Chalkbeat

At retreat, Denver school board members discuss trust, agenda setting, ‘convoluted’ governance framework

2026-08-18T01:49:35+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.

The Denver school board was polite Monday as the seven members and Superintendent Alex Marrero publicly discussed some of the underlying reasons why, in the words of the paid facilitator, “the last month or two has not been super smooth.”

The most animated discussion centered on how the board sets its meeting agendas, a sore spot for some members who said they’ve struggled to get their priorities heard. Board members also talked in general terms about how to restore broken trust, the importance of working together even if they disagree, and the steep learning curve experienced by new members.

No one raised their voice or pointed any fingers. But tension was at times palpable in the silences. Some board members spoke so softly that it was hard to hear them from 10 feet away.

“This is the most collaborative I’ve ever seen the board,” member Amy Klein Molk said near the end of Monday’s eight-hour board retreat. “I am so proud to be here right now and so grateful for this conversation. We need more of this in general.”

The retreat comes after Marrero wrote a letter to board President Xóchitl Gaytán in June detailing several frustrations, including that board members are too involved in administrative matters. Marrero’s letter said he is caught in the crosshairs of a “litany of ongoing interpersonal issues amongst board members,” some of whom he said have canceled two-on-two meetings with his staff “because of who they are paired up with.”

A day after he sent the letter, Marrero told the board he had applied for another job in Miami. He didn’t get the position. Seven months earlier, his name was leaked as a finalist for the top schools job in Chicago. At the time, he said he was committed to Denver.

Marrero and the board met behind closed doors last month to discuss their working relationship. They emerged from that meeting striking a more conciliatory tone, although tensions between board members bubbled up in the brief public portion.

Similar tensions have surfaced at previous board meetings, with some members accusing Gaytán of rejecting their requests to add items to the meeting agendas. The policy framework that the board uses, called policy governance, is often at the center of the disagreements because board members interpret its rules differently.

“Nothing is clearly defined,” board member DJ Torres said. “Everything is up for interpretation.”

Board members noted that the way the Denver school board interprets policy governance is different from the way other school boards do, with some members calling Denver’s version “convoluted,” strict, and too black-and-white. But board members didn’t have a clear answer when facilitator Keith Gruen asked why the board hadn’t changed the framework.

“We skirt around this at every retreat we have,” board member Kimberlee Sia said.

Klein Molk added, “I feel very strongly that we lack trust. And I don’t think we can move forward until we figure out a way to move through that.”

Monica Hunter suggested the tension is because some of her fellow board members want things to stay the same while others are pushing for change.

“I’ve also heard that we’re ‘one voice,’” Hunter said, referring to a principle of policy governance. “No, we’re not. That’s why we’re elected — to be different voices.”

Gruen spent part of the retreat encouraging board members and Marrero to find common ground. They paired up for an activity where they shared details about their lives by finishing the sentence, “If you really knew me, you’d know…” They also did some lighthearted icebreakers, including naming their favorite home cooked meal and the first music album they bought.

Gruen was paid nearly $10,000 to facilitate, according to a district spokesperson.

By the end of the retreat, the board pledged to hold a public study session to workshop Marrero’s latest strategic plan for the district, his second since coming to Denver five years ago. They also discussed revising the board’s policy for agenda setting. Gruen gave them some homework, too: to get coffee or go on a walk with a board colleague, just to talk.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero to school board: ‘I can no longer ignore these concerns’

2026-06-26T01:43:55+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.

A day before Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero told the school board that he had applied for another job, he sent a four-page email of concerns about the Denver board.

“Respectfully, I can no longer ignore these concerns,” Marrero wrote in the June 8 email to board President Xóchitl Gaytán. He added that “the current trajectory” is “increasingly untenable.”

The email, which Chalkbeat obtained in a public records request, shows Marrero believes the board is overstepping its bounds. It could also shed light on why he’s looking to leave Denver Public Schools after five years at the helm of Colorado’s largest district. Marrero is a candidate for the top job in Florida’s Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

Marrero declined an interview for this story. But his email lists several concerns, including:

The board is getting too involved in administrative matters. Under DPS’ framework, the board sets policy and the superintendent carries it out. Marrero referenced several instances that he said blurred that line, including a proposed board policy that would require schools to use a certain approach to teach reading.
The board violated his contract. The example Marrero cited is from February, when the board voted to go into a closed-door executive session without him, which would have been against his contract. The board reversed its vote, and he was included.
He and his staff are in the crosshairs of disputes among board members. “Board members not speaking to each other, canceling 2x2 meetings because of who they are paired up with and a litany of ongoing interpersonal issues amongst board members puts me in a no-win situation,” Marrero wrote. The 2x2 meetings consist of two board members meeting with district staff so as not to violate open meetings law.
The board isn’t holding itself accountable. Marrero wrote that while he has had four formal evaluations, the board hasn’t done any self-assessments.
The board is trying to create “a parallel legal advisory system.” Some board members have been pushing for the board to hire its own attorney.

Other emails obtained in a public records request show that board members have recently accused each other of violating board policy and open meetings law, though none of the recent accusations have resulted in a public discussion or censure. The board last censured one of its members — John Youngquist — in November.

In interviews and written statements, some board members said they agreed with Marrero’s concerns, while others said they aren’t true. Two of the seven board members, Kimberlee Sia and Amy Klein Molk, declined to comment.

Gaytán, who was first elected in 2021, said in a statement that she hopes the board recommits to its governance model, which says members should stay out of day-to-day operations.

