Many of the progressive groups that swept Colorado Democrats to office in November have lined up to support the teachers. The text message campaign in support of the union message comes from one of those groups, the Colorado Working Families Party, sometimes dubbed “the Tea Party of the left” for its efforts to help more progressive Democrats win primaries and pull the party to the left. Unions, along with individual members, provide funding for the group, which has been active in New York for years but is relatively new in Colorado.

The pro-union text includes a link that takes recipients to a page on the Action Network website affiliated with the Colorado Working Families Party. There, recipients can see other causes that the group has supported.

In contrast, the page hosting the pro-district letter contains no additional information about its backer. Searches of the Colorado Secretary of State’s website, Open Secrets, a site that tracks political spending, and the internet at large turn up no organization or even public presence that goes by the name “Support Students, Support Teachers.”

While messages in support of a political candidate generally have to disclose who paid for them, the same rules don’t apply to “issue communication” from advocacy groups.

The Federal Communications Commission strictly regulates automated bulk calls and texts, but there are exemptions for so-called “peer-to-peer” messages in which an actual person hits send on a pre-loaded text. Such messages, with or without proper disclosure, have become a common feature of recent political campaigns.

The pro-district, anti-strike text message comes from Phone2Action in Arlington, Virginia. Like Action Network, it provides tools for clients to share their message with the broader public using text messages, social media, and other means.

Union members voted to walk off the job Jan. 22 after negotiations with the school district over the ProComp agreement, broke down. The Denver Classroom Teachers Association wants the district to put significantly more money into teacher pay, adopt a salary schedule that allows teachers to get raises more quickly, and reduce the value of some bonuses and incentives, with the difference going into base pay.

If Denver teachers strike, it would be the first such labor action in Colorado’s largest school district in 25 years.

Denver teachers union rejects latest district offer as a ‘waste of time’

2019-02-01T03:01:07+00:00

The Denver teachers union rejected the school district’s latest attempt Thursday to avert a teacher strike: a new offer that would boost the district’s proposal to increase what it spends on teacher pay by an extra $3 million, and fund two additional years of cost-of-living raises.

In all, the district’s offer would invest an additional $50 million into teacher pay over the next three years, officials said. But it still doesn’t meet the demands of the union, whose members are prepared to walk out of their classrooms in protest.

District officials had barely gotten through explaining their proposal before union negotiators asked to meet in private to discuss the deal. The crowd of at least 100 teachers and supporters in red T-shirts watching the exchange began chanting, “If they won’t pay us, shut it down!”

When union negotiators returned less than an hour later, they apologized to the crowd for “wasting your time.” Of district negotiators, lead union negotiator Rob Gould said, “They didn’t bring a proposal tonight. They brought a small IOU.”

An hour and a half after negotiations started, they were over.

“The offer you have brought today is an example of your inability to listen to our educators,” Gould told Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova and her team. He reminded her that teachers are ready to strike. “From this day forward, you will have no choice but to listen.”

The district and the union are negotiating how to revamp ProComp, Denver Public Schools’ system of bonuses and incentives that teachers receive on top of their base pay. Thursday was the first time negotiators met since talks broke down Jan. 18 and teachers voted to strike.

The two sides have been in a holding pattern since last week, when the district requested state intervention in the hopes it could help broker a deal. The union opposes intervention. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has until Feb. 11 to decide whether to get involved. Teachers cannot legally strike while a decision is pending.

The $50 million the district offered on Thursday would break down like this: an additional $20.5 million in the 2019-20 school year, an additional $3 million plus a cost-of-living raise in 2020-21, and another cost-of-living raise in 2021-22. The size of the cost-of-living raises would likely be from 2.7 to 3 percent, said Mark Ferrandino, the district’s chief financial officer.

Both the district and the union want to simplify ProComp, but they disagree on how much money should be invested into base pay versus bonuses. The union favors higher base pay and smaller bonuses, while the district wants to keep certain bonuses more robust.

Before Thursday, the cost of the district and union proposals differed by about $8.5 million (though some estimates put the two sides even farther apart). The offer the district made on Thursday would shrink that gap by about a third.

Superintendent Cordova started Thursday’s bargaining session by emphasizing that she’d prefer to reach a deal before state officials decide whether to intervene.

“As the superintendent and as a DPS parent, I know how much stress this is causing on our entire system,” said Cordova, who has a daughter in high school.

After the union ended the talks, Cordova told a gaggle of television cameras she was disappointed the union hadn’t offered a counterproposal.

“It’s really unfortunate we are where we are right now,” she said. “We’d set up tonight to negotiate from 5 o’clock to 8 o’clock. It’s not even 7 o’clock.”

Union supporters filtered back into the room. A group of children stood behind her, holding signs with messages such as, “I Stand with Teachers.” Adults shouted as she answered reporters’ questions, and a man with a drum started a chant of, “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

Cordova gathered her laptop and left.

But after the crowd dispersed, she and her team returned to stage their own form of protest: sitting at the empty negotiating table, laptops open, until the appointed ending time of 8 o’clock.

‘Everyone is ready to strike’: Rallying teachers pessimistic renewed talks will produce a breakthrough

2019-01-31T04:46:46+00:00

Hundreds of teachers wearing red rallied Wednesday at the Colorado State Capitol as the Denver school district and teachers union prepare to return to the bargaining table.

Among the Denver teachers we interviewed, there was little optimism that the renewed talks would produce a deal.

“DPS is very stubborn,” said Susan Trahan, a preschool teacher. “It may take a strike for things to change, and it’s time for the world to change.”

Meanwhile, teachers say they are struggling to maintain normalcy as they await word on whether state labor officials and Gov. Jared Polis will intervene in their pay dispute with the district.

“Teachers are not focused on their jobs,” said Sara Penner, an English language acquisition teacher, when asked about the mood in schools. “Our heads are not in the classroom. We feel like we’re in limbo waiting to see if we’ll strike.”

Members of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association voted to go on strike Jan. 22 after months of negotiations over the ProComp system, which provides bonuses and incentives on top of base salaries, ended without a new agreement.

The two sides are roughly $8.5 million apart on money — more under some analyses — but also have deep philosophical disagreements about how the pay system should be structured, with the union wanting more money into base pay and the district wanting larger bonuses, particularly for teachers at high-poverty schools.

Denver Public Schools quickly asked the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment to intervene in the dispute, while the union asked them to keep out. The state has until Feb. 11 to make a decision, though officials could act sooner.

In this tense and uncertain environment, the two sides are resuming negotiations.

In a press release Wednesday, Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova also expressed optimism, even as she framed the problem primarily as one of low state funding.

“I look forward to engaging in the discussion with the DCTA negotiating team, and want to restate my commitment to work arm-in-arm with our educators to fix state funding for education,” Cordova said.

Union members have pushed back against the idea that Denver Public Schools doesn’t have the money to meet their demand to put an additional $28 million into teacher compensation, on top of the $436 million the district currently spends annually. The district has offered to increase funding by more than $20 million, with some of that money coming from cuts to administrative positions.

Penner said she’s recently married and thinking about starting a family, but she can’t afford a home that’s larger than the small apartment she rents now. So she’s thinking about leaving the city of Denver and the district because she doesn’t want a long commute on top of a long work day.

These types of challenges make teachers ready to walk, she said.

“I don’t foresee anything happening,” she said of the new negotiations. “I don’t foresee teachers backing down. This is what we want, and we’re willing to go all the way.”

Michele Luster, an elementary special education teacher, said she and many of her colleagues are worried about their students in the event of a strike, but after 20 years of teaching, she’s seeing her paycheck go down rather than up due to rising health insurance costs.

“We’re ready,” she said.

Adriana Ogaz, a bilingual third grade teacher, said she’s dreamed of being a teacher since she was a little girl, but two years in, she feels disenfranchised and is thinking about leaving the profession.

She appreciates that the district proposal offers significant raises to early-career teachers like her, but the raises for veteran teachers are much more modest compared to the union proposal. That concerns her, as she imagines Denver will be that much more expensive in another decade or two. That’s if she stays at all.

“At this point, everyone is ready to strike,” she said. “We want change, and we want it now.”

Denver teachers rallied at the state Capitol on the eve of renewed negotiations between their union and Denver Public Schools.

Denver teachers are on the brink of a strike. Here’s how we got here and what could be next.

2019-01-30T23:10:15+00:00

For the first time in 25 years, Denver teachers are fed up enough to walk out.

Last week, 93 percent of Denver Classroom Teachers Association members who voted supported going on strike. The vote came after teacher pay negotiations between the teachers union and the school district broke down Jan. 18, leaving the teachers without a contract that governs the district’s complicated salary-and-bonus system.

The day after the strike vote, Denver Public Schools asked state labor officials to intervene and try to broker a deal between the two sides. That request put the strike on hold. The union has since filed a response asking the state to stay out of it.

Gov. Jared Polis has until Feb. 11 to decide whether to get involved. Teachers cannot legally strike while a decision is pending.

While the district and the union wait for the answer, their negotiators are returning to the bargaining table. The two sides are set to meet Thursday at 5 p.m.

How did we get here and what happens next? This Q&A is meant to answer those questions.

Ninety-three percent favoring a strike is a landslide. How many teachers voted?
It’s unclear. The strike vote was an internal union matter, and the union has not released the numbers. Leaders did say the election was conducted electronically by a third party.

Is it certain the teachers will go on strike?
No. A strike could be averted if the union and the district reach a deal.

If it’s not averted, when would a strike start?
It depends on how quickly Polis makes a decision about whether to intervene — and what he ultimately decides. If the state intervenes, that could delay a strike by up to 180 days as a mediator or fact-finder works with the two sides to reach an agreement.

If the state does not act, teachers could strike immediately.

One important note: Polis could stay out of it for now but choose to intervene later.

Is it just teachers who are going on strike?
No. The Denver Classroom Teachers Association represents teachers and “specialized service providers,” which include school nurses, counselors, physical therapists, speech language pathologists, and others. Union members are often referred to collectively as “educators.” In all, the union represents about 5,600 Denver educators.

But not all educators are members of the union. Before the strike vote, the union president said 64 percent of district educators were members. It’s likely higher now. Educators can choose whether or not to strike, regardless of their union membership.

Would schools be closed during a strike?
Denver Public Schools Superintendent Susana Cordova has said schools will remain open if teachers walk out. The district has been recruiting substitute teachers to fill in, as well as delivering to schools boxes of lesson plans for the subs to teach.

But there have also been signs that some schools could close. An internal letter from Cordova to the district’s central office employees says they are expected to deploy to schools to work as substitute teachers or in non-instructional roles unless they face “extenuating circumstances.” Those circumstances could include caring for a child “who is also a DPS student whose school was authorized to close by the superintendent.”

There is no set student-to-teacher ratio that schools must maintain, either by state law or district policy. A district spokesperson said officials will determine whether to close schools on a case-by-case basis: “If we anticipate any risk to student safety based on an inability to provide appropriate supervision, we will close the school or make the determination to offer meals only.”

Even if schools are open, should families send their children or keep them home?
The answer to this question is likely a personal one. Working parents will have to weigh whether they can afford to take time off to stay home with their children or find child care. Some families depend on school to provide meals, mental health support, or nursing care to their children.

District officials have promised that academic learning in schools will continue during a strike, and they have assured families that students won’t be watching movies all day.

The teachers union is encouraging families to send their children to school — but for a different reason. “We encourage parents to send their students to school if their school building remains open,” the union wrote in an FAQ document. “Student safety is paramount for all district schools, therefore the district will be obliged to close schools if safety becomes an issue due to limited staffing.”

The document added, “One major goal of a strike is for school buildings to be shut down as a demonstration of the essential labor performed by educators.”

What about innovation schools and charter schools?
Innovation schools are run by the district, so a strike would affect them. Charter schools are not, so a strike would not affect them. Charter schools would operate normally.

How long would a strike last?
It’s impossible to say. But it is possible to look at history. The last teacher strike in Denver, in 1994, lasted a week. A strike last year by teachers in the southern Colorado city of Pueblo also lasted a week. And a strike earlier this month by Los Angeles teachers lasted about a week, too.

Exactly why are educators ready to strike?
The strike would be an attempt to pressure the district into giving the union what it wants — a new pay structure and more money for teacher salaries.

Denver’s educator pay system, called ProComp, allows teachers and specialized service providers to earn bonuses and incentives on top of their base salary for things like working in a hard-to-fill position or a high-poverty school.

Who qualifies for which bonuses and the size of those bonuses can change from year to year. Educators say that makes their pay unpredictable, and that by funneling lots of money into incentives instead of base pay, ProComp has diminished their long-term earning potential. The union wants a system that invests more money into base salaries and less into bonuses.

Why can’t the two sides agree?
The disagreement is part philosophical and part financial.

The philosophical disagreement is about whether the bonuses and incentives are valuable. Voters agreed to fund them by approving a tax increase in 2005 — so nixing them would mean forfeiting about $33 million in tax money this year. That’s only a portion of the more than $400 million the district spends on teacher pay, but neither side wants to lose it.

Instead, the union wants to shrink the size and number of the bonuses and incentives, while the district is pushing to keep certain incentives more robust.

For instance, the district wants to offer a $2,500 bonus to educators who work at a high-poverty school as a way to ensure vulnerable students have good teachers. The union’s proposal calls for that same incentive to be $1,750, with the difference going to base pay.

The two sides also disagree on how much of the district’s $1 billion budget should be spent on educator compensation. Both agree it should be more — but they differ in how much more.

When negotiations broke down on Jan. 18, about $8.5 million separated the cost of the union and district proposals on their face. Different analyses have yielded larger cost differences.

District officials have so far proposed investing an additional $20 million into teacher pay, partly by promising cuts to central administration. Union leaders want to continue to negotiate for more than that. The cost of the union’s proposal is about $28 million.

Denver district, teachers union to resume negotiations Thursday

2019-01-30T00:34:05+00:00

The Denver district and teachers union will head back to the bargaining table Thursday at 5 p.m. as they continue to await word on whether Gov. Jared Polis will intervene in their pay dispute.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association offered the date, which is notable because union officials previously had cast doubts on the value of ongoing negotiations unless the district is willing to come up with more money for teacher pay.

Union Executive Director Pam Shamburg said the union had no confirmation from the district that it would offer more money, but that officials had said “everything is on the table.”

“We are willing to come to the table in a good faith effort to get a deal done,” Shamburg said.

The two sides have been in a bit of a holding pattern. After the teachers union voted to go on strike, the district requested state intervention in the hopes that a mediator or fact-finder could help broker a deal. The union opposes intervention and is preparing its members to walk off the job to pressure the district to meet its demands.

Teachers cannot legally strike while a decision about state intervention is pending.

Polis has encouraged the district and the union to continue negotiating while state officials decide whether to intervene. Denver Public Schools Superintendent Susana Cordova said last week that the district was eager to return to the table, but no date had been set at that time.

Tuesday’s date setting comes on the same day as a conference call between representatives of the governor’s office, the state labor department, the district, and the state teachers union.

Shamburg characterized Tuesday’s conference call as an opportunity to get feedback from the governor after his Office of State Planning and Budgeting did its own analysis of the two sides’ competing proposals, which differ in philosophy and cost. Colorado Education Association President Amie Baca-Oehlert and a researcher with the state teachers union were on the call on behalf of the union. District spokesperson Anna Alejo added that Polis set up the call to make sure there was clarity on the cost of the two sides’ proposals.

Throughout the negotiations, it has often seemed as if the district and the union are not operating from the same set of facts, such as how much each proposal will cost over the long-run, how many teachers would take advantage of opportunities for raises, or how different policies affect teacher retention.

In its filing on Monday asking the state to stay out, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association said the district had “effectively unraveled” months of negotiations based on shared assumptions by introducing “a completely different financial model” last Thursday.

Mark Ferrandino, the Denver district’s chief financial officer, said that far from introducing a different financial model, the district was engaged in a good faith effort to come up with more accurate assumptions about where teachers would fall on the proposed salary schedule and the likely cost of that schedule. To do so, it looked at numbers from neighboring Aurora Public Schools, whose salary schedule is similar to the one proposed by the union.

“It’s the same financial model we’ve always been using,” Ferrandino said — just updated.

Shamburg, meanwhile, does not believe the new information makes the model more accurate because it’s not based on Denver teachers.

This kind of disagreement is emblematic of the lack of trust between the two sides and of the competing claims that state officials are weighing as they decide whether to intervene.

The state cannot impose an agreement on the district and the union, but it can require the two sides to participate in mediation, conduct independent fact-finding, or hold public hearings in an effort to broker a deal.

Cher Haavind, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, which is the agency that would intervene, said the purpose of the joint call Tuesday afternoon was to share information and better understand each side’s position.

Haavind said one reason the law allows 14 days for the department to make a decision about whether to intervene is to provide an opportunity for the informal convening and information gathering “that helps us explore the value of intervening or not intervening.”

Rumors have swirled that a decision by the department is imminent. Haavind said she does not expect the governor’s office and state labor officials to take the full two weeks to decide, but she stressed Tuesday that no decision has been made and that officials are actively weighing evidence and seeing what happens over the next few days.

“You have to be respectful of the process and the collective bargaining agreement and the working conditions,” she said. “We want to intervene if it’s helpful and we do not want to intervene if it will get in the way of negotiations.”

She called the return to the bargaining table “positive.”

Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association are negotiating an agreement that governs a system of bonuses and incentives that teachers receive on top of their base pay. The system is known as ProComp. As part of these negotiations, the union pushed the district to put an additional $30 million into teacher compensation. The district has offered more than $20 million, but the two sides are still roughly $8.5 million apart.

They also have strong philosophical differences about how teacher compensation should be structured, with the district wanting to keep more money for bonuses and the union wanting smaller bonuses and larger base pay.

‘What do we want? Teachers that stay!’ With strike on hold, Denver students speak out

2019-01-29T01:51:00+00:00

An estimated 1,100 students at seven Denver high schools staged sit-ins, information sessions, marches, and other demonstrations during the school day Monday in a show of solidarity with teachers who stand ready to strike over a pay dispute.

“Teachers are the ones that support us,” said Alexandria Bermúdez Burciaga, a senior at Denver Center for International Studies at Montbello in northeast Denver, where the day began with conversations in the auditorium and then a march through the hallways. “We spend most of our time with teachers, and they listen to us. They’re preparing us for the future.”

Monday was the day that Denver teachers would have gone on strike if the district had not requested state intervention into a long-running pay dispute. Until that process is complete, it would be illegal for teachers to go on strike. Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association have been negotiating the ProComp system, which provides bonuses on top of base salary for things like working in a hard-to-fill position or in a high-poverty school.

Both sides’ proposals put more money into base pay, but district officials want to keep larger bonuses and incentives because they see those as important tools for retaining teachers. The union believes that higher and more predictable base pay will do more to keep teachers over the long-run.

Students who participated in the Montbello demonstration said even with bonuses, too many teachers leave each year.

Adriana Medina, 17, a junior and student organizer of the Montbello event, said she’s seen how teachers leaving in the middle of the school year can hurt student learning.

“It’s hard for a lot of the students especially after they’ve started building a bond with someone,” Medina said. “That’s a process that takes a lot of time.”

Bermúdez Burciaga added that she’s had substitutes fill in for months at a time after teachers have left. Both students said those substitutes can’t fill their teachers shoes.

“What do we want? Teachers that stay. How do we get it? Give them fair pay,” was one chant that echoed through the halls of Montbello.

Another was: “Polis, escucha: tu pueblo está en la lucha.” The chant in Spanish called on Gov. Jared Polis to “listen” and recognize that teachers are engaged in struggle.

The union and its supporters don’t want Polis to order state intervention, which would delay a strike.

Bermúdez Burciaga said the administration at her school was supportive of the demonstrations and thanked students for keeping it peaceful.

Denver Public Schools spokesman Will Jones said that is the approach school leaders are taking across the district. In addition to the Montbello campus, where district-run and charter schools share space, students demonstrated at Northfield High School, East High School, George Washington High School, Denver School of the Arts, John F. Kennedy High School, and Martin Luther King Jr. Early College. MLK had the largest demonstration, with some 400 students participating, according to the district.

Denver Public Schools did not allow media into schools to cover the demonstrations, with a spokesperson citing a desire to “protect the integrity of the school day.”

Students who took part were marked “present” if they were in school that day, regardless of whether they attended their regular classes. Jones said that at some schools, the conversations took place during certain class periods or during lunch.

“DPS encouraged school leaders to plan with students for today’s sit-ins,” Jones said in an email. “Together, they could identify spaces designated for protest activities, and then use conversation and trusted adults to keep lines of communication open. We are optimistic that we will continue to hear a variety of perspectives, maintain a productive educational environment, empower our students to lead and share, and reach a positive resolution with our teachers.”

Correction: The original version of this story had the wrong last name for Adriana Medina.

Why the Denver district did not call a snow day

2019-01-28T23:45:41+00:00

Denver Public Schools spent much of last week telling parents that school would go on as normal this week, even after teachers in Colorado’s largest school district voted to strike.

As it turned out, the snarl in the school day Monday wasn’t picketing teachers but 7 inches of fresh snow. But the district did keep its promise: Classes proceeded as scheduled.

The failure to call a snow day fueled speculation on social media that the decision to keep schools open was a power move by the district.

“@DPSNewsNow being straight petty not calling a (snowflake emoji) day today,” one parent tweeted. “Up to my kids’ knees, but at least we can walk! Still coming down strong. Stay safe, teachers who can’t afford to live in Denver!”

“A snow day probably would have alleviated a little of the #teacherstrike tension by showing you care about the safety of your students and staff @DPSNewsNow,” another person tweeted.

District officials pointed to an inaccurate weather forecast as the reason for not calling a snow day. The storm ended up dumping more snow than predicted. The slippery road conditions caused some parents to keep their children home.

As for the teacher strike, the action was put on hold last week while state officials decide whether to intervene in a dispute between the Denver school district and the teachers union. The two sides disagree on how — and how much — to pay the district’s teachers.

When district staff made the decision at 3:30 a.m. Monday to keep schools open, the forecast was calling for only a few inches of snow, according to district spokesperson Anna Alejo.

“For today’s storm, forecasters said Denver would have 1 to 3 inches of accumulation, and they anticipated the snow would stop by 10 a.m.,” Alejo wrote in an email.

The snow continued through early afternoon.

Neighboring Aurora Public Schools to the east and Jeffco Public Schools to the west didn’t call snow days, either. Alejo noted that in deciding whether to cancel school, Denver Public Schools’ transportation director confers with neighboring school districts, as well as with the Colorado Department of Transportation and city officials responsible for plowing the roads.

“We consider impacts to families and their ability to safely travel,” she wrote. “Schools are not only vital places of learning for students, but they also provide nutrition, health care, counseling, and essential support services. Whenever possible, DPS strives to keep schools open.”

Denver teachers union asks Colorado labor officials to stay out of dispute with district

2019-01-28T23:30:00+00:00

Arguing that intervention would be “futile,” the Denver teachers union has formally asked state labor officials to stay out of a contract dispute between the union and the Denver school district over how to pay the district’s teachers.

Intervening in the matter — which would further delay a teacher strike that was originally set to begin Monday — “would be an endorsement” of the district’s “recent abusive tactics,” the union wrote in a response filed Monday to the district’s request for state intervention.

The district and the union are at odds over how to revamp Denver Public Schools’ teacher pay system, known as ProComp. The union wants to invest significantly more money into teachers’ base salaries. The district has also proposed increasing base salaries, but has pushed to keep sizable bonuses that incentivize teachers to work in hard-to-fill positions and high-poverty schools. The union argues that relying on bonuses makes teachers’ pay unpredictable.

“The philosophical difference behind the salary schedules is preventing the parties, as it has for many months, from reaching agreement on a new compensation scheme,” says the response from the Denver Classroom Teachers Association.

Also contributing to the stalemate, according to the union: “a broken relationship” between the district and the union that no state officials — not even the governor — can mend.

“Only DCTA and DPS can repair their relationship,” the union response says, “and that process will begin once they re-establish mutual respect through the bargaining process.”

The “abusive tactics” described in the union filing include an email to schools from a district human resources employee that said immigrant teachers here on visas would be reported to immigration authorities if they participated in a strike. The district has since apologized for the email, which the superintendent said was factually wrong and should not have been sent.

But the union said these types of communications are meant to intimidate teachers and are likely to continue until the larger disagreement is resolved.

The two sides have been negotiating the ProComp agreement for 14 months. At the end of a marathon bargaining session on Jan. 18, union negotiators rejected the district’s latest offer and ended the talks, thereby letting the contract expire. On Jan. 22, the union announced its members had overwhelmingly voted to strike.

Last Wednesday, district officials formally requested intervention from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. The district’s request had the effect of delaying a strike that could have begun Monday at the earliest. Teachers cannot legally strike while Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is deciding whether state labor officials should try to broker a deal between the two sides. Polis has 14 calendar days to make a decision.

Cher Haavind, a spokeswoman for the department, said officials do not expect to take the full two weeks to reach a decision. If they do not intervene, a strike could start at any time after that decision is issued. It’s also possible that officials could decide not to intervene and then change their minds and exercise jurisdiction in response to new circumstances.

Nothing prevents the two sides from continuing to meet in the meantime. However, union officials have said they don’t see a good reason to talk unless the district is prepared to put more money into teacher compensation. Right now, about $8 million separate the union and district proposals.

The state cannot impose an agreement, but it can require the district and the union to participate in mediation, deploy a fact-finder to investigate competing claims, or hold public hearings. That process could take as long as 180 days.

District officials made clear they believe those methods could help. The two sides had already been working with a mediator, but the district noted in its intervention request that every bargaining session has “occurred in public in front of large audiences and news crews filming all conversations,” a setting that “does not encourage genuine conversations.”

Colorado law requires teacher contract negotiations to be open to the public. However, Alexandra Hall, director of the Division of Labor Standards in the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, told Chalkbeat the department is exploring with the state Attorney General’s Office the possibility of moving the talks behind closed doors.

Union officials have said they would not agree to private bargaining.

When bargaining ended late on Jan. 18, the union was requesting the district invest an additional $28 million of its $1 billion budget into teacher pay. The district was offering an additional $20 million — a proposal officials called “generous.”

A teacher strike would negatively impact students, parents, and teachers alike, district officials wrote in their intervention request. Vulnerable students — including those who rely on school for meals, mental health services, and nursing care — would be most at risk, they argued.

The union pushed back on that assertion, noting in its response that a weeklong teacher strike in the southern Colorado city of Pueblo in May did not result in catastrophe. The union also cited a poll that it conducted in early January that showed 89 percent of Denver parents side with the teachers in the pay dispute, and 69 percent of parents would support a strike.

Read the entire response from Denver Classroom Teachers Association here:

With no Denver strike Monday, Colorado labor officials weigh the benefit and cost of intervention

2019-01-26T02:45:49+00:00

Rather than walking off the job on Monday, many Denver teachers are planning to “walk in,” entering their school buildings together dressed in red to show their support for their union in its pay fight with the district.

The strike that was authorized this week by members of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and that could have started Monday instead is on hold as all sides await word on possible state intervention.

“No strike Monday,” read a notice the union posted on its website late Friday afternoon. “Please report to work as normal. The strike is not cancelled — only postponed.”

Representatives of the teachers union have said they oppose state intervention, requested by Denver Public Schools, but the union still has not filed a formal response to the district’s request. Once it does, that starts a 14-day time period for state labor officials and Gov. Jared Polis to make a decision.

The state cannot block a strike indefinitely, nor can it impose an agreement on the two sides, but it can require the them to participate in fact-finding, mediation, or public hearings in an effort to encourage a deal. That could delay a strike by as long as 180 days.

Union leaders emphasized the importance of abiding by this process. Otherwise, a strike would be illegal and teachers and special service providers like counselors, nurses, and school psychologists would risk fines and even the loss of their licenses.

Meanwhile, the anticipation that sprung from the historic vote by teachers in Colorado’s largest school district has given way to frustration and tension.

“It’s exhausting,” said Shelley Flanagan, a reading intervention teacher at Valdez Elementary. “We’re ready to funnel the energy. We’re ready to be done with this.”

But for now, teachers at her school are maintaining as much normalcy as possible, preparing lesson plans for the week with the expectation that they’ll be deploying them, Flanagan said.

On its website, the union told teachers their principal cannot require them to turn over lesson plans for substitute teachers, though.

“A strike is not an absence,” the union said. “It is a work stoppage.”

The union also reiterated that the district said it made a mistake in an email to teachers working on immigrant visas. They are legally allowed to strike and will not be reported to immigration authorities. That email to immigrant teachers further exacerbated tensions, despite an unconditional apology and retraction by the district.

Polis has encouraged the two sides to keep negotiating during this time period, and Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova said Thursday that the two sides have agreed to do so. However, no dates have been set, and union President Henry Roman said the district needs to come up with more money for bargaining to be productive.

Corey Kern, deputy director of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, said Friday the union remains willing to resume negotiations, but it’s not clear yet when that would happen.

The two sides were roughly $8 million apart when members of the bargaining team walked away from the table Jan. 18. Denver Public Schools and the teachers union are negotiating the terms of the ProComp agreement, a system that provides bonuses and incentives to teachers on top of their base pay.

The union wants the district to put roughly $28 million more into teacher compensation and reduce the value of most bonuses to put more money into base pay. The district has agreed to put $20 million more into teacher pay and wants to distribute more of that money as bonuses, particularly for teachers at high-poverty schools.

The union and the district had been negotiating for more than a year, the last several months with help from a mediator, when the ProComp agreement expired without a deal.

Alexandra Hall, director of the Division of Labor Standards in the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, said labor officials are looking at whether a third party could bring the sides closer together.

Several other news outlets reported that state intervention would allow negotiations to take place in private. State law requires that bargaining between public school teachers and their districts take place in public, which has led to sometimes raucous negotiations in which teachers boo district proposals.

Hall said private bargaining is a “hypothetical” that the department is exploring with the Attorney General’s Office. There may be a way to do it, but it’s still an open question.

“It’s probably easier to have a conversation when you’re not being interrupted by the comments from the public,” Hall said. “But we would have to hear from both parties that they agree there is a benefit.”

Kern said the union believes there is real value in negotiating in public and would not agree to private bargaining.

“It helps build trust for everyone involved,” he said. “It’s really hard when an agreement is reached and folks voting on it don’t know how you got at the decisions that you made. All they see is the finished product.”

Hall said she sees potential value in a formal fact-finding process. In bargaining sessions, the union and the district often did not agree on basic assumptions, like how much each proposal would cost or how much money the district has available for compensation. Fact-finders are usually professional arbitrators who have authority to dig through budgets and make recommendations. It’s not a fast process.

In the Pueblo teacher strike in May, the two sides had already used a fact-finder who sided with the union — but whose recommendations the school board rejected before teachers walked out. That report was influential in the department’s decision not to intervene.

Hall said the decision to intervene is one that the state does not take lightly. When two parties have been negotiating a long time and are close but not yet at a deal, that’s when mediation can be least effective, she said.

“What we have to weigh is, has this gone on so long and are they so close that we are simply getting in the way of the employees exercising what they need to do to bring this to resolution?” Hall said.

Here’s what picketing outside Denver schools might look like — and how police and the district plan to handle it

2019-01-26T00:41:04+00:00

If Denver teachers do indeed strike, the morning scenes outside schools could be dramatic: lines of educators chanting and waving picket signs, substitutes crossing those lines to get to work, and families and students trying to navigate it all.

Keeping a watchful eye will be Denver police and the school district’s safety team.

Both are trying to strike a balance: ensuring schools are able to operate while making sure picketing teachers are free to speak their minds. The stakes are high for all involved, but particularly for union organizers and the school district, as a blunder could undermine their standing in the court of public opinion at an inopportune time.

Last week, even before negotiations between the union and district hit a stalemate, Denver police initiated a conversation with Denver Classroom Teacher Association officials to lay out picket-line expectations, said Sonny Jackson, a police department spokesman.

Picketers are restricted to public sidewalks off school grounds, he said. Municipal code prohibits the obstruction of streets, sidewalks, and building entrances frequented by the public. Denver police — not district safety staff members, who are not sworn law-enforcement officers — enforce that rule.

Jackson characterized that conversation with the union and a subsequent one this week as positive.

“Our main objective was to build a rapport in advance of an impending strike,” he said.

The head of Denver Public Schools’ 140-member safety team — which includes uniformed safety officers at each middle and high school, an armed patrol team that provides support to all schools, an emergency management team, investigators, and support staff — is striking a similarly collaborative tone.

“Really, our primary focus is safety,” said Mike Eaton, DPS’s chief of safety. “We want to make sure our schools remain open … We also understand that teachers have a right to voice what they feel they need to voice, and that plays a part in our planning.”

The union has expressed a different point of view on one key point: It would like to see schools shut down, “as a demonstration of the essential labor performed by educators.”

A “strike plan” document produced ahead of bargaining sessions this month describes closing schools as a goal of picketing, suggesting it begin when teachers start arriving for the day and wrap by mid-morning. A union FAQ document suggests another tactic to force school closures: encouraging parents to keep sending their children to school during a strike. The thinking is that if enough students show up, the district won’t be able to adequately staff school buildings and will be forced to close them for safety concerns.

Not all teachers have embraced that strategy, with some saying that the decision about whether to send a student to school should be a personal choice.

The DCTA has designated 12 “anchor schools” for larger pickets, the strike plan says. “These are also schools with high visibility, along major thoroughfares,” it states.

Those schools were identified as:

Southwest: Abraham Lincoln High School, Kaiser Elementary, Eagleton Elementary
Far Northeast: Denver School of the Arts, Montbello High School, Vista Academy
Southeast: Cory Elementary/Merrill Middle School, Hill Middle/Steck Elementary, Hamilton Middle/Holm Elementary
Northwest: North High School, Polaris Elementary, Colfax Elementary

At four of those campuses — Lincoln High, North High, Montbello High, and Vista Academy — district-run schools and charter schools share space. DPS officials aim to keep all their campuses open with non-union staff and administrators, substitutes, and central administration staff pitching in, and have assured co-located charter schools that operations will be normal.