“Superintendents of the highest caliber choose districts where governance is predictable and professional,” she said. “When boards undermine that framework, we risk driving away the visionary leaders our students and families and families deserve.”

Marlene De La Rosa, who was elected in 2023, said she is committed to working with her colleagues to address Marrero’s concerns. As for the board’s dynamics, De La Rosa said, “Collectively, there’s room for improvement. It would benefit us to do some self-evaluation.”

Youngquist, who was also elected in 2023, had a different take.

“Any representation that our current board is grounded in dysfunction is false,” he said in a statement. He said recent accusations between board members are “fabrications.”

Board Vice President Monica Hunter, who was elected in November, mentioned one board member in particular but didn’t name them. She said in a statement that the member has “struggled to move beyond the dysfunction of their past, and that has been reflected in the many 6-1 votes, but the rest of us remain united in our work and clear about who we serve.”

Board minutes show at least three 6-1 votes this year. Gaytán has been the sole no vote each time. This is Gaytán’s second stint as board president. Her first, from 2021 to 2023, was also marked by personality conflicts among board members.

Gaytán said her votes have consistently reflected her values.

DJ Torres, who was elected in November, said he wasn’t surprised byMarrero’s email, because the superintendent alluded to these concerns before. Torres said some board members are also frustrated with the way the board conducts business. But Torres added that it’s opportunistic timing for Marrero to send such an email just as he’s applying for another job.

Policy governance is at the center of the tension between Marrero and the board. A previous board adopted the framework, which is meant to set clear expectations for both sides, in 2021 to help attract a new superintendent amid accusations that it had micromanaged the last one. Marrero was hired that same year.

Policy governance is written into Marrero’s contract. It says that the board sets goals but “will avoid telling the Superintendent or staff what to do or how to do it.”

In his email, Marrero wrote that he has “observed repeated efforts by individual Board members to become involved in academic implementation, instructional decisions, school operations, and administrative matters that fall squarely within the Superintendent’s delegated authority.”

He also raised concerns about board members questioning his recommendations. In April, the board rejected his recommendation against expanding the district’s innovation zone, which is a semi-autonomous group of schools. Marrero said adding another school to the zone would amount to self-segregation, because the zone students are whiter and wealthier.

The board voted to expand the zone anyway. Some board members were sympathetic to parents and educators who said they’d carefully followed the application process. Marrero asked if that meant he had to recommend a yes vote — a point he also raised in his email.

“The answer to that question has significant implications not only for Innovation applications but for every area where the Superintendent is expected to exercise professional judgment,” he wrote.

Marrero’s contract says that if the board materially alters its governance policy, he can deem it a termination of his contract. It says he should first provide the board president a written notice of his concerns and enter into good faith discussions to resolve them.

If the board terminates Marrero without cause, his contract says he receives 12 months’ salary. He earned $346,529 this past school year.

In a statement, Marrero said the board has not informed him that it has materially altered its governance policy, “nor has it responded substantively to the concerns I raised.

“Before discussing hypothetical remedies, it would be appropriate to first ask whether the Board believes its actions are consistent with the governance model it adopted and the contractual commitments it made,” he said. “I have honored my commitments and will continue to do so.”

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Denver school board meeting detours into dispute over agenda items

2026-03-06T06:24:01+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.

Tensions flared at a Denver school board meeting Thursday when two members accused the board president of rejecting their requests to add items to meeting agendas.

“I believe you have unjustly and unilaterally made decisions to withhold things from the agenda,” board member DJ Torres said at one point to board President Xóchitl Gaytán.

Board Vice President Monica Hunter agreed, saying she was “very concerned” that Gaytán “is not fulfilling her duties.” Hunter said that disputes over agenda items had happened several times in the three months since she and Torres were elected in November and Gaytán was chosen as board president for a second time in December.

Gaytán said the board president has the final say over the meeting agendas. She also implied that Torres wasn’t clear in his emails about what he wanted to add.

Thursday’s argument recalled a particularly contentious era of the Denver school board. Gaytán’s first stint as board president, from 2021 to 2023, was marked by personality conflicts, power struggles, and tense debates among members. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, then a mayoral candidate, called the board dysfunctional. Voters cited that dissatisfaction when they ousted two incumbents in the 2023 school board election.

“We have to show the public that we can become a fully functioning board that they would like to see,” Gaytán said in an interview after that election.

Thursday’s heated conversation began when Torres asked for a “point of order.” Gaytán attempted to cut him off and ask the school district’s lawyer, Aaron Thompson, to intervene.

“Excuse me, I would like to finish my point of order,” Torres said. “He can respond after I’m done.”

What followed was a convoluted back-and-forth between Torres, Gaytán, and Thompson about board policy and procedure.

Torres said he asked Gaytán on Monday to add a discussion to Thursday’s agenda about the policy for setting meeting agendas. Gaytán said she didn’t add it because she didn’t think that a two-member working group, including Torres, was ready to bring a proposal to the full board.

Throughout the discussion, Torres and Gaytán accused each other of violating procedure.

“Dr. Torres, you are out of order,” Gaytán said at one point.

“No, you’re out of order,” Torres responded.

The conversation wound down after Thompson reiterated the proper way to address an alleged policy violation by a board member. There are three steps: A private conversation about the potential violation, a public discussion at a board meeting, and finally a public censure.

“I can settle with that,” Torres said. “Because this feels like a clear violation.”

The debate ended when another member called for a short break. The vote was unanimous. The board meeting resumed after a five-minute break.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Denver’s last innovation zone could shrink as 1 school nears return to district control

2026-01-09T03:28:52+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.

Denver Public Schools’ only remaining innovation zone could soon shrink.

Innovation zones are a reform-era invention that allow district-run schools to operate with charter-like autonomy. Schools in zones are overseen by nonprofit organizations with executive directors who take on a supervisory role instead of district administrators.

But the number of zones in Denver has dwindled in recent years from three to one as a school board majority backed by the Denver teachers union has reined in school autonomy.

Now the last remaining zone, called the Luminary Learning Network, appears poised to go from eight schools to seven next year when one of its schools, Ashley Elementary, reverts to district control. And an effort to keep eight schools in the zone may not have support from DPS leaders.

A presentation posted on the school board’s website earlier this week said Willow Elementary had requested to join the zone for next school year. But district officials were recommending the school board vote no, according to the presentation, which is no longer on the website.

Their reasoning, the presentation said, was that the addition of Willow would make the zone into a collection of “more affluent” schools, which would contradict the zone’s commitment to equity and the school board’s emphasis on representation.

Willow has withdrawn its application to join the zone, district spokesperson Scott Pribble said Thursday. But the district anticipates Willow will resubmit it in the near future, he said. Willow Principal Catrina Pazo did not respond to requests for comment.

The Luminary Learning Network was founded in 2016 by four schools that wanted more autonomy over how they spent their time and money and the freedom to try new ideas. The district has consistently renewed its contract with the zone every three years. The latest contract is now up for renewal, and the school board is expected to vote later this month.

District officials told the board Thursday that the decision for Ashley Elementary to return to district control next school year was a mutual one between Ashley and zone leaders.

Paige Neuharth, the district’s director of authorizing and accountability, also cited Ashley’s “current academic performance trajectory.” Ashley’s test scores have declined recently and the school earned a red rating this year, the lowest on the state’s color-coded scale.

“A transition to district management is viewed as the most effective way to prioritize instructional coherence and operational stability for the Ashley community,” a district spokesperson said.

Superintendent Alex Marrero has pushed for a more centralized approach to school improvement in the four and a half years that he has helmed DPS. That approach is a departure from past superintendents who used flexibility as an improvement strategy.

Bailey Holyfield, the zone’s executive director, said the renewal period was a chance to evaluate whether the zone’s schools were aligned with its theory of action that flexibility from district curriculum, training, and other mandates empowers educators and better serves students.

In an interview, Holyfield said that “it makes the most sense for Ashley to rejoin district management” at this time. She said the decision was made with “mutual respect for and care for Ashley,” and she noted that the zone is open to working with any school, regardless of its rating.

Ashley Elementary Principal Janet Estrada referred questions to Holyfield.

Willow Elementary has the state’s highest rating, signified by the color green. But district leaders had other concerns about Willow joining the zone, according to the now-removed presentation.

The students at the zone schools are already whiter and wealthier than the district as a whole, and while the students at Ashley are nearly all students of color, Willow is almost half white.

Replacing Ashley with Willow would drop the zone’s percentage of students of color from 59% to 56%, according to the presentation. That’s far below the districtwide percentage of 75%.

Willow was briefly part of another now-defunct innovation zone called the Northeast Denver Innovation Zone. Willow left that zone in 2021 before it dissolved in 2024. Another zone, Beacon Network Schools, was dissolved by the school board in 2023.

The board has rejected innovation zone expansion requests before, though never for the Luminary Learning Network, which has grown over the years.

It’s unclear when the board might vote on adding Willow to the zone. The board is scheduled to vote on renewing the Luminary Learning Network’s contract, without Ashley, on Jan. 22.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Pueblo District 70 board member resigns in wake of ‘public Christian school’ controversy

2025-12-10T18:05:34+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.

Pueblo District 70 school board member Anne Ochs abruptly announced her resignation during a board meeting Tuesday evening after a district parent called her out for helping quietly bring what’s been billed as Colorado’s “first public Christian school” into the district.

Hannah McDowell, who has three children in district schools, spoke during the public comment period at the end of the meeting. She criticized Ochs for keeping key information about the school, Riverstone Academy, from the public.

McDowell also expressed concern that Ochs failed to disclose she’d already signed a contract to work for Riverstone’s authorizer, Education reEnvisioned Board of Cooperative Educational Services, or ERBOCES, when she voted in June to allow the school to open within district boundaries.

Pueblo School District 70 board member Anne Ochs.

McDowell said she learned about it from news coverage and cited details reported exclusively by Chalkbeat. She handed out copies of Chalkbeat stories and other documents to Ochs and the other Pueblo 70 board members after she spoke.

“Ms. Ochs, your lack of transparency and misleading statements are beyond disappointing,” she said. “Your constituents should not have to learn about a serious conflict of interest from a news article months after the fact.”

Colorado’s ‘first public Christian school’ violated health and safety rules, documents show

McDowell then asked Ochs, who was first elected in 2021 and has two years left in her current term, to resign. Ochs had been the president of the five-member board until a new president was selected at Tuesday’s meeting.

After McDowell’s three-minute statement, Ochs responded angrily.

“First off, I didn’t start with ERBOCES until July 1,” she said. “Secondly, I have to work for a living and this had nothing to do with Riverstone. I don’t work with Riverstone. I didn’t even know about Riverstone being one of the programs.”

Ochs finished by saying, “You know what? You’re getting your wish come true, because I was planning on resigning anyway. I’m done.”

Ochs’ announcement was met with a “thank you” from the audience and a smattering of applause.