Eaton, the district’s safety chief, said good communication up front between his team, the union, and police is essential to managing what is likely to be an emotionally fraught situation. If a strike begins, the district intends to open an emergency operations center to manage its resources, he said.

Corey Kern, deputy executive director of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, said the union has had several conversations with Denver police that have been generally positive. He added that the union is still working on its strike plans and is not ready to share details about how teachers will approach picketing.

Eaton said that because teachers “always put students first,” district safety officials do not anticipate picketers “targeting kids or creating an unsafe environment for kids.” That doesn’t mean the scenes unfolding outside schools will leave students unaffected, he said.

“It can be very traumatic for elementary school kids to see a teacher he or she has trust in, to see the teacher picketing outside their schools,” Eaton said, adding that the district will look for ways to minimize impact on children.

‘This was wrong,’ says Denver schools chief of email threat to immigrant teachers

2019-01-26T00:17:16+00:00

Less than three weeks into her tenure as Denver schools superintendent, Susana Cordova stood in the lobby of the district’s downtown headquarters Friday afternoon and apologized.

Ringed by television cameras, Cordova said she was shocked the evening before to learn that a district human resources employee had sent an email to schools on Tuesday that said immigrant teachers working in Denver Public Schools on visas would be reported to immigration authorities if they participated in an impending teacher strike.

“This was wrong,” said Cordova, flanked by three Denver school board members. “I cannot begin to express how shocked I was to learn of this message, and how deeply sorry I am for the anxiety and fear this has caused our educators, our families, and our community.”

The district will not report to authorities the names of any employees who walk off the job, Cordova said. Of the district’s approximately 5,600 educators, 128 of them are here on H-1B and J-1 immigrant visas, a district spokesperson said.

Immigrant educators have the right to participate in a strike, Cordova emphasized. “They can exercise that right without fear that they will be reported to immigration,” she said.

The email, which was leaked on social media, sparked admonishment from teachers, parents, community leaders — and even Denver Mayor Michael Hancock. The mayor took to Facebook Friday morning to say the message, even if it was a mistake, was “unconscionable.”

“DPS must take immediate and corrective action,” he wrote.

No employees were put on leave as a result of the email, Cordova said. The district is taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again, she said. She did not elaborate on what they are.

The email was particularly jarring in a school district with a large number of immigrant students whose school board has passed numerous resolutions vowing to create a welcoming environment and protect students from heavy-handed immigration enforcement.

The Colorado People’s Alliance, a racial justice organization that shared the email on Facebook, wrote: “If DPS claims to want to welcome and protect their immigrant students, why are they lying to and intimidating their immigrant teachers about their right to strike?”

People also took to Twitter to condemn the district.

“How do you ‘erroneously’ send out a letter threatening your immigrant staff?” tweeted one person. “Straight thuggery.”

“I work with teachers that received this threatening email,” tweeted another. “Sickening.”

Shelley Flanagan, a reading intervention teacher at Valdez Elementary, a dual language school, said several of her colleagues took the district at face value that they could not strike.

“They believed what they were told,” she said. “We believed what we were told.”

All of this comes at a time when tensions between the community and Denver Public Schools, which have long been strained, are particularly high. The Denver teachers union voted earlier this week to strike after teacher pay negotiations with the district fell apart.

The strike is temporarily on hold while Colorado Gov. Jared Polis weighs whether to grant the district’s request for state officials to try to broker a deal between the two sides.

In the lobby Friday, Cordova tried to explain what led to the erroneous email being sent. In preparing for a potential teacher strike, she said district officials asked a law firm specializing in immigrant visas whether a strike might have negative impacts on immigrant teachers, “and how we could take the appropriate steps to protect them if they choose to strike.”

The law firm advised the district it would have to notify the U.S. Department of Labor of the strike. That message was “misinterpreted” by human resources staff, said Cordova. She added that she doesn’t think there was any “malicious intent” behind the email, though the employee who sent it did not follow the district protocol for such communications.

Denver Public Schools is a diverse urban district with about 93,000 students. Roughly 70,000 of them are students of color, with more than 50,000 students identifying as Hispanic.

Cordova acknowledged that the threat expressed in the email, even if erroneous, has damaged trust between the immigrant community and the district. The superintendent said she is “fully committed” to working to repair that trust.

She also pointed to several recent actions the district has taken to support immigrant students and families. Shortly after President Trump was elected in November 2016, the district assured families worried about heightened immigration enforcement that it would not share students’ immigration status with federal authorities. In early 2018, the Denver school board passed a resolution pledging to “stand shoulder-to-shoulder” with undocumented students.

Denver Public Schools was also the first school district in the country to hire educators granted work permits and exemption from deportation through President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known colloquially as DACA.

“As a school district, we have been resolute in our opposition to sharing any information that could negatively impact the rights of our immigrant populations,” Cordova said. “Sharing such information would run directly counter to our core beliefs.”

Her comments were echoed by the three school board members in attendance: Lisa Flores, Jennifer Bacon, and Barbara O’Brien, who is vice president of the board.

“We do not believe in intimidation,” Bacon said, “and we do not believe in discrimination.”

Negotiations poised to resume as Denver teachers plead with district to raise pay

2019-01-25T06:07:16+00:00

As Colorado’s governor weighs whether to intervene to head off a teacher strike in the state’s largest school district, Denver teachers packed a school board meeting Thursday night to press their demand for higher pay. They marched on the sidewalk in front of district headquarters, chanted in the lobby, and took turns giving sometimes emotional testimony to the board.

“I’m striking because I spend 182 days a year supporting and helping raise other people’s children, but my husband and I can’t afford to have children of our own,” said Bridget Stephenson-McKee, a third-grade teacher at Force Elementary, as she fought back tears.

Denver Public Schools Superintendent Susana Cordova said Thursday that the district and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association have agreed to continue negotiations while they wait to hear if state officials will intervene. A date for negotiations has not yet been set; Cordova said the two sides are working on it.

Union President Henry Roman said that to make any progress toward an agreement, the district needs to come to the table with more money. The two sides are separated by about $8 million.

“They need to be ready to bargain,” Roman said.

Meanwhile, the district continues to prepare for how to keep schools open if teachers walk out. Cordova sent a letter Tuesday to employees who work in the central office making clear the expectation that they will be deployed to schools to work as substitute teachers or in non-instructional roles, such as hall monitors.

Central office employees, who include many administrators, will not be allowed to take vacation or personal leave from “now through the strike period” unless their time off was previously approved or they face “extenuating circumstances.”

Employees who refuse to follow the directive could face corrective action, district spokesperson Anna Alejo confirmed. District officials did not specify what corrective action means in this instance, but generally, it could include getting fired.

Teachers are also reporting pressure to stay on the job. On social media, some shared a letter from a district human resources employee that said immigrant teachers here on visas would be reported to immigration authorities if they don’t show up to work. The district later apologized, saying the human resources employee was mistaken.

The district must report a strike to the U.S. Department of Labor, but it will not tell the government the names of employees who choose to walk off the job, Alejo said. Immigrant employees cannot have their visas revoked for going on strike, according to a fact sheet prepared by the law firm that processes visas for Denver Public Schools.

Cordova previously said teachers have a legal right to strike and that “bad behavior” from administrators would not be tolerated.

Teacher pay negotiations fell apart last Friday when the union rejected the district’s latest offer. Union officials announced Tuesday that teachers voted overwhelmingly to strike.

On Wednesday, district officials requested intervention from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Union officials say they don’t want state intervention, which could delay a strike for as long as six months, though they have not yet filed a formal response. Once the union notifies state labor officials of its position, Gov. Jared Polis has 14 days to make a decision. Teachers cannot legally walk off the job until that decision is made.

Polis, a Democrat, has encouraged the two sides to keep negotiating in the meantime. A decision to intervene could be politically fraught, as many of the same progressive groups that swept Democrats into office in November also back the teachers union.

The district and the union are negotiating how to revamp the district’s pay-for-performance system, known as ProComp. It pays teachers bonuses and incentives on top of their base salary for things such as working in a high-poverty school or a hard-to-fill position.

But teachers say those bonuses make their pay unpredictable, and that funneling so much money into incentives over the past decade has gutted their base pay. The union wants a system that invests more money into base salaries and less into bonuses.

The district is pushing for certain incentives it sees as key to ensuring vulnerable students have good teachers, including a $2,500 bonus for teaching at a high-poverty school.

The district’s last proposal was to invest more than $20 million additional dollars into teacher pay. The union’s proposal calls for investing closer to $28 million in additional money.

At the legislature, House Majority Leader Alec Garnett lobbied Joint Budget Committee members to turn a mid-year adjustment in school funding into an opportunity to give Denver — along with other districts — more money to help them meet teacher demands.

Garnett said he thought there might be an opportunity to close some of the gap between the district and the union, but the answer was no. Moving money around for this purpose would have complicated budget consequences. State Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, an Arvada Democrat who serves on the budget committee, said it’s not the role of the legislature to head off a strike.

On Thursday night, the teachers who marched on the sidewalk, crammed into the school board meeting, and filled an upstairs overflow room demanded the district find the money. “What do we want? Fair pay!” they shouted in the lobby. “When do we want it? Now!”

Rebecca Ryan, a teacher who works at Gilliam School, a public school inside a youth detention center, gave a poignant example of how low pay has affected her family. A single mother of three children, Ryan said she has to rely on food banks because she can’t afford groceries.

“Look me in the eye,” she said to the board, “and tell me why it is okay that you guys have all this money you’re putting in central administration, and I can’t feed my (expletive) children.”

The teachers in the audience erupted in cheers.

Erica Meltzer contributed reporting.

As Denver braces for strike, charter operators seek to reassure parents, tackle pay issue

2019-01-24T04:49:05+00:00

The day after news that Denver teachers union members had voted to strike, Denver’s largest charter school operators reassured families their schools will keep operating as usual and sought to highlight their own efforts to better compensate teachers.

Both DSST Public Schools and STRIVE Prep — which collectively educate about 9,500 students at 25 schools — wrote emails to families and supporters Wednesday as questions swirl about the ramifications of a potential Denver strike at district-run schools.

The earliest a strike could start would be Monday, but Denver officials have asked for state intervention, a move that could delay any labor action.

Teachers at Denver’s 60 charter schools are not union members and won’t be going on strike.

But around the nation, unions have started to organize charter teachers, and the issue of teacher pay and how schools are funded has drawn more public attention.

While classes at charter schools wouldn’t be directly affected by a Denver strike, any labor action will still touch those students and their families. Many Denver charters share space with district-operated schools in district-owned buildings, and district and charter officials say they have been communicating about making sure things run normally.

“We remain very supportive of all Denver teachers and all Denver schools,” DSST CEO Bill Kurtz wrote in a letter also posted online. “Yet we share in the concerns of many throughout our community about the impact a strike will have on our students and families.”

While charter schools have been a factor in district-union negotiations elsewhere — including in Los Angeles, where a strike just ended — the focus is narrower here, on the district’s ProComp pay-for-performance system for district teachers.

Denver Public Schools has long embraced charter schools as part of its nationally known “portfolio” model that calls for giving schools autonomy, allowing families to choose among them, and then closing or replacing schools if they don’t make the grade academically.

The district also allows charters space in existing schools that have it to spare, part of a “collaboration compact.” Five of STRIVE Prep’s 11 schools are co-located with district schools. STRIVE CEO Chris Gibbons said DPS has conveyed that transportation, food services, safety and security, and facility management will be operating normally at all district buildings.

Kurtz said the district is “taking proactive steps to work with everybody and ensure students and families can get to their schools each day. So we feel good about that.”

A DPS spokeswoman confirmed the district has been communicating with charter schools housed in district buildings, but did not immediately provide more details.

Both DSST and STRIVE in their letters Wednesday mentioned the importance of paying their teachers well. DSST was more specific: Kurtz wrote that school officials last week committed to a 12 percent raise in teacher pay across the 15-school network. He described it as part of an effort over the last several years to boost compensation for all employees.

While STRIVE’s letter did not go into such detail, Gibbons said STRIVE is also planning average raises of 10 percent to 12 percent next year, a “significant” increase.

The charter network uses a performance pay system, with teachers eligible for raises based on a combination of teacher evaluations, test results, and other tools in specific content areas.

Charter school teachers are often paid less than district teachers. A 2016 report by the Colorado Department of Education found that the average Colorado charter school teacher earned $39,052 the previous year, whereas the average salary at a district-run school was $54,455. Kurtz and Gibbons could not immediately provide information about averages salaries at their schools.

Leaders from both Denver charter school networks say their efforts on teacher compensation are in response to broader state funding challenges and not connected to the DPS negotiations or the potential for a Denver strike.

Colorado voters in November rejected Amendment 73, a statewide tax increase that would have raised an additional $1.6 billion a year for schools. Even without that new money, the charter leaders said they know they need to do more for teachers.

“The degree to which public funding is paying for education in Colorado is reaching crisis state,” Gibbons said. “All of us watched Amendment 73 with a great deal of interest as a potential statewide and systematic solution to funding that would systematically impact teacher compensation. When that failed, we believed it was time to do everything we possibly could.”

Colorado doesn’t have unionized charter schools, though they do exist in other states. The nation’s first charter strike took place in Chicago in December, and another charter operator in that city is threatening one.

Last fall, the Denver teachers union used state public records law to obtain the names, email addresses, and salaries of every charter school teacher in the school district — a signal that the union plans to try to get charter school teachers to join. The Denver Classroom Teachers Association declined to say how it planned to use the information.

Denver pays substitute teachers about $100 a day (when there’s no strike). Here’s how that stacks up.

2019-01-24T01:20:30+00:00

Among the many reactions we’ve seen to Denver’s likely teacher strike, one standout has been surprise at how much the district pays substitute teachers.

During a strike, Denver Public Schools plans to pay substitutes twice the regular rate, or $212 a day. Some of our readers expressed surprise that people who step in to cover the classes of teachers who are absent would normally be paid just $106 a day.

That’s actually the low end of the substitute teacher pay scale in Denver. Retired teachers earn $123 a day, and any substitute who has worked 60 full days earns the title “super guest teacher” and is paid significantly more in subsequent days.

Still, since Denver teachers are preparing to strike over low pay, we thought it would be interesting to answer the question of whether Denver’s substitute teacher rate is unusually low. A sampling of other big-city rates shows that many districts do pay substitutes more, though usually not by all that much.

In some large districts, the regular rate can be close to Denver’s special strike rate. New York City guarantees substitutes $185.15 a day, while Los Angeles substitutes earn $191 a day — and that rate rises to $258 if the teacher stays in the same placement for more than 20 straight days. Boston substitutes earn $141 a day — a figure that doubles if they stay in one position for an extended period of time.

Other districts offer pay that’s more in line with Denver’s regular rate. Washington, D.C., pays substitute teachers $120 a day, noting on its website, “We are excited to offer some of the most competitive pay in the region.” Indianapolis began paying substitutes between $90 and $115 two years ago amid a broader overhaul to how schools are supplied with subs.

And some districts pay far less; the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, says the low end of the range is $75 a day. One person who saw the news from Denver on Twitter wrote, “SOMEONE GETS PAID THAT MUCH TO SUB?????? My 75$ a day is aching.” She said she worked as a substitute teacher in rural Ohio.

Rates are often set in contracts between districts and their teachers unions. Many districts pay retired teachers more than others, and also have different rates for people who fill new roles daily and people who step into one role for an extended period of time. Substitutes must meet standards set by their states and districts and do not typically receive benefits.

In Colorado, unlike in some states, substitutes do not need to be licensed teachers or pursuing licensure. A college degree is not even required, although many districts do not usually hire substitutes who have not graduated from college.

People who work as substitute teachers are unlikely to relocate for higher pay, so the pay comparison that might best illuminate Denver’s chances of recruiting large numbers of substitute teachers during a strike is with nearby districts.

There, Denver’s regular rate appears to be on par with the market. The nearby Jefferson County and Douglas County districts each pay $100 a day, while Cherry Creek, an affluent district adjoining Denver, pays $90.

But far more than pay will influence how many teachers Denver is able to bring on to replace the thousands of educators who are expected to strike.

Denver already has low unemployment, so there aren’t many qualified people looking for daily work — at least not under normal circumstances, when the district has a hard time finding enough substitute teachers. The district is hoping that the tens of thousands of furloughed federal workers in Colorado who have gone without pay for weeks will step up to fill classrooms in the event of a strike, if the federal government is still shut down at that time.

People considering the short-term work would also have to be willing to cross the picket line. Already, some people who say they are Denver educators have condemned potential substitutes as scabs, willing to side with the district over its employees in the dispute over teacher pay.

That dynamic could potentially entice at least a few Coloradans into Denver’s classrooms. “If Denver public schools is looking for substitute teachers who are just educated generally and not specifically in education theory to help break the strike,” one person tweeted, “I could probably chip in a few hours.”

But the tension appears more likely to keep people who are approved to work in Denver classrooms away.

“As a sometimes substitute in Denver, I stand with the teachers,” one person tweeted. “I will not take jobs in DPS during the strike. The double pay rate is NOT worth the stain on my soul.”

“Money is tight. I’m qualified to be an emergency sub and I’d probably enjoy it,” tweeted another person who identifies herself as a nurse. “But I will put my time in on their line, not behind it.”