Ochs then stood up, closed her laptop, and walked out of the board room. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Ochs emailed a short resignation letter to the board and district superintendent on Wednesday morning.

“This decision has not been an easy one, but due to increasing time constraints and personal commitments, I am no longer able to devote the level of attention and energy that the students, staff, and community deserve,” she wrote.

Ochs said in the letter, obtained by Chalkbeat through a public records request, that her resignation is effectively immediately.

Riverstone opened with about 30 K-5 students in August, in a light industrial area just outside Pueblo city limits. Its website describes it as a public elementary school offering “a Christian foundation” and Christian curriculum, but its religious affiliation wasn’t widely known until early October.

That’s when the head of the public education cooperative that authorizes Riverstone publicly declared it the state’s first public Christian school. The next day, the state warned that it could withhold public funding from the school because the state constitution doesn’t allow religious public schools.

In November, Chalkbeat obtained an email suggesting that Riverstone was created to spur a lawsuit over the question of whether public money can be used for religious schools. The U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked on the issue in April.

The email came from Brad Miller, a lawyer who represents District 70 and ERBOCES. When he sent it on June 4, Ochs quickly responded saying the Pueblo 70 board would discuss putting the issue on the agenda, according to emails obtained by Chalkbeat.

Christian law firm’s search for test case led to religious public school in Colorado, emails suggest

But when the board voted in late June to allow Riverstone to open within district boundaries, Ochs didn’t publicly mention that Riverstone was a Christian school or that it was meant to spur a legal test case.

When asked in October by Chalkbeat if she’d known about Riverstone’s religious affiliation when she voted on it, Ochs first said no. The next day, she called back and said she knew the school planned to use Christian curriculum, but added, “to me that doesn’t make it a religious school.”

Ochs also acknowledged in October that she’d started a job with ERBOCES in July, but indicated that she’d interviewed for the position after the June vote on Riverstone.

But McDowell, the district parent who spoke Tuesday, said that Ochs signed the contract for her new job on June 9. That was two weeks before the June 24 Riverstone vote, according to a copy of the contract reviewed by Chalkbeat.

This story has been updated with information about Ochs’ resignation letter.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado Springs 11 teachers face warnings, discipline, or termination for strike-related actions

2025-12-10T01:22:05+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.

Twenty-five teachers in Colorado Springs District 11 received warnings or were penalized by district officials because of actions during the run-up to a one-day strike by the teachers union in early October, according to union officials.

Union leaders say the district’s sanctions are part of a broader union-busting effort that could push teachers out of the classroom.

Angel Givler-Viers, a fifth grade teacher who is active in the teachers union and has a large social media following, faces the most severe punishment. The district superintendent recommended at the Dec. 3 school board meeting that she be fired for insubordination and neglect of duty.

Jessica Wise, a spokesperson for the 22,000-student District 11, said by email that “a number of staff received appropriate communications” following events surrounding the strike on Oct. 8. She couldn’t confirm whether the number was 25.

The flurry of warnings and discipline measures handed out to teachers involved in the strike comes after more than a year of growing tensions between school district leaders and the Colorado Springs Education Association teachers union. The school board voted a year ago to let the union’s master agreement with the district lapse at the end of last school year, a move that enraged many teachers and helped spark the strike.

David Graf, a union official, said in addition to Givler-Viers a second teacher is on paid leave now for actions prior to the strike. A third teacher was on paid leave earlier this fall for materials distributed during the strike but has returned to the classroom, he said.

Givler-Viers has been on paid administrative leave since Oct. 6. Wise said it could be weeks or months before the school board votes on whether she should be fired.

District 11 has about 1,650 teachers. Last year, about two-thirds were in the union, but that number has gone down, partly because many teachers left the district last year, Graf said.

Besides objecting to the end of the master agreement, teachers union members have cited general concerns, such as low morale and lack of teacher voice in district decisionmaking, and specific ones, including a new policy banning most flags, including pride flags, from district classrooms and a recent decision to cut several pages on gender identity out of a high school health textbook supplement.

Wise confirmed that the district’s curriculum department removed the textbook pages in August because they weren’t aligned with the district’s approved curriculum and standards, according to an October Rocky Mountain PBS story.

Wise said the district has made big investments in teachers in recent years, including this year giving licensed teachers a 4% recurring raise and a 6% onetime bonus. The district has also launched a districtwide teacher coaching program and eliminated central office jobs in order to preserve classroom positions, she said.

Givler-Viers, who taught literacy at McAuliffe Elementary and often goes by Dr. G., believes the district’s effort to terminate her is part of a broader effort to silence and scare educators.

“It’s just way bigger than me,” she said. “It impacts all of us. And if they get away with it now, they’re going to continue doing it.”

Social media posts lead to district investigation

Givler-Viers received a letter that outlined four allegations against her on Nov. 21, about seven weeks after being put on administrative leave, said Graf, who’s been involved in the case.

One allegation in the Nov. 21 letter cites unprofessional conduct stemming from inappropriate social media posts. The other three allegations cite issues that arose after she was placed on leave, including that she set foot on district property and talked to district staff in violation of the leave conditions and that she didn’t answer questions fully and truthfully during the district’s investigation.

Givler-Viers said she stood on a step leading to the district administration building to make a speech to union members during a censorship vigil while she was on leave.

Graf and Givler-Viers said the district hasn’t specified what social media post or posts prompted the first allegation.

Wise said the district can’t comment on individual cases or timelines, but said “employees recommended for termination are provided information regarding allegations and findings at the appropriate stage of the process, consistent with those legal requirements, prior to any Board of Education consideration.”

Givler-Viers, who’s taught in District 11 for eight years, has more than 18,000 followers on TikTok. Many of her posts are short videos in which she speaks directly to the camera about issues ranging from the unpaid work teachers do to the challenge of taking sick time as a teacher.

About a week before the strike, she posted a video in which she suggested that parents seeking to support the union keep their children home on the day of the strike. She cautioned that children attending school that day could end up in large classes staffed by central office employees with no teaching experience.

“ … that means your kids could be in a classroom with however many other kids show up, with an accountant," she said in the post, which has nearly 90,000 views.

A week after the Sept. 28 TikTok post, Givler-Viers said she was going over Latin and Greek roots with her students when she was asked by her school principal to come to the office. A district human resources official told her she was being put on administrative leave while she was investigated for her social media posts. She went back to her classroom to gather her personal items and was escorted to her car.

“I just took my cell phone and my car keys and I left, and the kids … they’re like, ‘Are you OK? Where are you going? What’s happening?’” she said.

‘I can’t do it anymore’

Graf said 22 teachers received either a conference memo or a letter of reprimand because they referenced the strike in messages or in plans for substitute teachers who worked on the day of the strike.

A conference memo is one of the district’s mildest responses to an infraction and warns employees about a violation of board policy but isn’t placed in their personnel file. A letter of reprimand is a more serious penalty.

Jim Dobyns, who goes by the first name Talsen, is a physical education teacher at Rogers Elementary School. He received a conference memo around the time of the strike. He said it was the last straw that prompted him to resign. His last day is Dec. 19.

“It’s a terrible working environment to be in when you’re constantly under duress and afraid,” he said. “I just can’t do it anymore.”

The conference memo Dobyns received cited a message he left prior to the strike in the online system for lining up substitute teachers. He wrote, “This leave was posted without the consent of the teacher. You will be required to cross a picket line to accept it.”

Dobyns said district administrators, not him, posted the request for a sub to cover his classroom during the strike.

The conference memo, which was reviewed by Chalkbeat, said, “This unsatisfactory inappropriate conduct negatively impacted the operations of the school and caused harm amongst the Guest Staff and/or District Staff that were covering your classroom on that day.”

Dobyns said he wrote the message in the online system because he didn’t want his sub to be surprised by the strike.

“A lot of subs didn’t know [about the strike]” he said. “A lot of people don’t watch the news these days.”

Dobyns expects more District 11 teachers to quit in the coming months.

“I know from the talk around the water cooler that there is going to be an exodus of educators from D11 come March when hiring season starts,” he said.

Dobyns has a job lined up in home remodeling sales once he leaves the district.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Superintendent Alex Marrero says he’s staying in Denver after report he’s finalist for Chicago job

2025-11-08T00:40:29+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.

Superintendent Alex Marrero said in a statement Friday that he doesn’t intend to leave Denver Public Schools after the Chicago Sun-Times reported that he’s one of two finalists for the job of Chicago Public Schools’ next CEO.

“While I have great respect for Chicago Public Schools and appreciate the professional recognition implied by recent speculation about my potential candidacy for superintendent, I want to be clear that my dedication remains firmly with Denver Public Schools where I am proud to continue serving as superintendent,” Marrero said.

One finalist for the Chicago job is Meisha Ross Porter, who led New York City Public Schools in 2021, three sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Chalkbeat.

Finalists are set to interview with Chicago Board of Education members, a community panel, and the mayor next week. Chicago’s selection will mark the first time its new 21-member school board chooses a new leader for the nation’s fourth largest school district.

Earlier on Friday, Denver Public Schools sent a statement saying Marrero “has no plans to leave the district.” The statement said he was attending the Global Cities Symposium in Asia “and will be extending his trip for a brief, but well deserved vacation prior to returning to Denver.”

Marrero is excited to work with the newly elected Denver school board members, the earlier statement said. Three candidates backed by the teachers union were elected Tuesday to the seven-member board.

Marrero has been superintendent of the 89,000-student Denver Public Schools since 2021. Graduation rates have risen in his four-year tenure, and the district’s state rating jumped this year to “green,” the second highest, for the first time since 2019, before the pandemic.

But concerns about school safety and a string of shootings in and around Denver’s largest high school have sown discontent among some parents. Unpopular school closures and cuts to the central office have hurt morale among district employees, according to Marrero’s latest performance evaluation.

Before coming to Denver, Marrero was the interim superintendent of a much smaller district in New Rochelle, New York. He was previously the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in New Rochelle and an assistant superintendent in East Ramapo, New York.

Marrero began his career in the country’s biggest school district, New York City, where he served as a guidance counselor, assistant principal, and principal. It’s also where he attended school as a child growing up in the Bronx.

Marrero identifies as Afro Latino and is bilingual. More than half of the students in Denver are Latino and about a third are learning English as a second language.

Marrero’s contract with Denver Public Schools runs through 2028. The board has extended it twice, most recently in May, which was five months before his latest performance evaluation in October. The board also voted in 2023 to give Marrero a raise. His salary this year is $346,529.

Marrero is the president of the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents and serves on the executive committee of the Council of Great City Schools.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Chris Gdowski, of Adams 12 schools, is Colorado’s 2026 Superintendent of the Year

2025-10-24T20:16:27+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.

Chris Gdowski, superintendent of the Adams 12 school district north of Denver, has been named Colorado’s 2026 Superintendent of the Year by two state groups for education officials.