The Denver district asked for state intervention in a pending teacher strike. Here’s what that means.

2019-01-23T21:55:32+00:00

After meeting with Gov. Jared Polis for roughly an hour Wednesday morning, Denver Public Schools officials formally requested state intervention in a potential teacher strike.

The request is not a surprise — Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova said she would ask for state intervention almost immediately after the Denver teachers union on Jan. 8 filed its notice of intent to strike — and it does not necessarily mean the strike won’t go forward. It could, however, delay it.

In a press release late Wednesday afternoon, Polis said he had not made a decision.

“The governor and the Department of Labor and Employment will continue to engage both sides and encourage both sides to return to the table and continue negotiating on a path forward,” the governor’s office said.

Without state intervention, a Denver strike could start as soon as Monday.

However, no action can occur while a decision is pending. Now that the district has filed its request, teachers cannot legally strike until a decision about intervention is made. That potentially provides time for more negotiations to occur.

By law, the teachers union has 10 days to respond to the district’s request for intervention, and the department then has 14 days to make a decision. However, neither the union nor the department is required to take the full time, state labor officials said. That means this could all play out before the end of the week, clearing the way for a strike, or drag into February.

Denver Classroom Teachers Association members voted overwhelmingly to go on strike after months of negotiations over teacher pay and the structure of ProComp, a system that provides bonuses and incentives to teachers on top of base pay, ended without an agreement.

The two sides are about $8 million apart and also disagree strongly about how much money should go toward incentives for teachers at high-poverty schools. The union wants more money to go toward base pay, while the districts sees the incentives as an important tool in attracting and keeping teachers at more challenging schools.

Typically, the Department of Labor and Employment only intervenes when both sides request it. However, the head of the department, who is appointed by the governor, can intervene if he believes it is in the public interest or if the governor does. The state cannot impose an agreement on the two sides, but it can provide mediation, conduct fact-finding, or hold hearings to try to bring the two parties together.

During the intervention period, which can last as long as 180 days, teachers and special service providers, like nurses, counselors, and school psychologists, also could not legally strike.

Denver Public Schools and the teachers union already have been working with a mediator for months. In the Pueblo teachers strike in May, the state declined to intervene because the two sides had already used mediation and fact-finding.

“The governor is being thoughtful about the appropriate role he can take in helping settle this,” Cordova said as she left her meeting with the governor at midday.

Shortly afterward, a spokesperson for the Department of Labor and Employment confirmed that Denver Public Schools had filed a request for intervention with the department.

Representatives of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association declined to comment, but posted a statement on their website. They told all members to report to work “until we hear otherwise.”

“We are disappointed in the district’s decision to involve a third party to delay our strike rather than negotiating in good faith with educators in Denver,” the union said. “We know the district has the resources to reach an agreement, and we hope to return to the table to continue negotiations on a fair compensation system for all teachers and [special service providers].”

Union representatives also met with the governor Wednesday.

“This is his effort to hear from both sides, to give both of us a chance to explain why we’ve created our proposals the way we have, and think about next steps,” Cordova said.

Cordova said she believes an outside party can help make progress where the two sides could not.

“There is deep mistrust on the part of our teachers,” she said. “Being in a place where we all feel confident we understand the facts would be really helpful.”

Denver Public Schools parents received an automated message from Cordova on Wednesday morning assuring them that school will continue as usual this week.

District officials are asking parents to make sure their contact information and any student medication records are up to date in the Parent Portal as they expect to use substitute teachers and redeployed central office staff — people who will not know students and their families the way classroom teachers do — to keep schools operating.

Here is the request the district filed with the state:

Denver teachers vote to strike in push for higher pay

2019-01-23T04:34:02+00:00

Denver teachers voted overwhelmingly to go on strike for the first time in 25 years. Amid a national wave of teacher activism, they’re seeking higher pay and also a fundamental change in how the district compensates educators.

Because of state rules, Monday is the earliest a Denver strike could start.

Ninety-three percent of the teachers and other instructional staff members who voted in a union election Saturday and Tuesday were in favor of a strike, according to the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. That surpassed the two-thirds majority needed for a strike to happen.

“They’re striking for better pay, they’re striking for our profession, and they’re striking for Denver students,” said teacher Rob Gould, a member of the union’s negotiation team who announced the strike vote results Tuesday night.

Denver Public Schools Superintendent Susana Cordova called the strike vote “not entirely unexpected.”

“From the correspondence that I’ve had with teachers by email and folks that I’ve talked with, it’s really clear there is a lot of frustration on the part of our teachers,” Cordova said.

She has pledged to keep schools open if teachers walk out. In an automated message to parents Tuesday evening, she made it clear that classes will take place as normal Wednesday and “into the foreseeable future.” The district is actively recruiting substitute teachers to fill in during a strike. It is offering to pay them $200 a day, which is double the normal rate.

The strike potentially affects 71,000 students in district-run schools. Another 21,000 students attend charter schools, where teachers are not union members.

Cordova said district officials plan to meet with Gov. Jared Polis on Wednesday and share a letter asking for state intervention, which could delay a strike. Denver Classroom Teachers Association officials also plan to meet with Polis Wednesday, according to union Deputy Executive Director Corey Kern.

The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment cannot impose an agreement between the district and the union, but it can provide mediation or hold hearings to try to bring about a resolution. In 1994, the last time Denver teachers went on strike, Gov. Roy Romer helped negotiate a settlement — after the court refused to order teachers back to work.

“It’s in everyone’s best interest to continue to work on finding the common ground,” Cordova said.

The strike vote in Denver comes after a weeklong strike by teachers in Los Angeles. It also follows a wave of activism and agitation for higher teacher pay that began sweeping the country last year. Here in Colorado, teachers from all over the state staged several rallies at the state Capitol last spring, demanding that lawmakers boost funding for the state’s schools.

The issue at hand in Denver is more localized. The teachers union and the school district had been negotiating for more than a year over how to revamp the district’s complex pay-for-performance system, called ProComp.

Late Friday night, an hour and a half before the most recent agreement was set to expire, the union rejected the district’s latest offer. Although the district offered to invest an additional $20 million into teacher pay and revamp ProComp to look more like a traditional salary schedule — which is what the union wanted — union negotiators said the district’s offer didn’t go far enough.

That rejection ended negotiations and set the stage for a strike. The union represents more than 60 percent of Denver’s 5,700 teachers, counselors, nurses, and other instructional staff.

Union officials did not release the number of teachers who voted on the strike or how many members it currently has. A spokesperson for the Department of Labor and Employment said strike votes are internal union matters over which the department does not have any purview. Kern said the vote was conducted electronically by a third party.

Cordova is in her third week on the job as superintendent. She has reminded the public repeatedly that she started her career as a Denver teacher and counts several teachers among her best friends. But her pledge to be more responsive than her predecessor, Tom Boasberg, has been tested in the bargaining process and now will be tested even further.

Denver teachers have long been frustrated by ProComp. In its most recent iteration, ProComp paid teachers a base salary and then allowed them to earn additional bonuses and incentives for things such as working in a high-poverty school or hard-to-fill position.

Denver voters passed a special tax increase in 2005 to fund the ProComp incentives. The tax is expected to generate $33 million this year.

But many teachers found ProComp confusing. Relying on bonuses and incentives caused their pay to fluctuate in ways that made financial planning difficult, they said.

Chris Landis, a fifth grade teacher at Colfax Elementary, said his salary has varied by as much as $5,000 from one year to the next in the four years he’s been teaching in Denver. He sees the union proposal as creating more stability over the long run, which makes the strike a risk worth taking.

“As someone who wants to be a teacher for the rest of my life, the union proposal has a lot going for it,” he said. “Education is worth fighting for. I’m willing to take a personal hit to guarantee the future for our kids.”

The union wants smaller bonuses and more money for base pay. The union also wants the district to spend roughly $28 million more than it currently does on teacher compensation.

The district’s proposal would have increased base salaries, too, but not by as much. And it would have kept the bonuses and incentives more robust. For example, the district’s offer includes a $2,500 incentive for teachers who teach at schools serving a high proportion of students from low-income families, while the union’s last proposal called for a $1,750 incentive.

District officials said that incentive is key to attracting and retaining high-quality teachers at high-poverty schools, where teacher turnover can be high, and Cordova does not want to compromise on that.

In the end, the union and the district proposals were separated by about $8 million. District officials said they couldn’t come up with any more money, and would already have to make deep cuts to invest the additional $20 million they proposed.

Teachers called their bluff, pointing to what they called a top-heavy administration and noting that $8 million is less than 1 percent of Denver Public Schools’ annual $1 billion budget.

The strike will put pressure on teachers, too, though. The union has a very modest strike fund. A Go Fund Me started on Jan. 16 had raised a little more than $7,000 when the vote results were announced.

“Everybody is stressed out” about going without pay, said Tiffany Choi, a French teacher at East High School, “but this is the sacrifice we’re willing to make.”

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the most recent union proposal with regards to incentives at high-poverty schools.

We work at Denver’s Title I schools, too. Here’s why we’re ready to strike.

2019-01-23T01:01:29+00:00

We are a group of teachers representing schools in the far northeast region of Denver. Many of us now receive “incentives” for working at Title I schools where many students live in poverty — and we are also willing to strike in support of the union’s proposed salary structure, which moves some of the money used for those incentives into long-term base pay.

Why? In short, we would rather have our base pay prioritized than earn bonuses that are not reliable, may not be working, and may also take the pressure off the district to solve systemic problems our schools face.

Issue #1: The current bonuses can’t be relied on. The “hard to serve” school label is based on free and reduced-price lunch percentages, which vary on an annual basis. Teachers at Marie L. Greenwood Academy, for example, could lose their “hard to serve” label because their school dropped just barely below the threshold. Additionally, John Amesse Elementary School and McGlone Academy are less than two miles apart, serve similar populations, and are a part of the same network; however, due to ambiguous calculations based on test scores, free and reduced-price lunch numbers, and teacher turnover rates, McGlone teachers receive larger bonuses than John Amesse teachers. This is not fair nor equitable. Teachers need money they can depend on.

Issue #2: It’s not clear that the current bonuses are working. We have not seen conclusive evidence that the incentives we receive for working in hard to serve schools have affected teacher retention or recruitment. Every year, schools in our area are hiring for positions that often get filled by first-year teachers. Many of the schools that receive these incentives still suffer from the same high turnover rates the bonuses were meant to remedy.

Issue #3: The current bonuses let the district off the hook. Some have argued that teachers in Title I schools deserve significant bonuses because the challenges faced in our work are difficult and taxing. However, many of these issues are due to systemic problems that the district would be better off trying to solve directly.

We know that increasing incentive pay to work at “hard to serve” schools will not fix the issues around segregation in Denver Public Schools. Increasing incentive pay to work at “hard to serve” schools will not fix the issues around some schools lacking nurses, social workers, counselors, support for Spanish speaking and emerging bilingual students, and support for special education programs. It will not solve issues around the lack of reliable technology, funding for arts, comprehensive neighborhood schools, or the flood of issues that we all feel in our schools on a daily basis.

We support the union’s proposal because we want the decisions we make as educators to stem from a love of our schools, a desire to serve our students, and a hope to support our community. We want teachers to seek out and stay at our schools because they believe in our vision, our mission, our students, and our community.

We are also passionate about a clear and transparent pay schedule. We want that structure to recognize our dedication to the field and our commitment to furthering our education – not a system that provides one-time bonuses that are in our checks one year and absent the next due to circumstances outside our control.

Anyone who enters our classrooms will see that we are doing our best with the resources we have in order to lift up the students in Denver who are most impacted by systemic racism and poverty. Let us come together on this idea: Fair pay for teachers means better outcomes for students. If we can stand together on this, then we can help improve the lives of so many more students, teachers, and families.

This piece was written by Jessica Schneider, Noel Community Arts School; Tanessa Bass, John H. Amesse Elementary; Rebecca Roberts, John H. Amesse Elementary; Valerie Henderson, Sandra Todd Williams Academy; Brian Weaver, Florida Pitt Waller ECE-8; Michelle Garrison, Farrell B. Howell ECE-8; Michael Sitkin, DCIS @ Montbello; CoryMontreuil, DCIS @ Montbello; and Nik Arnoldi, Escalante-Biggs Academy.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

Teachers union continues voting on possible Denver strike

2019-01-23T01:00:00+00:00

Denver teachers resumed voting Tuesday evening on whether to go on strike, a decision that will touch tens of thousands of people in Colorado’s largest school district.

The vote comes after months of negotiations left Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association still $8 million apart and with serious philosophical disagreements about how teacher compensation should be structured. Denver teachers are riding a wave of activism by their peers across the country that began last year and continues to build. Teachers in Los Angeles just reached a tentative deal with their district after more than a week on strike.

Members of the teachers union began voting on a strike Saturday. A final round of voting began at 4 p.m. Tuesday and will end at 9 p.m. Union officials said Tuesday evening that results would be announced at 9:30 p.m.

On Tuesday evening, a steady stream of teachers bundled against the cold made their way into a Knights of Columbus Hall in downtown Denver where the last voting session is taking place.

Maria Cruz, an early childhood education teacher for the past two years who previously worked as a paraprofessional in the district, said she voted “yes” to strike hoping it will push the district to close the gap between its offer and what the union is seeking.

“Teachers come and go and come and go and they never stay because there is not enough pay,” she said. “It doesn’t validate the teaching profession.”

The earliest a strike could start would be Jan. 28. On Tuesday evening, district families received a robocall from Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova making clear that classes would go on as normal on Wednesday, and that district officials intend to keep schools open for the foreseeable future.

Cordova has said she’ll ask for state intervention if the vote is yes, which could delay a strike. If teachers do walk out, the district intends to keep schools open and students learning by relying on substitutes, tapping central office staff with past teaching experience, and using pre-packaged lessons plans for every grade and subject area.

A Denver strike would affect roughly 71,000 students in district-run schools.

District officials went on the offensive over the weekend, making the argument that their offer was generous and responsive to longstanding teacher complaints about stagnant salaries.

The district also published its new salary schedule online alongside the salary schedules of other Denver metro area districts.

The two sides disagree on how much new money the district should put into teacher compensation and also on how that compensation should be structured. The district has said it will not compromise on offering bonuses to teachers at high-poverty and hard-to-serve schools. The union wants smaller bonuses and more money to go into base pay.

This would be the first teacher strike in Denver in 25 years.

Meet Denver teachers who voted yes to a strike, no to a strike — and just aren’t sure

2019-01-20T06:09:20+00:00

Throughout the day, the parking lot of Riverside Baptist Church filled up as Denver teachers made their way into a meeting organized by their union, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association.

Months of negotiations that failed to produce a deal between top leaders of Denver Public Schools and the union had given way to individual teachers facing a choice: To strike or not?

Along with reporting the news of the day — which you can read about here — Chalkbeat spent time visiting with teachers to get a sense of what was shaping their decision-making.

Most teachers we spoke with, both in depth and in passing, said they voted “yes” to strike. Union officials have said two-thirds of those who vote Saturday and in a second session Tuesday must sign off on a strike for it to proceed, and the prevailing wisdom among teachers we interviewed was that support is strong.

The decision, though, is far from black and white for many teachers, regardless of where they ultimately land.

Here are the stories of three teachers, all at different places:

Krista Skuce, Slavens K-8 school: Yes to strike

At the urging of teachers and parents, Slavens K-8 students turned out early on a few recent mornings to show support for their teachers. They wore red in solidarity and posed for pictures.

They also brought questions. “Why are you doing this?” was one.

Krista Skuce, a physical education teacher and 14-year Denver Public Schools employee, would tell students that she lives 40 minutes from the school because she can’t afford to live in Denver.

Krista Skuce

But there is more to her story. Her spouse, she said, is no longer able to work, beset by medical issues, unable to draw disability benefits, and in need of costly care including massage therapy, chiropractic appointments, neuromuscular therapies, and more.

At the same time, Skuce said her pay “doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.” So she hustles, earning extra pay by driving across town to coach softball and basketball.

Skuce, like many teachers who stopped to talk about their votes on Saturday, believes the district can do more to boost teachers’ base pay — before bonuses and incentives.

She said her salary has only increased $4,000 or $5,000 in the past 14 years, even though she has been teaching 27 years, has a master’s degree, and is National Board Certified.

Skuce said she knows that by voting to strike, she could very well end up taking money out of her own bank account. Striking teachers don’t get paychecks.

“I am hoping the district and the DCTA do the right thing and recognize the fact that there are some people here who are on the edge,” she said. “We are on the edge emotionally, financially. We know these are good people. And I think teachers are people who wake up every morning with forgiveness.

“You have to take a stand and say what you are for at some point in time in your life — and this is it,” she said. “I’m willing to do it, scary or not.”

Jason Clymer, John F. Kennedy High School: No to strike

An English teacher at John F. Kennedy High School, Jason Clymer stands with his fellow union members in the belief teachers aren’t paid enough. He finds fault with what is asked of teachers through LEAP, the district’s growth and performance system for teachers.

“Teachers at my school feel extremely micromanaged and can’t catch a breath,” he said.

But in the end, after being one of the first teachers in the door Saturday and attending an information session, Clymer said he voted against the strike.