Gdowski, who’s led the 35,000-student district for 16 years, was lauded by the groups for raising graduation rates, especially for Hispanic students, increasing the district’s career and technical education offerings, and overseeing two voter-approved bonds to improve district facilities.

Two Colorado education groups named Chris Gdowski the state's 2026 Superintendent of the Year.

A press release on the award also noted that he’s invested resources in schools serving large populations of low-income students, including by starting STEM and international baccalaureate programs and creating a newcomer center for recent immigrants at Thornton High School.

The Superintendent of the Year award is given out by the Colorado Association of School Executives and the Colorado Association of Superintendents and Senior Administrators. Last year’s winner was Deirdre Pilch, superintendent of the Greeley-Evans school district in northern Colorado.

Gdowski will represent Colorado in the National Superintendent of the Year award contest held by the School Superintendents Association.

In the press release from the Colorado Association of School Executives, Gdowski called the state award a “tremendous honor for him and the district.

“I am grateful to our staff members for their commitment to serving our diverse community and the doors of opportunity that we’ve opened for our young people,” he said.

Members of the state selection committee described Gdowski as a student-focused leader who takes a thoughtful approach to tough issues, according to the press release.

In the release, Keith Owen, a member of the selection committee and superintendent of the Fountain-Fort Carson district, described Gdowski as a servant leader.

“Not only is he passionate about serving students in his own district, but he is also a strong advocate for Colorado public education at the state level,” he said.

Gdowski attended Adams 12 schools himself, graduating from Thornton High School in 1985. He served as the district’s legal counsel before becoming superintendent in 2009.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Paying for housing on a Colorado teacher’s salary? It’s not easy, report finds.

2025-08-13T22:11:04+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.

At one point, Cassidy Proctor, a social studies teacher in the Montezuma-Cortez district in southwest Colorado, spent half her $44,000 salary on housing costs. Another district teacher recruited from the Philippines said she rents a single room in a family’s house for $750 a month.

Forty miles away, a local nonprofit helped Nathan Van Arsdale, who works at the Durango district’s career center, with a down payment on his 450-square-foot condo.

These are a few of the stories highlighted in a new report from the Keystone Policy Center on the shortage of affordable housing for Colorado educators and district staff. It’s based on survey results from more than 3,200 respondents in 10 Colorado districts. The report doesn’t name all the participating districts, but Van Schoales, Keystone’s senior policy director, said they include urban, suburban, mountain resort, and remote rural districts.

Several of the educators featured in the report cite the negative impacts of pricey or hard-to-find housing: long commutes, crowded living conditions, and living paycheck to paycheck. Ultimately, these kinds of problems lead to teacher turnover.

Finding affordable housing has long been a problem for Colorado teachers — sometimes because there’s simply no housing available and other times because the cost of available units is too high. The average teacher salary in Colorado was about $73,000 last school year, with district averages ranging from $37,000 in the tiny Vilas district in the southeast corner of the state to $100,000 in Boulder Valley. Colorado’s median single family home price was $590,000 in July, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors.

One of the Keystone report’s key findings is that many teachers spend too much of their income on housing. In four districts that participated, more than half of survey respondents spend over 40% of their income on housing — well above the 30% level that’s a common rule of thumb.

Schoales said keeping housing costs under that threshold is especially important for middle-income earners.

“Obviously, if you’re making a million dollars a year, if you want to spend a third [on housing], you still have a lot of discretionary income,” he said. “But for teachers and for cops and firefighters, it’s a real problem.”

Greg Meshell, a middle school math teacher in Cortez, said before a recent pay raise, he was spending 47% of his salary on housing not including utilities, according to the report.

“After the raise, it still accounts for about 42% of my salary,” said Meshell, who earns about $60,000 a year plus stipends from coaching.

Schoales said one of the report’s findings that most surprised him was that 70% of survey respondents said they’d be comfortable with their school district as their landlord.

“If you had asked me a couple of years ago if teachers would be interested in workforce housing, I would say very, very few,” he said.

The report highlights a couple districts that have provided housing to teachers for many years. One is Byers 32-J east of Denver, which manages 10 apartments and two houses for employees. The district touts lower rental costs as a benefit to try to draw teachers. For example, according to the report, the district recently purchased a three-bedroom, one-bath house with a garage, carport, and yard, which it rents to teachers for $400 a month.

“We don’t have a lot of turnover. When my teachers are there, they realize the benefit, and there’s a lot of loyalty that comes with that,” said Superintendent Tom Turrell, according to the report.

Schoales noted that some school districts partner with groups that oversee workforce housing, so they may technically own the units, but don’t have day-to-day oversight.

“It’s not quite like … a mining company from 100 years ago where if they don’t like you, they can throw you out,” he said.

The Keystone report includes four recommendations to help solve the teaching housing problem. One advocates for an outside group of consultants that can help school districts think through possible solutions. Another recommends more state support to bring districts,especially small rural ones, together to build workforce housing.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado lawmakers are drafting a bill to change the state’s school ratings system

2025-03-19T02:18:19+00:00

Leer en español.

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.

Colorado lawmakers are proposing big changes to the state’s school accountability system. Many of the recommendations come from a task force that worked for over a year on suggestions for how to improve the system.

But some of the proposed changes go further than the task force recommendations. One would give the State Board of Education more options when deciding what to do with schools and districts that have failed to show academic improvement for more than five years.

A bill proposing the changes, House Bill 1278, had its first hearing in the House Education Committee last week. But the committee held off on voting, because so much of the bill’s language is expected to change.

In part that’s because the bill’s initial fiscal note estimates the proposed changes would cost the state almost $18 million over three years, at a time when lawmakers are struggling to cut about $1 billion from this year’s state’s budget.

But it’s also because various groups are still pushing for changes.

Currently, the state’s school accountability system, in use since 2009, mostly uses standardized test scores to rate schools and districts. High schools are also rated on their graduation rates and on how many students move on to postsecondary options.

Schools can earn one of four ratings, while districts can earn one of five. The law requires the State Board of Education to step in when a district or school has reached five years of low ratings, but the State Board is limited to ordering changes that include: closing a school, turning a school into a charter school or community school, or granting innovation status, which allows a school or group of schools to get waivers from state laws or union contracts and try new approaches. The state can also order a school or district to turn over management to an external group, or can strip districts or schools of accreditation.

New language being drafted in a 12-page amendment would allow districts that have reached this five-year point to instead “take other actions that are comparable or that have a more significant effect…as proposed by the school district.”

“Actions include, but are not limited to, contracting with an external management partner, using contractors or resources provided by the department, engaging school districts to work together to monitor progress and provide assistance, or comprehensive school redesign,” the amendment draft states.

The task force was unanimous in its 30 recommendations, which are mostly all reflected in the proposed bill. But the task force report, published in November, didn’t mention changing the allowable state actions for when a school or district has reached five years of low ratings, also known as the end of “the clock.”

Here’s how a task force suggests changing the way schools and districts are rated in Colorado

Rep. Meghan Lukens, one of the bill sponsors who is a Democrat from Steamboat Springs and also a teacher, said that the task force did have a goal of giving schools and districts more flexibility. Other leaders involved in drafting the bill say the amendment is related to one of the task force recommendations to “support schools and districts pursuing bold solutions to turnaround.” But the report from the task force explains that recommendation as suggesting the state provide more funding for more district improvement efforts.

Among those who spoke at the hearing last week, a few were opposed to the bill, stating that the accountability system is still inequitable and that schools are still underfunded, while most education leaders who spoke were in favor of the changes. Some asked for a few more.

“The current draft shows significant promise but its expansion of and emphasis on standardized testing is simply tone deaf,” said Kara Smallwood, a speech language pathologist who was one of several educators to speak on behalf of the Colorado Education Association. “While well intentioned, we urge testing companies, legislators, and parents to hear us when we say that doubling down on standardized testing does not improve students’ experience in school nor their preparedness for the future.”

CEA President Kevin Vick told lawmakers that the union supports amending the bill to ensure that the state doesn’t double down on testing, and that teacher retention is a focus.

Vick also said they are working with bill sponsors on amendments so the system “prioritizes community-led approaches over more punitive state-led actions such as mass firings, use of external managers or other things that devalue the efforts of the people in our respective districts on the clock.”

Adams 14 lawyer and former lawmaker Joe Salazar told the House education committee last week that the Adams 14 district has felt like the state’s guinea pig for the accountability system.

Adams 14 is the only district in the state that has earned low ratings for more than a decade, triggering all of the system’s most severe consequences.

The latest district administration pushed back against state orders and managed to get the state to back off a request that the district reorganize, which could have meant dissolving the district or merging parts of it with neighboring districts. The neighboring districts united with Adams 14 in rejecting the state order.

Now, district leaders say they are making better progress working with the state in a collaborative relationship, as opposed to an adversarial one, but state ratings have yet to improve.

“What we have endured since 2018 has been punitive and counterproductive,” Jason Malmberg, Adams 14 teacher union president, told the committee. “It created chaos in an already vulnerable system.”

Malmberg spoke of the amendment, titled L6, adding new options for schools and districts at the end of the clock, saying that it takes “an important step forward,” by shifting the focus of the accountability system.

“I urge you to learn from the mistakes of the past,” Malmberg said.

The current draft of the bill also proposes, as recommended by the task force, translating standardized tests into other languages, or adopting tests in other languages, for students who are still not fluent in English.

This component of the bill is the most expensive, estimated at possibly $4 million in the first year alone.

An amendment is being drafted to narrow the requirement and lower the cost.

Another part of the bill requires the state to do more to encourage participation in state tests, by clarifying how schools and districts can encourage students to take the test, and by requiring that information sent home include statements from the state about the importance of taking the test.

Colorado’s annual performance ratings show more schools, districts earning better marks

Here are some of the other changes proposed by HB 1278:

Requiring a study on the effectiveness of external management partners, which are consultants the state has required districts to hire to help improve achievement, and the return on investment they offer to districts. The study would also need to look at what is necessary for the consultants to be successful, and the department of education would need to create a list of groups qualified to work as external managers.
Students who fall into subgroups such as students with disabilities, English learners, or those who qualify for free and reduced price lunch should be combined into one “super subgroup,” so schools are only evaluated for them once.
Requiring the department of education to look for early indicators of distress to provide support earlier to schools and districts before they have five years of low ratings.
Requiring that improvement plans toward the end of the clock include financial plans.
The State Board would have to adopt new requirements for what school districts must do to earn a distinction rating, the highest performance rating available, including that none of the disaggregated student groups can have the lowest “does not meet” result in any performance category.
Requiring that if a district earns an insufficient rating due to low participation for three years in a row, it must submit a corrective action plan to the state.
Requires various studies for future changes to the accountability system including adjusting weights of the different factors evaluated, changing the labels for each rating, and increasing equity.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Denver school closure decision timeline leaves just 2 weeks for talks with affected families

2024-09-18T17:20:19+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.