“Going on strike is very hard,” said Clymer, whose wife works in human resources for the district’s central office. “And I think the agreement DPS came to was close enough.”

Clymer questioned picking a fight now because of the limited scope of the negotiations. That would be the current agreement governing ProComp, the pay system that provides teachers one-time bonuses for things like teaching in a high-poverty school, getting strong evaluations, having students who earn high test scores, or teaching in a high-performing school.

He said he’d like to save some political leverage to focus on other issues covered by the district’s main contract with the union.

“It’s really unfortunate these things can’t all be negotiated together,” he said. “If the district came out and said, ‘We want to give you more money, not as much as you like, but we want to devote more to things like mental health services,’ I really think that would be a winning argument.”

In opposing a strike, Clymer said that he did not want to divide his fellow teachers.

“Although I voted no, I believe in the union,” he said. “And if the union voted to strike, I will absolutely support the union.”

Paula Zendle, Denver Green School: Undecided about strike

Paula Zendle is dreading the moment that is appearing increasingly likely: standing before her students at the Denver Green School and explaining why she won’t be there to teach them.

“I tell them constantly, ‘Don’t miss school, don’t miss school. Don’t be absent, don’t be absent, don’t be absent,’” said Zendle, her eyes welling up with tears as she waited on a friend. “I have been fighting to avoid a strike. I hate this. It’s utterly and totally agonizing to me.”

Paula Zendle

Zendle said she left a career in the corporate world for the classroom and has been teaching eight years. She teaches English language acquisition and Spanish at the Green School, a popular and highly-rated middle school option in a district that celebrates choice.

Zendle said she has done her research and written to the district’s chief financial officer. What bothers her is a system she believes rewards younger teachers and underpays teachers in terms of the cost of living.

The average Denver teacher currently earns about $51,000 in base pay and $57,000 with incentives, according to data from the state education department and the district. That’s less than teachers in districts like Boulder Valley, Cherry Creek, and Littleton.

District officials have agreed to put $20 million more into teacher compensation and defended their most recent offer on Saturday as “compelling.”

For Zendle, the prospect of facing her students — and that she works in a supportive school environment — is contributing to her struggle in deciding whether to vote “yes” to strike.

So if the moment does come, what will she tell her students?

“We have the right to protest unfair taxpayer spending,” she said. “This is not only unfair, it’s unconscionable. Their priorities have been wrong for 10 years.”

Then she paused and made clear that her decision had not been made. She considers herself a person of principle, and that will guide her in making a decision.

Denver hopes to keep its schools open in a strike — and the union wants you to send your kids

2019-01-20T03:56:06+00:00

Superintendent Susana Cordova says she is committed to keeping Denver schools open and continuing to educate students in the event of a strike.

In Los Angeles, where a teacher strike is entering its second week, many students are watching movies and playing games. Cordova said she plans to do more for the 71,000 students in district-run schools if teachers vote to strike and state intervention does not lead to a deal. The 21,000 students who attend charter schools will not be affected.

“We want to assure parents school will stay open,” she said. “We know it is critically important that we focus on the education of our kids. Sixty percent of our kids qualify for free and reduced-price lunch. We know they depend on school not just for their meals but for their access to opportunity.”

Negotiations broke down Friday between the district and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, the union that represents teachers and special service providers such as nurses, school psychologists, and counselors. A strike vote is taking place in two sessions, one Saturday and another Tuesday. The earliest a strike could start is Jan. 28.

This would be the first strike in 25 years in the state’s largest school district. In 1994, the district used more than 1,000 substitutes to keep schools open, though many parents kept their children at home, something union leaders encouraged.

It’s not clear yet how high teacher participation in a strike would be. During the final week of bargaining, some teachers reported near universal support in their buildings, while others said some of their colleagues were uncertain. Some teachers have said they disagree with the union position in the negotiations and won’t participate as a matter of principle.

Teachers who strike do not get paid while they are not at work.

Cordova said the district is “in the process of building out our sub pool” and offering higher pay to those willing to work during a strike. But she declined to say how many substitutes the district could call on, and some teachers say they already have a hard time finding subs for routine absences.

Substitutes who work during a strike will earn $200 a day, double the normal rate, and “super subs” who work more than a certain number of days a year will get $250.

Many central office staff who have past teaching experience will be sent to schools to work with students. Cordova said the district is working on pre-packaged lesson plans for every grade and subject area so that learning can still take place, and officials will prioritize placing qualified staff members with special education and preschool students, those she deemed most vulnerable.

Students who get free or reduced-price lunch will still be able to eat in school cafeterias.

For its part, the union is encouraging parents to send their children to school, but with a different purpose.

“One major goal of a strike is for school buildings to be shut down as a demonstration of the essential labor performed by educators,” the union wrote in an FAQ document. “To this end, we encourage parents to send their students to school if their school building remains open. Student safety is paramount for all district schools, therefore the district will be obliged to close schools if safety becomes an issue due to limited staffing.”

Union officials said they were working to establish alternative daytime care with community partners like churches and Boys and Girls Clubs should schools close.

As Denver teachers turn out to vote on strike, superintendent defends ‘compelling’ district offer

2019-01-20T03:06:29+00:00

Denver teachers — some fighting back tears, others filled with energy and purpose — streamed into a rented Baptist church Saturday to cast a high-stakes vote on whether to go on strike.

If their answer is yes, it would be the first strike in Colorado’s largest school district in 25 years and affect some 71,000 students and 5,300 teachers.

The vote on Saturday and another scheduled for Tuesday evening come after the Denver Classroom Teachers Association rejected a district offer and ended negotiations late Friday night, the conclusion of months of bargaining that left the two sides still more than $8 million apart and with significant philosophical disagreements about how teachers should earn raises.

“This is about solidarity of all the workers for the district,” said Kris Valdez, who has taught physical education for 17 years at Columbian Elementary, a high-poverty school in northwest Denver. “For as long as I have been in the district, I feel like we have kind of always been taken advantage of. Now we’re coming together and seeing we have a lot of power when we unite.”

Valdez voted to strike, citing as his primary reason what he sees as a district that is too top-heavy. He, echoing other teachers, said he believes the district can invest more in teachers and paraprofessionals than in “deans of cultures, deans of this, deans of everything.”

The teachers union and Denver Public Schools are not negotiating their master contract — that deal was finalized in 2017 — but rather the ProComp system, which provides teachers one-time bonuses for things like teaching in a high-poverty school, getting strong evaluations, having students who earn high test scores, or teaching in a high-performing school.

Both sides’ proposals moved Denver teachers to much more predictable salary schedules that allow for reliable raises if teachers stay with the district and earn more education. The district proposal put an additional $20.5 million into teacher compensation, with some of that money set aside for bonuses, while the union’s last offer demands an extra $28 million toward compensation and keeps more of it in base pay.

On Saturday, the district sent an email to teachers making the case for its salary proposal and inviting them to use an online tool to see how much more they could be making if the union would just say yes. The district also posted its proposed salary schedule alongside those of other Denver metro area districts to show that pay would become much more competitive. The email urged teachers who aren’t union members to join and vote if they want their view to be heard.

At a press briefing Saturday, Cordova said the district had talked to teachers who would be making as much as $15,000 more.

“That’s a very compelling offer to our teachers and it recognizes the very high cost of living in Denver,” Cordova said. “It’s hard for me to understand that we would have teachers who are willing to go out on strike, who will attempt to shut down our schools, who will interrupt the education of the children of Denver because of 10 percent increases on average.”

Cordova noted that teachers in Pueblo went on strike for 2 percent raises last May, while teachers in Los Angeles are on strike for 6.5 percent raises. The district describes its offer to Denver teachers as a 10 percent average increase in base pay, a figure that includes cost-of-living raises the union and the district already agreed to in their master contract in 2017. The union’s proposal would amount to an average increase of 12.5 percent.

The actual raises that Denver teachers would see under either the union or the district proposal vary considerably depending on the current circumstances, educational level, and longevity of the teacher. Both sides have provisions that prevent teachers from losing money in the transition.

Cordova said the district is planning to cut $10 million in administrative costs, a figure that includes many central office jobs, to pay for teacher raises, as well as additional cuts to fund raises for paraprofessionals, bus drivers, food service workers, and others.

Money is not the only source of disagreement. The district feels strongly about keeping $2,500 bonuses for teachers who work in high-poverty schools, while the union wants more of that money to go into base pay and wants a salary schedule that allows early career teachers to earn raises more quickly.

Union officials were tight-lipped Saturday about how things were going during the vote at Riverside Baptist Church, home to one of the city’s largest church auditoriums. The proceedings, including three separate information sessions, were closed to the public and the press.

Corey Kern, deputy executive director of the DCTA, said the union would not be releasing any information about the number of votes cast or delve into other details until after the process concludes Tuesday, saying it’s the association’s policy to not discuss ongoing procedures.

“We don’t want to sway the vote or in any way influence or pressure anyone,” he said of union members. “It’s their decision.”

Union officials said Friday that a strike requires a two-thirds majority of members who cast votes but did not describe details about how the voting would be conducted. A spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment said strike votes are internal union matters over which the department does not have purview.

Denver teachers and special service providers, such as school psychologists, nurses, and speech language pathologists, must be union members to vote, but they can join at any time — including right before voting. The union represents more than 60 percent of Denver teachers.

Those who attended Saturday’s information sessions described the feeling in the room as positive and low-key, in contrast to the often volatile atmosphere of the last few contract negotiation sessions with the district officials, which were open to the public and streamed live.

“I think it was optimistic, with a lot of solidarity, but it wasn’t that intense,” said Jason Clymer, a first-year English teacher at John F. Kennedy High School. Several teachers who came to the microphone expressed concern for their students, he said — including a nurse who was worried about delegating authorization to dispense drugs to her students.

Before negotiations ended on Friday, DCTA President Henry Roman said it’s important to remember that a strike vote and even a strike don’t mean the end to bargaining. Rather, those actions send “a big signal” to an employer about how seriously employees take an issue.

Similarly, Cordova said the district would keep talking and negotiating with the union.

“It is critically important that we reach an agreement,” she said.

The earliest that a strike could start is Jan. 28.

Cordova said she would ask Gov. Jared Polis to intervene if the vote is to strike. Gov. Roy Romer helped negotiate an end to the last Denver teachers strike in 1994. That came after the state tried — unsuccessfully — to have a court declare the strike illegal.

Cordova said that while she disagrees with a strike she can understand why teachers would reach that decision. She said no corrective action would be taken against any teacher engaged in a legal job action.

“We will not allow for any kind of bad behavior on the part of our leadership teams,” Cordova said. “The most important thing we can do is create the right culture for our kids to learn.”

Kristin Lacario, an English as a second language teacher at McMeen Elementary School, said her decision to support a strike was challenging given the potential significant impact on families. More than eight in 10 families at the school qualify for government-subsidized lunches — a proxy for poverty — and 37 different languages are spoken there.

But Lacario — who as a senior team lead also coaches and evaluates teachers — said she also has seen the toll the ProComp system can take on teachers. Teachers’ bonuses took a big hit last year when the school narrowly missed a higher rating in the district system, she said.

“Why were they not willing to put forth that little extra bit?” Lacario said. “To me it seems like a social justice issue, too, in the sense that the people on the ground, day after day, serving our kids in our community … why are we not being compensated in accordance with that?”

Talks collapse, Denver teachers to vote on strike

2019-01-19T06:55:00+00:00

The Denver teachers union will hold a vote on whether to strike after months of negotiations over pay ended in deadlock.

The bargaining team of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and officials with Denver Public Schools met all day Friday and exchanged several proposals, but they could not close a gap of more than $8 million between the two sides.

Around 10:30 p.m., Superintendent Susana Cordova said the district’s analysis found the union’s latest proposal would actually widen the money gap between the two sides, but said the district wanted to keep talking.

“It’s late, but it’s not midnight,” she said, referring to the deadline to reach an agreement.

Rob Gould, a special education teacher and member of the bargaining team, ended the discussions at that point.

“We came here tonight in good faith,” he said. “We came to correct a longstanding problem in Denver. We made movement tonight, and we’re going to talk to our teachers tomorrow.”

The room packed with red-shirted teachers erupted in cheers. Some were also crying.

Becca Hendricks, a math teacher at Emily Griffith Technical College and a member of the bargaining unit, said she felt mixed emotions at the prospect of a strike: excited at the ability to make a big change for teachers and weighed down by the responsibility.

“It doesn’t feel good,” she said. “It impacts a lot of lives.”

Cordova said she was disappointed that the union called off talks.

“We’re not at the end of the day,” she said after the meeting broke up. “We were really willing to keep talking.”

For Hendricks, it didn’t seem like there was anywhere to go.

“It became clear that the money was not a place they were going to move,” she said. “That’s a hard sticking point for us. We’ve had little to no increases for so many years, so it will take a lot of money to make up all the damage that has accrued.”

A strike requires a vote of two-thirds of the union members who cast votes, union officials say. About 64 percent of Denver teachers are members, according to the union. Teachers can join the union even on the day of the vote, which will occur on Saturday and Tuesday, but they must be members to vote.

Cordova said she would ask the state to intervene if there is a positive strike vote. The state could require the two sides to do mediation, use a fact-finder, or hold hearings to try to reach a resolution. But the state can also decline to intervene if officials don’t believe they can be productive. That intervention would delay a strike but not prevent one if the two sides still can’t agree.

The earliest that a strike could occur is Jan. 28.

Denver teachers are feeling emboldened by a surge in activism by their peers across the country that began last year and continues to build. The vote here comes as a teachers strike in Los Angeles enters its second week.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association and Denver Public Schools are not negotiating their master contract — that deal was finalized in 2017 — but rather the ProComp system, which provides teachers bonuses for things like teaching in a high-poverty school, getting strong evaluations, having students who earn high test scores, or teaching in a high-performing school.

Denver voters approved a special tax to pay for these bonuses in 2005, which today generates around $33 million a year.

That system has been through several iterations but has been a source of frustration for many teachers because their pay was hard to understand and changed based on factors they could not control. District officials and the majority of the school board believe it is critical to keep bonuses for teachers who work in high-poverty schools as a way to retain those teachers. Turnover is a major problem in these schools and has big effects on students.

The average Denver teacher earns about $51,000 in base pay and $57,000 with incentives, according to data from the state education department and the district. That’s less than teachers in districts like Boulder Valley, Cherry Creek, and Littleton.

Both sides’ proposals moved teachers to much more predictable salary schedules that allowed for reliable raises if teachers stayed with the district and earned more education. The district proposal put an additional $20.5 million into teacher compensation, while the union’s last offer put an extra $28 million toward compensation.

The district spends about $436 million a year on teacher pay. The money for the raises would come from a combination of increased state funding and cuts to central office staff that Cordova described as deep and painful.

In addition to the total amount of money, the status of those high-poverty bonuses was a major sticking point. The district wants higher bonuses, and the union wants to put more of that money into base pay.

“To be able to bridge the gap between what is the difference in our two proposals is more than the $8 million that they were talking about because we were not willing to compromise on the need to recruit and retain teachers in our high poverty schools,” Cordova said. “We know for purposes of equity that it is so important to retain teachers in our schools that need them the most.”

But union members argued that a more reliable way to keep these teachers, who are often relatively early in their career, would be to offer them ways to more quickly increase their salary and have more stability in their economic situation. They said every other district in the region uses a reliable salary schedule, and Denver should, too.

That stance marks a major departure from some of the ideas in ProComp, among a suite of policies that have earned Denver a national reputation as an education reform hotbed over the last two decades, though both sides’ proposals met the letter of the ballot language.

Hendricks described driving a Lyft, delivering food, and tutoring to make ends meet, despite having 11 years of experience, a master’s degree, and working with at-risk students at the Emily Griffith campus. She had to move out of Denver and still has a roommate at 33 years old.

Hendricks said the union’s proposal offers higher lifetime earnings and the ability to earn raises more quickly. Cordova argues the district proposal is the stronger one for teachers, representing the largest single increase for teachers in district history and one that will give Denver teachers higher lifetime earners than those in any other metro area district.

Both sides will be trying to make their case over the next four days to teachers weighing their own compensation, the best interests of their colleagues and students, their savings accounts, and other factors in a strike vote.

More than 5,300 teachers and specialized service providers, such as social workers, psychologists, and speech language pathologists work in 147 district-managed schools. Roughly 71,000 students attend those schools.

Another 21,000 students attend Denver’s 60 charter schools. Charter teachers are not union members, and those schools will not be affected by whatever happens next.

Cordova said she was committed to keeping schools open and providing a quality educational experience for students even if there is a strike. In Los Angeles, where teachers are also on strike, many students are watching movies and playing games during the school day. The district will offer higher pay to substitute teachers and deploy central office staff to classrooms with prepared lesson plans, she said.

Students who get subsidized lunches will still be able to eat at school.

All eyes are on Denver’s teacher pay negotiations as a strike looms. Here’s where things stand and how to tune in.

2019-01-19T04:00:00+00:00

Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association have been negotiating for more than a year against a backdrop of widespread protests over teacher pay.

Now, the union is inching toward a strike.

The issues at play are narrower than they are in Los Angeles, where teachers are striking over pay but also class sizes and school resources. In Denver, the union and district agreed on a general contract last year. Now, the sides are focused on the district’s complicated pay-for-performance system, with the union pushing for higher salaries and more opportunities for raises.

The union says it will call for a strike vote on Saturday if a new agreement can’t be reached.

In the meantime, negotiations in Denver are particularly interesting because state law requires bargaining to happen in public. If you’re just getting caught up, or want to tune in as the back-and-forth continues, here’s what you should know.

When are the union and district set to negotiate, and how can I watch?

One session remains on the schedule:

Friday, Jan. 18, 9 a.m.-9 p.m.

Both sessions will take place at the Acoma Campus, at 1617 S. Acoma St., and are open to the public.

You can also watch online. The district often livestreams the negotiations — here’s where you can find them. It doesn’t always, because doing so takes staff time.

If the district isn’t livestreaming, the union will set up a Facebook Live with a cell phone and a tripod, but it will be of lower quality. Here’s the union’s Facebook page.

If you don’t see anything in either place, it probably means the two sides are caucusing, or meeting in private. Those meetings aren’t streamed.

If you tune in, you’ll see members of both negotiating teams. The union’s team includes Pam Shamburg, Denver Classroom Teachers Association’s executive director; Corey Kern, DCTA’s deputy executive director; Henry Roman, DCTA’s president; Rob Gould, a Denver teacher; and several other teachers.

The district’s negotiation team includes Mark Ferrandino, chief financial officer; Susana Cordova, superintendent; and Michelle Berge, general counsel.

What are the union and district at odds over?

The two sides are negotiating the contract that governs the district’s complex pay-for-performance system, known as ProComp.

Denver teachers have long said the pay-for-performance system is too complicated and unpredictable. It pays teachers a base salary and allows them to earn bonuses and incentives for things like high student test scores or working in a hard-to-fill position.

But giving up the incentives altogether would mean giving up tax money raised specifically for teacher salaries. In 2005, Denver voters passed a tax increase to fund ProComp, and the ballot language was specific about how the tax revenue would be used, including to pay teachers for things like working in hard-to-fill positions, increasing their teaching skills, and earning positive evaluations. District officials project the tax will raise $33 million next year.

Where do things stand?

The timing: The current agreement is set to expire at midnight Friday, and union leaders have said they will call for a strike vote starting on Saturday if a new agreement cannot be reached. (Voting would then conclude on Tuesday).

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association informed the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment on Jan. 8 of its intent to strike. A union must give the state 20 days notice, which means the earliest a strike could start would be Jan. 28.

The basics: The biggest sticking point is money. Buoyed by widespread protests over teacher pay in Colorado and other states, the Denver union has asked the district to invest about $30 million more of its $1 billion budget into teacher compensation.

The district’s offer as of Jan. 11 would invest $23 million more into teacher pay. District officials have said some of that money will come from increased state funding, but $7 million would come from cuts to the district’s central office, where many administrators work.

The salary schedule: The union has proposed returning to a more traditional salary schedule. The maximum base salary would be $100,000, which a teacher with a doctorate could earn after 20 years of positive evaluations.

After offering less than that for months, the district’s Jan. 11 proposal matched that $100,000 maximum base salary. Earning it would require a teacher with a doctorate to have 30 years of positive evaluations.

The base salary for a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree on the district’s schedule as of Jan. 11 would be $45,500. The union’s schedule would start at $45,000.

The union’s salary schedule differs from the one the district has proposed in one major way: it has more “lanes,” which allow teachers to get raises more frequently.

The “lanes” represent a teacher’s education level. The salary schedule also has “steps,” which represent a teacher’s years of satisfactory evaluations.

The union’s proposed salary schedule has nine “lanes” and 20 “steps.” The district’s Jan. 11 offer has only six “lanes” but 30 “steps.” In the union’s view, the district’s offer doesn’t give teachers enough of a salary boost for furthering their own education.

The district’s proposal is an attempt to diversify the ways teachers can get a pay raise. Teachers could move a lane by getting an advanced license or serving for 10 consecutive years, in addition to earning a higher degree or National Board certification.

Contract talks hit a sticking point Tuesday, with the union insisting the district embrace a salary table with its preferred structure for steps and lanes. Negotiations that were scheduled for all day ended before lunch as district negotiators regrouped. District officials say they want a counterproposal from the union, while the union says the ball is still in the district’s court.

About those bonuses: The district and the union also disagree on the size of the bonuses and incentives. The union favors larger base salaries and smaller incentives, with some as small as $1,000.

The district has proposed three different incentives at $2,500 each. One would be for teachers who work in high-poverty schools, where more than 60 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Another would be for teachers who work in hard-to-fill positions, such as special education and secondary math, and teachers who teach in Spanish.

The third $2,500 incentive would be in the form of a retention bonus for teachers who return to work at a set of 30 schools the district and the union deem “highest priority.”

About 72 percent of Denver teachers would qualify for one of the two $2,500 incentives, district officials said on Jan. 11. About 37 of those same teachers would qualify for both incentives.

A first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree who gets both incentives — say, a first-year special education teacher in a high-poverty school — could make $50,500 under the district’s proposal.

How did we get here?

Here is a timeline if you’re looking to dive even deeper.

Jan. 18, 2019: Liveblog: Follow Denver’s teacher pay negotiations here
Jan. 17, 2019: Denver district, teachers union make some progress as deadline looms, but still far apart
Jan. 16, 2019: Denver district, board members frame contract negotiations as debate over values
Jan. 16, 2019: Why I won’t strike: Denver teachers in high-poverty schools, like me, deserve real bonuses
Jan. 15, 2019: ‘The reckoning has come’: Denver teachers union takes hard line in negotiations
Jan. 14, 2019: Denver teachers union poll shows strong support for a strike, even among parents
Jan. 11, 2019: Some Denver teachers told us they’re ready to strike. Here’s why.
Jan. 10, 2019: Denver teachers threaten a strike at month’s end, district plans to keep schools open
Dec. 13, 2018: The Denver district has offered to raise teacher pay. Will it be enough to avert a strike?
May 30, 2018: Against a backdrop of protests, teacher contract negotiations in Denver get heated
March 15, 2018: Strike vote by Denver teachers no longer imminent due to contract extension
March 14, 2018: Denver teachers union leaders vote to call for a strike vote if pay negotiations fail
Nov. 29, 2017: Now up for negotiation: ProComp, Denver’s teacher pay-for-performance system
Sept. 1, 2017: Denver school district, teachers union reach agreement on contract that includes $1,400 increase to base pay (This is when the union and district reached a deal on their master agreement, which also included pay raises. The ProComp negotiations are separate and started soon afterward.)
April 20, 2016: Denver teachers confused, frustrated by parts of pay-for-performance system, report finds

Liveblog: Follow Denver’s teacher pay negotiations here

2019-01-19T03:30:00+00:00

Denver Public Schools administrators and Denver Classroom Teachers Association, the teachers union, are scheduled to meet all day Thursday and Friday, if necessary, to try to reach an agreement on the district’s controversial pay-for-performance system, ProComp. We’ll be updating this post as there is news to report. Find more about the negotiations here.

No deal

Friday, 10:30 p.m.: The district and union failed to reach a deal and a strike vote will begin Saturday.

After yet another long break to crunch numbers, district negotiators returned to the bargaining table with less than two hours remaining before the expiration of the district’s ProComp agreement.

Superintendent Susana Cordova said administrators were concerned that the union’s most recent offer was its last and best. The district proposed some change to the structure of the deal, but did not come up in dollars.

That was enough for the union bargaining team to call it a night about an hour and a half before the deadline.

“We came here tonight in good faith,” said Rob Gould, a special education teacher and member of the bargaining team. “We came to correct a long outstanding problem in Denver. We made movement tonight, and we’re going to talk to our teachers tomorrow.”

Cordova looked to her colleagues at the negotiating table.

“OK,” she said to them. Then they left the room, packed with red T-shirt-clad teachers and their supporters.

There will be two voting sessions — Saturday and Tuesday. For a strike to come off, two-thirds of union members who vote must agree to it, said union president Henry Roman. The earliest teachers would walk out is Jan. 28.

$1,750 vs. $2,500

Friday, 9:10 p.m.: Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova has said bonuses for teachers in high-poverty schools is a top priority and a line that she’ll hold. When the union returned to the negotiating table a little before 9 p.m., they acknowledged that by bumping up their proposed incentive from $1,500 to $1,750.

The union also agreed to certain caps on how quickly teachers could leverage in-district professional development for raises. But like the district before, they did not budge on money. They said this additional incentive, which more than 70 percent of teachers qualify for, could come from administrative bonuses or reserves.

But it’s still less than the district proposal of $2,500 for high-poverty schools and for teachers who return to certain high-priority schools. These bonuses are at the heart of the ProComp system, approved by Denver voters in 2005. Denver Public Schools general counsel Michelle Berge said the union proposal “involves gutting” the incentives.

In meaningful ways, the two sides are as far apart as they were 12 hours ago.

No more money

Friday, 5:15 p.m.: Denver Public Schools administrators came back with a counteroffer after four hours of calculations, and it was this: Denver teachers would have the opportunity to move up a “lane” into a different pay category through additional education without having to earn a master’s degree. They brought no additional money to the $20.5 million that the district has offered to put toward increasing teacher pay.

While the offer brought the district’s salary schedule a bit closer to the union’s in structure, the union negotiators responded strongly to the idea that there is not more money to be had. Roughly $8 million separate the two sides. Rob Gould, a special education teacher and member of the bargaining team, pointed to more than $4 million in bonuses that administrators got last year, with many individual bonuses equivalent to half a year’s pay for a beginning teacher. Union President Henry Roman cited the district’s $67 million reserve and said the district does not need to bank so much taxpayer money.

“If there is a strike, it will be because of your unwillingness to invest in a system that will ensure the students of Denver can have a high-quality education in every classroom,” Gould said.

Becca Hendricks, also a member of the bargaining team, described driving for Lyft, delivering meals, and tutoring to make ends meet — and still having to move out of Denver, even with 11 years of experience and a master’s degree.

“I’m 33 years old, and I have a roommate,” she said. “My parents warned me, but my high school teachers were able to afford houses. I had that modest expectation.”

The district offer represents a roughly 4.5 percent increase in the $436 million it spends on teacher compensation each year, while the union plan would be a 6.4 percent increase.

But the disagreement is not just about the amount of money.

Superintendent Susana Cordova said the district would not budge on the bonuses it gives to teachers in high-poverty schools. The additional value of those bonuses, compared to the union proposal, is nearly enough to close the gap between the two sides. The district says retention at schools with the bonuses has gone up, and that the bonuses are key to reducing achievement gaps by keeping experienced teachers in challenging schools.

Brian Weaver, also a teacher on the bargaining unit, said that class size and the emotional toll of not having resources to help students is a much bigger driver of turnover.

“Not one of those teachers has said, ‘I would stay if the bonuses are higher,'” he said. “I have had teachers come to me and say they just can’t handle it with this class size.”

The union is now considering its next moves. The ProComp agreement under discussion expires at midnight.

Back at bargaining

Friday, 12:40 p.m.: The two sides convened a little after noon for the first time on Friday. It was not to exchange proposals, but to discuss the implications of an error. Denver Public Schools officials realized they had not fully accounted for the impact of retaining more senior, higher paid teachers, which means their own proposal costs $3 million more than they had thought. This is good in some ways. It’s good for students that their teachers returned to their schools, and it brings the two sides closer together on total dollar amount — though they’re still roughly $8 million apart.

But reaching a deal remains complicated, and the time it took to understand the implications of the newly discovered costs was time not spent developing a counterproposal.

Superintendent Susana Cordova said the district continues to believe very strongly in the value of incentives for teachers in high-poverty schools, which cost between $7 million and $8 million a year. Neither the administration nor the school board wants to give these up, and that means that money isn’t available to change the salary schedule closer to the union’s.

The two sides also remain far apart on the value of professional development units. The district fears that without caps, teachers could move up multiple salary categories in a year, increasing their pay too quickly. Union negotiators believe that fear is unfounded, given what is required by these training units and the realities of teacher workload.

The district is now back to the drawing board.

Cordova said the work is challenging, but they will not stop.

“We are trying to determine if, with the budget that we’re at, which is a higher budget than we thought, can we put together a proposal that is a better offer for our teachers than we already have,” she said.

Friday, 10:30 a.m.: Denver Public Schools administrators and the bargaining unit of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association are back at work, caucusing separately, Friday morning. Thursday wrapped up with some small progress and a generally positive feel — but still a lot of ground to cover before a deal could be reached. You can read our story here.

Stay tuned

Thursday, 6:45 p.m.: We’ll reconvene in the morning. District officials plan to work late preparing their response to the union’s offer. We’ll be back on Friday.

Keep on

Thursday, 6:05 p.m.: Bargaining team member Rob Gould said the spreadsheets “would make you cry.” Most of the afternoon passed with the two sides trying to get to the bottom of some errors in the union’s offer from this morning, but the resolution seemed like a happy one. Union negotiators believe their counteroffer actually saves $2.5 million.

“I want to say thank you to the district,” Gould said. “This is really hard.”

“It’s really hard,” Superintendent Susana Cordova agreed.

With everyone relaxed and smiling, the district went back to work on the math and figure out a response. This is very different than Tuesday, when teachers in the audience waited and waited for a response that never came. Cordova said the district will first figure out how long their analysis will take, then tell union supporters if it makes more sense to keep working tonight or to reconvene in the morning.

This progress comes after community members and religious leaders from the Industrial Areas Foundation spoke first to the teachers to express their support and then delivered a message directly to Cordova in an upstairs office. They said her message to the community — expressed at a school board meeting and an email to parents Wednesday — that framed the debate as one of values made it seem as if district officials cared more about the fate of children than the teachers who work with them every day.

“This is not your district,” said retired teacher and member of the Jewish congregation B’nai Havurah Susan Cooper. “It is our district.”

Cordova said that was never her intent, that she knows that the district proposal also represents its values — and that people can have shared values but different ways of getting there.

“I would not have taken this job if I did not believe deeply in our teachers,” she said.

Behind the scenes

Thursday, 3:15 p.m.: School district labor negotiations take place in public in Colorado. The two sides can meet privately to work out their own positions — known as caucusing — but once they’re bargaining, those discussions must take place in public.

Representatives of the Denver teachers union charged Thursday morning that school board member Barbara O’Brien had violated that principle by reaching out privately to union representatives and offering one-on-one meetings with the district’s chief financial officer, Mark Ferrandino.

Pam Shamburg, the union’s executive director, described it as effort to “circumvent this table.”

“Please pass the message to Barbara that this is illegal,” special education teacher Rob Gould, a member of the bargaining team, said.

Ferrandino looked startled and confused by the accusation, and Superintendent Susana Cordova quickly said she “100 percent agreed” that bargaining happens in public at the table.

Reached by phone, O’Brien said she did not intend to go around the bargaining teams and that she did not engage in bargaining. She said she reached out to someone she’s known for years with the National Education Association, the national teachers union, to see if “a fresh set of eyes” would help the two sides make progress.

“I didn’t for a second think she would take the district side,” O’Brien said. “I’ve been involved with enough negotiations over the years to know that sometimes it helps to have some fresh energy when everyone is getting tired. … I did offer that if she wanted to look at the district proposal and talk about the numbers, then Mark is the best numbers person we have.”

O’Brien has not attended any of the bargaining sessions, unlike some of her colleagues, something for which the union has criticized her.

“I don’t believe that’s the role of a school board member,” she said. “We have a negotiating team, and I trust them.”

One step forward

Thursday, 2:30 p.m.: Thursday’s negotiations between Denver Public Schools administrators and the teachers union began with tense verbal sparring. But after an hour focused on the district’s concerns with the union’s proposed salary schedule and another three hours of private conversations about the details, the two sides have — at the very least — something to talk about.

The union has agreed to shave $2 million off their request for more teacher pay, and the district is rerunning its own analysis.

This represents progress from Tuesday, when the district negotiating team arrived expecting a union counterproposal and, when one was not forthcoming, did not return to the table even as more and more teachers arrived to observe. That long wait left some hard feelings that had to be hashed out Thursday before everyone could get down to business.

The district and the union are negotiating the terms for Denver’s pay-for-performance system known as ProComp, which provides teachers bonuses on top of their base salary for things like good evaluations, working in a high-poverty school, or working in a school with high ratings. The deadline to reach a deal is Friday, and if the two sides cannot agree, the union will hold strike votes on Saturday and Tuesday.

The district has moved away from much of the bonus structure that previously characterized ProComp and that many teachers complained introduced too much uncertainty into their pay. Both sides have presented more traditional “steps and lanes” salary schedules in which teachers get raises for years of service and for earning additional education and credentials.

The union proposal puts more money into base pay and provides more opportunity to move up before earning a master’s degree. The district proposal provides additional ways to advance, such as gaining national certification or reaching 10 years of service, which district officials see as a way to reward longevity without tying it to educational attainment. The district proposal also keeps more money for bonuses.

Much of the disagreement relates to the structure of the schedules and how each rewards teachers for different things, but underlying that is the question of money. The union proposal will cost more. Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova said the district has put in the money that it can — an additional $23 million toward compensation — while the union wants the district to come up with even more.

“You haven’t been putting in the money that you should have over the last 10 years,” Rob Gould, a special education teacher and member of the bargaining team, said during the morning session. “I get it, if I hadn’t been paying my bills for the last 10 years, I would have a hard time catching up too.”

Cordova said she feared the two sides aren’t operating from the same financial assumptions.

But for now, at least, the two sides are talking.

Denver district, teachers union make some progress as contract deadline looms, but still far apart

2019-01-18T03:53:52+00:00

Something unusual happened near the end of bargaining Thursday between the Denver teachers union and school administrators: The district offered a change to its proposal, and some teachers gathered in the audience snapped their fingers in approval.

The two sides are still far apart in terms of reaching an agreement on Denver Public Schools’ ProComp system, which offers teachers bonuses on top of their base salary for things like teaching in a high-poverty school or earning a strong evaluation. The deadline for a deal is Friday, with teachers set to vote on either strike or ratification Saturday and Tuesday. The district’s and the union’s proposals still reflect different ideas about how teachers should earn more compensation — and have very different price tags.

But Thursday’s session was a far cry from the intense frustration that marked Tuesday’s bargaining session. On that day, district officials departed the bargaining table to “process” after the union refused to make a counteroffer to the most recent district proposal. Teachers filled the room after school and waited in hot, cramped conditions for a response that never came.

Thursday’s session opened with tense verbal sparring, but by the afternoon, the union had made changes to its proposal that reduced the cost by an estimated $2.5 million. District officials said they would spend the night and early Friday morning analyzing the proposal and seeing where else they might be able to move.

The district did offer a small concession Thursday that some teachers seemed to appreciate: increasing tuition reimbursement 50 percent, to $6,000. Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova said research shows this type of incentive is a strong tool for recruiting and keeping teachers, especially teachers of color. The money for this will come from reducing the bonus that teachers get for teaching in a so-called “distinguished” school.

More often, Denver teachers have reacted with boos to offers that the district saw as significant steps toward the union position.

Beyond small steps like the tuition reimbursement, Cordova said she was “very open to considering” aspects of the union proposal, a sentiment that seemed to clear the way for more back-and-forth.

“The district has moved and DCTA was willing to change their proposal,” said Tiffany Choi, a French teacher at East High School who attended the bargaining session. “We both showed willingness to compromise, and that’s positive.”

Dana Berge, a member of the union bargaining team, said the district is “beginning to listen to us, but they are not listening to us in terms of the values in our proposal.”

Both proposals keep some bonuses, at much more modest levels, and put more money into base pay. And both proposals lay out a schedule for how Denver teachers can earn more money, both by “steps,” or number of years of service, and by “lanes,” or additional educational achievement.

The union proposal has more lanes and allows Denver teachers to start moving up by earning additional college credit or by taking the kind of professional development that teachers need to do anyway. Teachers take such training to maintain their teaching licenses — or because they see a need, for example, to learn more about helping students with trauma. The union’s counteroffer Thursday removed one of the lanes, bringing down the total cost.

The district’s first lane change comes with a master’s degree, completing 10 years of service, earning an advanced license, or earning national board certification.

Berge said the union proposal more closely mimics those in other districts and will keep “highly dedicated, highly trained, highly experienced teachers” in Denver and reduce the problem of losing more experienced teachers to better-off suburban districts while less experienced teachers concentrate in the highest-needs schools.

She argued that a more stable salary structure would do more to keep teachers in high-poverty schools than the bonuses given under the current system.

The union proposal will cost a lot more than the district proposal. Cordova said the district is in the process of identifying “deep, deep cuts” to administrative positions to redirect money to classrooms, but even those won’t provide all the money needed to close the gap between the two sides.

During the long period in which each side was working separately on its proposals, a group of religious and community leaders from the Industrial Areas Foundation arrived to offer support to teachers and then a direct message to Cordova. They criticized her for framing the disagreement as one about values.

“Please don’t dare insinuate that you care more about the children in hard-to-serve, high-poverty schools than we do,” said Susan Cooper, a retired teacher and member of the organization. “We value solidarity, not a divide and conquer approach. We value stability, which we don’t have because we can’t keep teachers in Denver.”

Billy Williams of the Denver chapter of the NAACP said parents and community members would support the teachers “if they are forced to strike.”

Cordova said it was never her intent to suggest one side held the moral high ground.

“We can have similar goals, similar values, and different ideas about how to get those done,” she said. “Good people can disagree and still care about our kids.”

The two sides expect to resume bargaining at 10 a.m. Friday.

Denver district, board members frame teacher contract negotiations as debate over values

2019-01-17T01:15:00+00:00

With time running out to strike a deal with the teachers union, Denver school district officials in a special board meeting Wednesday portrayed the unresolved issues in contract negotiations as a clash over values.

The hastily called meeting was primarily a briefing for school board members from the district’s chief negotiators and Superintendent Susana Cordova. But it was also a chance for the district — and a board that generally supports its positions — to seize the narrative.

Cordova framed the district’s stance as honoring core district values, including getting teachers into hard-to-staff jobs and high-poverty schools, and keeping them there.

Under negotiation is the district’s pay-for-performance system, called ProComp. It offers teachers a base salary and allows them to earn bonuses and incentives for things like high student test scores or working in a hard-to-fill position. The union would like to take some incentive money and put it toward higher base pay to lift the salaries of all teachers.

The district’s general counsel, Michelle Berge, on Wednesday said the union wants to take $10 million being used now to incentivize teaching in high-poverty schools and spread the money around “like peanut butter.”

Talks hit a sticking point Tuesday, with the union insisting the district embrace a salary table with its preferred structure for paying teachers by “steps” corresponding to a teacher’s experience and “lanes” representing education.

The two sides have bargaining sessions scheduled for Thursday and Friday, and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association has pledged to hold a strike vote Saturday if an agreement isn’t reached.

Denver teachers have long said the pay-for-performance system is too complicated and unpredictable.

Cordova acknowledged the two sides are far apart on money. The money on the table for teachers now, she said, “is not enough.” But she said the two sides should reach an agreement, then work together to “fix the core of the problem” — how the state funds schools.

Wednesday’s meeting gave board members a platform as Denver inches closer to what would be its first teachers strike in 25 years.

Board member Jennifer Bacon said a system in which teachers don’t know what they are going to be paid — it can vary from year to year under ProComp — is “crazy.”

“What are we really negotiating on to make teaching an idolized profession?” said Bacon, one of two board members who often push back against the district’s policies.

Member Happy Haynes said she put a higher priority on rewarding teachers who take hard-to-fill jobs and work in high-poverty schools.

“It isn’t just simply numbers moving around on cells on a spreadsheet,” she said. “There are values that we are articulating here.”

A teachers union representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Union President Henry Roman, however, has previously cited values in articulating the union’s stance.

“We know the district has the money to pay teachers a living wage,” Roman said in a statement last week, “and it’s time that they get serious about budgeting their stated values, so that we can have a deal by the 18th and prevent further stress on educators, students, and the community. Any further delay in getting a fair and transparent compensation system will only serve to aggravate the situation.”

On Friday, district officials presented a new proposal that would put an additional $6 million into teacher pay. That’s on top of the additional $17 million the district had already proposed, for a total of $23 million more. Taking into account a previously promised cost-of-living raise, the $23 million would increase teachers’ base pay by 10 percent from this school year to the next on average, district officials said.

Board member Carrie Olson, a former teacher, indicated the school district has more work to do to describe its offer.

“When I sit here, I know it sounds good, but I know that is not translating into the teachers in our schools,” Olson said. “The feeling isn’t, ‘This is a great deal.’”

That doesn’t appear to be lost on district officials. Cordova fielded teacher questions for an hour late Wednesday afternoon during a “telephone town hall” with educators after the district blasted them with robocalls informing them of the opportunity.

Teachers, meanwhile, organized informational community meetings at no fewer than three Denver schools Wednesday afternoon or evening, part of an effort to engage parents, said union vice president Christina Medina. In some cases, school administrators took part in those or previous meetings to discuss implications of a strike and explain the district position, she said.

“No one is more invested than parents,” said Medina, a teacher at Academia Ana Marie Sandoval elementary school in northwest Denver. “So connecting with them is important because they love our kids and we love our kids. It’s making sure we are on the same page. Making sure that teachers stay and we have great teachers in Denver.”

Why I won’t strike: Denver teachers in high-poverty schools, like me, deserve real bonuses

2019-01-16T23:22:41+00:00

I’m in my eighth year teaching in Denver Public Schools. I have spent my career teaching in Montbello, where a majority of my students qualify for free and reduced lunch. I have a master’s degree in English, and at High Tech Early College, I teach primarily concurrent enrollment classes, for which students receive both high school and college credit.

For the last five years, I have been rated “distinguished,” the district’s highest evaluation rating for teachers. That rating, plus my degree and the fact that I teach at a high-poverty school, means I benefit from many aspects of our current pay system, known as ProComp.

So I’m watching the Denver teacher’s union negotiations for a new pay scale closely. And I’m concerned.

For one, I believe that my distinguished rating reflects my hard-earned successes in the classroom. The union has advocated successfully to end bonuses tied to evaluations under the new contract, which is disappointing. I see that change as funding less effective teachers at the expense of others, and I worry they could drive strong teachers from the district.

But far more important to me are the existing bonuses for teachers who work in high-poverty schools. The union is advocating to shrink bonuses for teachers in Title I schools to $1,500 from $2,500, and redistributing the rest to increase everyone’s base pay.

I can tell you from experience that schools where many students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch — an indicator of poverty — face complex and often painful challenges. We don’t talk enough about how, all over America, most poor kids go to school with poor kids and rich kids go to school with rich kids. That means teachers in schools like mine aren’t working with a few students arriving with challenges — behavior problems, unaddressed trauma, worries about being undocumented, for example — but often entire classes of students who need special attention for those reasons.

If those bonuses keep shrinking, what incentivizes teachers to teach at schools like ours? If it’s the same pay at two schools, what will bring teachers into the places where we need them the most? A sense of vocation and moral purpose, for sure, but that ignores reality. Turnover at my school is relatively high, and evening out teacher pay could make it worse. Students at those schools deserve great teachers who stick around.

To be clear, I love High Tech, and I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not anti-union. All teachers should be compensated for the hard and important work that they do, and I’m excited to see pay rise for everyone. I don’t believe that strong base pay and bonus money for qualified educators are mutually exclusive.

But the union’s stance on high-poverty schools is indefensible. I hope it reconsiders.

Alison Corbett is a teacher at High Tech Early College and was a 2017-18 Teach Plus Colorado Fellow.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

‘The reckoning has come’: Denver teachers union takes a hard line in negotiations

2019-01-16T01:35:00+00:00

Negotiations grew more tense between the Denver teachers union and the district on Tuesday as the two sides struggled to find common ground over its pay-for-performance system.

Union and district officials appear to literally be at standstill. After a tense exchange before noon, district officials departed the room to regroup — and did not return to the negotiating table. Talks are scheduled to resume Thursday.

The day’s developments indicate that it may be growing more difficult for Denver to avoid a strike that would upend Colorado’s largest school district and add to a national wave of teacher activism.

On Tuesday morning, Denver Classroom Teachers Association representatives told district leaders that they want a traditional salary schedule, with “steps” corresponding to a teacher’s experience and longevity and “lanes” representing education. The district’s proposal, which would allow teachers who served 10 consecutive years to jump into the next lane, was unacceptable, the union said, and they don’t plan to budge.

“We need you to convert your structure to ours so we can move forward,” said union bargaining representative Robert Gould.

Asked what kind of changes the union might still be open to, Gould responded, “You’re not listening. You’re not listening to what we’ve been saying for the last two weeks, you haven’t been listening to what we’ve been saying for the last two months, you haven’t been listening to what we’ve been saying the last year, nor the last five years. What we’ve been saying is, we need the structure to be our structure. Then we can move forward.”

A long pause followed.

“Well, I don’t honestly know where we go from this ultimatum here,” said Michelle Berge, the district’s general counsel, adding that her team would regroup.

Then Gould continued.

“Denver teachers, they’ve met their limit,” he said. “There’s only so long you can continue to tell people no. And at some point, that’s what you’re going to get back — no. This Saturday, teachers are going to vote. They’re either going to vote yes for a commitment or they’re going to vote yes for a strike.”

“I understand that,” Berge said, explaining the district is struggling to find a way forward when the union hasn’t agreed to changes in months.

Then the room erupted with union supporters noting changes they had agreed to.

“Cut more central administration waste!” parent and education activist Amy Carrington yelled.

District officials said they were cutting central administration. Seven million dollars is being cut, and more is coming, they said.

As talk shifted back to the union, Pam Shamburg, DCTA executive director, said it was time for bigger change.

“The reckoning has come,” she said. “The district is going to have to dig deep. But it’s going to have to happen. And now is the time for the reckoning.”

The two sides went into a break — and didn’t meet again.

District officials said Tuesday evening that they are processing the union’s position and have work to do before Thursday.

Superintendent Susana Cordova told Chalkbeat district officials entered Tuesday’s negotiations feeling they had come a long way toward the union position. Cordova said the district remains committed to making a deal, but would still like to get a counter-proposal from the union.

“We would like to see something from them,” said Cordova, who took the district’s top job last month. “I am new to negotiating, but that’s generally how that works.”

On Friday, Denver Public Schools officials presented a new proposal that would put an additional $6 million into teacher pay. That’s on top of the additional $17 million the district had already proposed, for a total of $23 million more.

Corey Kern, the union’s deputy executive director, said the two sides need to reach a “fundamental understanding” of how a teacher can qualify to move up “lanes” and potentially earn more money.

“If not, it will be very difficult for us to make a counter to the district,” he told Chalkbeat. “We would like to get back to the table and work on the issue and come to an agreement. But right now, we’re so far apart.”

The union is pushing for teachers to be able to move up in the system not just if they have earned master’s degrees or doctorates, but from other avenues, such as taking taking college courses or completing district professional development units, he said.

Mark Ferrandino, chief financial officer of the Denver district, said steps and lanes have become a sticking point in part because of how much money it would take to fund the different proposals but also because of philosophical differences. The district believes its proposal actually allows for more flexibility for teachers, while the “very clear table” provides much more transparency than the old ProComp system.

Kern said the union was disappointed the two sides did not reconvene Tuesday — “it felt like we lost a day” — but is hopeful for what’s next.

Cordova said she believes a deal remains in everyone’s best interests, but if one cannot be reached, she will do everything possible to keep schools open. That includes offering more money to substitute teachers, deploying other district staff to classrooms, and preparing lessons for those people to teach.

The union, for its part, is also encouraging parents to send students to school if there is a strike — with the intent of proving how hard it is to run schools without teachers.

Bargaining sessions are scheduled for Thursday and Friday, if necessary. Without an agreement, union leaders plan a strike vote for Saturday, and a strike could start as early as Jan. 28.

Eric Gorski contributed reporting.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that it was a parent, and not a union representative, who shouted, “Cut more central administration waste!”

Denver teachers union poll shows strong support for a strike, even among parents

2019-01-15T13:00:35+00:00

As negotiations resume Tuesday between the Denver school district and the teachers union, the union has released a poll that shows strong support for its position — and even for the potential of a strike.

The telephone survey of 600 randomly selected Denver voters found that 82 percent of respondents side with the teachers over the school board on salary negotiations and that 62 percent would support teachers going on strike if there is no resolution by the end of January, the union said in a press release. Parents of Denver Public Schools students, those most affected by a potential strike, reported even higher levels of support.

The union did not release the actual questions asked in the poll. Though the results contrasted public support for teachers and the school board, district administrators like Superintendent Susana Cordova and Chief Financial Officer Mark Ferrandino are negotiating with the union, not the board.

According to a memo from Harstad Strategic Research released by the union, 92 percent of Denver school parents surveyed said teacher pay falls short, 89 percent said they side with teachers, compared to just 7 percent siding with the school board, and 69 percent would support a strike if a deal is not reached.

In a press release on the poll findings, the union further said that 74 percent of respondents had a positive view of teachers, compared to a third who had a positive view of the school board and that “nearly half of the respondents want the board to take a real change of direction.”

In 2017, union-supported candidates won two seats on the Denver school board. The other five members largely back the district’s current policies. Control of the board hinges on this fall’s election, and the union and its supporters are hoping to gain more seats.

Harstad Strategic Research is a national polling firm based in Boulder, Colorado, that mostly works for Democratic candidates. FiveThirtyEight gives the firm a B+ in its pollster rating. The poll was conducted between Jan. 7 and Jan. 10, before the district made its most recent offer.

Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association reached an agreement on their master contract in 2017. The two sides have now been negotiating for more than a year on the district’s pay-for-performance system, ProComp. The deadline for a deal is Friday, and union leaders plan to hold a strike vote Saturday if one is not reached.

If Denver teachers walk, it would be the district’s first strike in 25 years.

The timing of the poll release is intended to increase pressure on the district as the deadline approaches. Denver educators have been buoyed by a national wave of teacher activism. The union may also feel it has leverage because Superintendent Susana Cordova just took over on Jan. 7, and a strike would be a less-than-ideal start to her tenure.

Cordova is consistently attending negotiating sessions, in contrast to her predecessor Tom Boasberg, who rarely made appearances. Cordova also has promised to cut central office positions to help pay for teacher raises. At the same time, in an email to parents last week, Cordova said she would ask for state intervention if a deal is not reached and pledged to keep schools open in the event of a strike.

ProComp pays teachers a base salary and allows them to earn bonuses and incentives for things like high student test scores or working in a hard-to-fill position. Many Denver teachers don’t like it because it introduces uncertainty into their salaries.

But if the district abandoned the system entirely, it would have to give up tax revenue — estimated at $33 million next year. That’s because Denver voters agreed in 2005 to tax themselves at a higher rate specifically to fund this incentive system, intended to reward teachers for things like working in hard-to-fill positions, increasing their teaching skills, and earning positive evaluations.

The district’s most recent offer, made late Friday, would create a maximum base salary of $100,000 — the union’s stated goal for much of the negotiations — but it would take 30 years and a doctorate rather than 20 years to get there, as the union wants.

The base salary for a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree on the district’s schedule as of Jan. 11 would be $45,500. The union’s schedule would start at $45,000.

The two sides also disagree on the total amount of money the district should put into raising compensation for teachers, on the size of bonuses and incentives, and how many “steps” and “lanes” there should be, with each step and lane representing an opportunity for more pay. The lanes represent a teacher’s education level, and the steps represent a teacher’s years of satisfactory evaluations.

A step is based on how many years a teacher has been teaching, and a lane refers to how much education a teacher has.

The district and the union are scheduled to negotiate Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday this week.

We asked 3 Denver teachers why they’re ready to strike. Here’s what they said.

2019-01-12T04:39:57+00:00

The crowd was sparse before school ended. Then, around 3:30 p.m. Friday, dozens of teachers began streaming into the teacher pay negotiations between the Denver district and teachers union.

Negotiations are getting down to the wire. The current contract that governs Denver’s teacher pay-for-performance system, called ProComp, expires Jan. 18. The Denver Classroom Teachers Association has said it will hold a strike vote on Jan. 19 if an agreement is not reached. Because of state rules, the earliest a strike could start would be Jan. 28.

Late on Friday afternoon, Denver Public Schools officials presented a new proposal that would put an additional $6 million into teacher pay. That’s on top of the additional $17 million the district had already proposed, for a total of $23 million more.

Taking into account a previously promised cost-of-living raise, the $23 million would increase teachers’ base pay by 10 percent from this school year to the next, district officials said.

But when union negotiators asked for feedback from the teachers who’d come to watch — filling every chair, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and standing in the back — they got a series of loud boos and at least one expletive. Among their concerns: that the district’s proposal doesn’t give teachers enough of a salary boost for furthering their own education.

“We found a student with a loaded gun today,” one teacher said. “We do not get paid enough.”

Chalkbeat spoke with three teachers who attended Friday’s bargaining session. We asked their opinions on the progress of negotiations and their feelings about a strike.

Here’s what they said.

Lindsey Gillette, social studies teacher, Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design:

What do you, as a teacher, want from the district?
“I want to be able to feel like I can go to the doctor and pay my rent the same month. My commute is over an hour because I can’t afford to live where I teach. Students are their best selves when they’re safe and have food — and teachers are going to be the best teachers when their mortgage and rent is paid or they can get their cavities filled.”

What do you think about the prospect of a strike?
“It’s the last resort. We don’t want it to happen. … We want every kid across the district to have an equal and great education. You don’t get that when teachers are worried about being in poverty.”

“We love our kids so much, and when they know this is what we’re going through, they are with us. …. Our school day ended at 2:10 today and we walked out. Our hall was lined with kids walking with us, and kids being like, ‘I wore red today, miss. Can we picket with you?’”

Kurt Scheumann, English teacher, South High School:

What do you want parents to know?
“We see teacher turnover in DPS at a rate of 20 percent or more every year. And so parents need to know that their children’s teachers are fleeing the district, whether that’s for a different district altogether or for a different job.”

How has the teacher pay system affected you personally?
“I, personally, for my second to third to fourth year of teaching, saw a $1,000 pay cut every year because the bonuses and incentives each year decreased in value. … It just makes it impossible to plan for the future.”

How do you feel about the possibility of going on strike?
“Nobody wants to go on strike. I don’t know a single teacher who is excited to try to shut down the schools. That sounds awful. That sounds stressful. We like our jobs. We like our kids. We like the communities we serve. But it feels like it’s the only option at this point.”

Kathleen Braun, math teacher, Emily Griffith High School:

What do you think of the progress of negotiations?
“I started in 1968. I was around for the very first strike (in 1969). My question is, Why are we doing 50 years ago again? It feels very demeaning.”

How are you feeling about going on strike again?
“We don’t want to do this. There isn’t a teacher I know of who wants to go on strike. We love our students as if they were our own. We want the best for them.

“But as far as we can see, the best for them is to maintain a stable, well-educated, caring workforce and that’s not going to happen if we don’t go on strike. You can’t go to work and give 100 percent to your students when you’re wondering if you’re going to be able to make your mortgage and pay for your own child’s braces.”

Denver teachers threaten a strike at month’s end; district plans to keep schools open

2019-01-11T00:14:38+00:00

The Denver teachers union could go on strike as soon as Jan. 28, but the district superintendent assured families Thursday that schools would remain open even during a walkout.

“We know the possibility of a strike is unsettling for families,” Superintendent Susana Cordova wrote in a district newsletter emailed to parents and others Thursday.

The district and the union have been negotiating over teacher pay for more than a year. The current agreement is set to expire on Jan. 18, and union leaders have said they will call for a strike vote on Jan. 19 if a new agreement cannot be reached.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association informed the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment Tuesday of its intent to strike. A union must give the state 20 days’ notice, which means the earliest a strike could start would be Jan. 28.

In her letter, Cordova said Denver Public Schools would do everything it could to avoid a strike. That includes asking the state to intervene, which could put a strike on hold. State intervention can last up to 180 days, which could delay a strike until July.

This brinksmanship is also playing out in Los Angeles as teachers in the nation’s second largest district prepare to strike next week. Last year, teacher strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona drew national attention to issues of teacher pay and working conditions.

In Colorado, teachers staged statewide protests last spring, but then returned to their classrooms with these issues unresolved.

Union President Henry Roman said in a statement that teachers are disappointed that the district is already talking about getting state officials involved in negotiations.

“We know the district has the money to pay teachers a living wage,” Roman said, “and it’s time that they get serious about budgeting their stated values, so that we can have a deal by the 18th and prevent further stress on educators, students, and the community. Any further delay in getting a fair and transparent compensation system will only serve to aggravate the situation.”

But state intervention isn’t a foregone conclusion. The district must make a formal request, and state regulators can decide whether to grant it. Regulators did not intervene in Colorado’s most recent teacher strike, which happened last spring in the southern city of Pueblo.

In that case, state regulators said in a written decision that they rarely intervene unless both sides request it. The district and union in Pueblo had used a mediator and a fact-finder but were unable to come to an agreement. In deciding not to get involved, state regulators said the two sides “already have used the kinds of tools we might employ.”

The Denver district and union have been using a mediator since late September, when the union declared an impasse, which means the two sides are stuck and need outside help.

Denver teachers last went on strike in 1994. The strike lasted a week before the union and the district signed a compromise on teacher working conditions and other issues. The district used more than 1,000 substitute teachers to help keep schools open during the strike.

Money is the sticking point this time. Buoyed by widespread protests over teacher pay in Colorado and other states, the Denver union has asked the district to invest approximately $30 million more of its $1 billion budget into teacher compensation. That would make it possible for the most veteran Denver teachers to earn a base salary of $100,000.

The district’s latest offer would invest $17 million more into teacher pay. It would also simplify the salary schedule and offer teachers more predictability in their paychecks.

The district and the union are not negotiating the main teacher contract. They are negotiating the contract for the district’s complex pay-for-performance system, known as ProComp.

ProComp pays teachers a base salary and allows them to earn bonuses and incentives for things such as high student test scores or working in a hard-to-fill position. The union has long argued the bonuses make it difficult for teachers to predict their pay and plan financially.

The union wants to reduce the size of the bonuses and put more money into base pay. It’s not possible to get rid of the bonuses altogether because they’re funded by city tax revenue that voters specifically earmarked to incentivize Denver teachers to cover in-demand jobs, increase their teaching skills, and earn positive evaluations.

Getting rid of the bonuses and incentives would mean giving up the tax money, which district officials project will be $33 million this year.

The union and the district are scheduled to meet again Friday to continue negotiations. Three more sessions are planned for next week on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, Jan. 18.

The Denver district has offered to raise teacher pay. Will it be enough to avert a strike?

2018-12-13T21:55:12+00:00

Most Denver teachers would get raises under a new salary structure proposed by the school district Wednesday night. The proposal would boost the salary for first-year teachers by nearly 8 percent to $45,000 annually.

The current contract between the district and the teachers union expires Jan. 18, and the union has threatened to strike if an agreement is not reached.

While union leaders said the district’s proposal is “moving in the right direction,” they said it still falls short. For one, they said it wouldn’t give teachers enough of a salary boost for furthering their own education by taking classes toward earning advanced degrees.

“You’re listening,” Rob Gould, a special education teacher and member of the union bargaining team, told district negotiators. “I will say that. We still need you to listen further.”

Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association have been negotiating for the past year against a backdrop of widespread protests over teacher pay. The two sides are not negotiating the main teacher contract. Rather, they are negotiating the contract that governs the district’s complex pay-for-performance system, known as ProComp.

Negotiations have been heated, in part because of a state law that requires the district and the union to bargain in public where teachers can watch. Wednesday’s session was no exception. At the end, Gould pointed to a red and white button he had pinned to his union T-shirt.

“This button says, ‘Ask me why I am ready to strike,’” Gould said, as a chorus of teachers “mmmhmmm”-ed in the audience. “I’m ready to strike because I’m sick and tired of teacher salaries paying for other things. And you need to prioritize teachers.”

The sole finalist for the district’s open superintendent job, Deputy Superintendent Susana Cordova, has said repeatedly the district should invest more in teachers’ base pay.

District officials said their proposal would simplify the system. It would also increase by $11 million the amount of money Denver Public Schools spends out of its $1 billion budget on teacher pay. The $11 million would come from a combination of increased state funding and cuts to the central office, said Debbie Hearty, head of human resources for the district.

However, the proposal does not give the teachers union what it really wants: the opportunity for veteran teachers to earn $100,000. The union has proposed its own salary schedule that would pay a teacher with 20 years of positive evaluations and a doctorate a base salary of $100,000.

Under the district’s proposal, a teacher with a doctorate and 20 years of positive evaluations would earn a base salary of $85,750.

The union’s proposal would cost a lot more than $11 million, maybe even three times as much. But union leaders said the district could come up with the money if it prioritized paying teachers over other things, such as calculating school ratings they think are flawed.

The district’s proposal gets close to a $100,000 salary but not all the way. The highest it goes is a base salary of $90,750. That would be for a teacher with 30 years of positive evaluations and a doctorate or a combination of advanced degrees, certifications, and longevity.

The district is proposing that teachers who have worked for the district 15 years be bumped up on the salary schedule as a way to honor retention — a proposal Hearty called “bold.”

The two sides do agree on where the salary schedule should start: $45,000 for a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree. Currently, first-year teachers earn a base salary of $41,689.

A $45,000 starting salary would be higher than in the surrounding metro districts, including Jeffco, Aurora, and Cherry Creek, but still lower than the well compensated Boulder Valley School District, according to a chart prepared by Denver Public Schools.

The district and the union also disagree on the size of the bonuses and incentives. The union favors larger base salaries and smaller incentives, with some as small as $1,000. The district has proposed offering an extra $2,500 to teachers who work in hard-to-fill positions, high-poverty schools, or other schools deemed “highest priority” by criteria not yet set.

About 75 percent of the district’s roughly 5,000 teachers would earn at least one of the $2,500 incentives, and about 25 percent would earn two, according to the district’s calculations.

The district can’t get rid of the incentives altogether because of the way they’re funded. In 2005, Denver voters passed a tax increase to fund ProComp. The ballot language was specific about how the tax revenue would be used, including to pay teachers for things like working in hard-to-fill positions, increasing their teaching skills, and earning positive evaluations.

Giving up the incentives would also mean giving up the tax money, which district officials project will be $33 million next year.

The district and the union are next scheduled to meet Jan. 8, which will give them just 10 days to come up with a deal before the current contract expires and a strike vote looms. The union has been holding community meetings this week to explain to parents and community members why a strike is a possibility. The union has three more such meetings scheduled next week.

Against a backdrop of protests, teacher contract negotiations in Denver get heated

2018-05-30T23:09:59+00:00

Buoyed by the energy of recent teacher protests, plus a sizable increase in state education funding, the Denver teachers union is renewing its push to get the school district to agree to a new teacher pay structure.

The union has proposed a salary schedule that would pay the most senior teachers with the highest degrees a base salary of $100,000. District officials said the union’s plan is too expensive, even with the additional state money Denver Public Schools will receive.

That didn’t sit well with teachers who came on May 16 to watch the first negotiation session since the district and the union last met in March. Teachers shouted that after thousands of them marched on the state Capitol in April to demand more money for schools, the state budget is predicted to send $50 million more to Denver next year. Union leaders referenced recent teacher strikes in other districts and said Denver could do the same.

“We got the money!” one teacher hollered. “We just want a little piece of it!”

District officials said most of the additional money – which they calculate will total less than $50 million – will be spent on previously negotiated teacher raises, as well as boosting pay for the district’s lowest-wage workers.

“There’s not new money sitting around or going to other places,” Denver Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Mark Ferrandino said in an interview.

The two sides are not re-negotiating teacher raises, per se, but rather the structure of the district’s pay-for-performance system, called ProComp. Teachers currently earn a base salary based on their level of education and years of experience, how much training they completed the year before, and a yearly performance evaluation based partly on student test scores.

Teachers can also earn bonuses and incentives. This year, for example, teachers who work in schools with high percentages of students living in poverty can earn an extra $2,578.

Teachers argue that base salaries are too low and the bonuses make their paychecks unpredictable. Those issues are especially difficult to deal with given that housing prices in gentrifying Denver have skyrocketed, they said.

The average Denver teachers earns $57,753 in base salary and incentives, according to the district. A recent study ranked Colorado last among states for the competitiveness of teacher salaries.

“The district needs to pay me a salary that reflects the high cost of living in Denver so that I don’t have to work two jobs and live with my parents,” teacher Kevlyn Walsh told district negotiators.

Walsh, a 29-year-old art teacher at East High School, said she could make more money if she quit teaching and worked full-time at her second job as a restaurant hostess.

Allison Mitchell, a special education teacher at South High School, said the district’s pay scale sends a message to teachers that the district doesn’t value them. That feeling can lead to high turnover, teachers said, which they argued isn’t good for students.

“Do I have to get a sugar daddy to stay in this profession?” Mitchell asked negotiators. “I want you to join with us and help create a pay scale that is lucrative enough that when I tell my students that they should be a teacher, they won’t laugh in my face.”

District senior counsel Michelle Berge calmly tried to explain how the additional state money would be spent. According to Ferrandino, the district will likely get $36 million extra, not $50 million. The $50 million number came from state education officials, who Ferrandino said didn’t take into account declining enrollment and fewer low-income families. State funding is based on student population, with extra money allotted for students from low-income families.

State law requires that some of that $36 million be passed on to independently run charter schools, Ferrandino said. Denver will have more than 60 charter schools next school year, which is more than any other district in Colorado.

The rest of the additional money will go toward employee compensation, Ferrandino said. That includes several million dollars to increase hourly pay for the district’s low-wage workers to help fill those positions in a tight job market, and several million to offset the increased pension contributions teachers will be required to make starting next year. It also includes money for pay raises negotiated last August for a new five-year teachers contract.

Union negotiators questioned how the district could have known during last year’s negotiations that it would get additional money this year. The back-and-forth got heated.

Berge: We knew there was a potential, and that was the only reason we knew we could afford what we agreed to last August. Rob Gould, a special education teacher and member of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association bargaining team: Well, I’m curious about that because you never shared that at the negotiations table. That doesn’t seem like it’s really bargaining in good faith. Berge: We took a huge risk. That’s part of bargaining. We took a risk. Gould: I think you’re taking a risk now by putting out that misinformation. A teacher in the audience, shouting at negotiators: You told us there was no money! You’re telling us now you knew there was money?

Yes, Ferrandino said in an interview. The district, he said, was projecting that Colorado’s booming economy would allow lawmakers to increase school funding this year. He said district officials were “very clear” during negotiations that Denver Public Schools wouldn’t be able to afford the new teachers contract without additional money.

Restructuring the district’s pay-for-performance system the way the union has proposed would take even more money, district officials said. The two sides agreed to extend the current agreement until January 2019 in the hopes that Colorado voters will approve a tax increase in November that would raise $1.6 billion for schools.

But teachers and union leaders said the additional state money should be enough.

“Our teachers felt like that was the promise: You do what you can to get more money, and we’ll do what we can to get teachers a living wage,” said Corey Kern, the union’s deputy executive director. “I think this is a little bit of bait-and-switch from the district.”