Denver Public Schools’ timeline for deciding on school closures leaves little time for community engagement between when district officials recommend which schools to close or consolidate and when the school board votes on those recommendations.

The timeline was unanimously approved by the school board Thursday night. It calls for DPS to hold a series of six regional community meetings in September and October.

But the list of specific schools the superintendent says should be closed or consolidated won’t be released until Nov. 7, after the community meetings are over. The board is slated to vote on that list of schools just two weeks later on Nov. 21.

District leaders will spend three weeks talking to residents all over the city about declining district enrollment and the broader reasoning behind closing small schools. But they will have just two weeks before the vote to hold more targeted meetings with the students, families, and community members who will be directly impacted by closures.

“The timeline we’ve created for ourselves makes this a more difficult situation this year,” board member Scott Esserman said in an interview. “And it’s really important and necessary that we make these painful decisions and get to a point where we can move forward.”

The district hasn’t hinted how many schools it will say should close, and the closures wouldn’t happen until the end of the school year. But officials have said the decision needs to be finalized by January, when Denver families begin choosing schools for the following fall.

Enrollment in Denver Public Schools has been declining since 2019, and despite a recent influx of migrant students, the district is predicting another 8% drop by 2028. The main reasons are falling birth rates and high housing costs that have pushed families out of the city.

Superintendent Alex Marrero has said he will base his recommendation in part on school enrollment data from the official student count day in October.

A policy adopted by the board in June — and amended this month to tighten the timeline — calls for the superintendent to hold meetings to discuss the “school specific positive implications of proceeding” with a closure or consolidation recommendation and the “school specific negative implications of not proceeding,” among other topics.

But the timeline proposed by Marrero and approved by the board does not include any school-specific meetings before the vote Nov. 21. The only meeting on the timeline between Nov. 7 and Nov. 21 is a school board public comment session on Nov. 18.

Esserman said the school-specific meetings will indeed happen in that two-week timeframe. But he said the district hasn’t scheduled or announced them because Marrero hasn’t decided which schools to recommend for closure.

Before board members approved the timeline Thursday, Marrero repeatedly drew their attention to the two-week period between the Nov. 7 recommendation and the Nov. 21 school board vote.

“I want to make sure everyone is aware that those two weeks are going to be intense for the district, but particularly [for] the board,” Marrero said.

He added that once he and his team make their recommendation for which schools should be closed or consolidated, “we are not going to be convinced otherwise.”

“We are going to stay firm,” Marrero said.

District leaders have said that they want this year’s school closure process to be smoother than past processes, which were full of stops and starts.

The board first directed the district to close small schools in 2021. Denver schools are funded on a per-student basis, and schools with low enrollment can’t afford as many programs and teachers.

But it took nearly two years of changing policies and shifting recommendations before the board voted in March 2023 to close three small schools at the end of 2022-23 school year. DPS has not closed any district-run schools since then.

At least six Denver charter schools have also closed since 2021, most of them due to low enrollment. Charter schools are publicly funded but run by their own boards of directors, not by DPS.

Neighboring Jeffco Public Schools, which is the second-largest district in Colorado behind DPS, has closed 21 small schools since 2021.

Denver Public Schools changed the dates and times of some of the regional community meetings after this story was published. The story has been updated to reflect the new dates and times.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org .

More guardrails for Colorado districts that want 4-day weeks, report urges

2024-08-13T16:01:39+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.

Colorado school districts with four-day weeks have slightly lower student achievement on average than those with five-day weeks and see little improvement in teacher turnover after shifting from five to four days.

That’s according to a new report from the Keystone Policy Center that argues for stricter guardrails on four-day school weeks and the creation of an expert panel to study the issue.

The report, “Doing Less With Less,” comes at a time when nearly two-thirds of Colorado’s 185 districts — enrolling about 14% of the state’s students — operate on four-day-a-week schedules. In the last five years, about two dozen districts across the state, most small and rural, made the switch. This year, the 1,200-student Strasburg district, about 30 miles east of Denver, is the only district changing to a four-day schedule, according to the Colorado Department of Education.

“There’s this growing movement around four-day school weeks, and as far as I know, there haven’t been any public discussions around the merits of it,” said Van Schoales, senior policy director at Keystone. “I mean, every district that’s applied for waivers [from five-day-weeks] has gotten them. It’s been a rubber-stamp process.”

Keystone’s report, citing both state and national research and anecdotes from district leaders, concludes that having fewer school days per week doesn’t generally help kids academically.

“The trend toward four-day school weeks in Colorado does not provide a net benefit to the state’s public school students,” the report says. “In fact, student achievement is not even the top consideration when districts make the switch.”

Instead, the primary rationale is to help recruit and retain teachers by offering the shorter week as an employment perk.

While some district leaders told Keystone that four-day weeks have given them a competitive advantage when it comes to staffing, the report concludes that the schedules often don’t make a big difference

As an example, it describes how when the tiny Dolores district in southwestern Colorado switched to a four-day week a few years ago, teacher departures slowed at first. But when a larger nearby district adopted a four-day week the next year, the advantage melted away.

“So now we’re all just back to fighting over who can pay their people more and benefits and things like that,” Superintendent Reece Blincoe said in the report.

The report also highlights the experience of District 27J, a 23,000-student district based in the Denver suburb of Brighton, the largest to have made the switch.

District leaders took the plunge in the 2018-19 school year after voters repeatedly rejected ballot measures that would have helped boost teacher pay. They figured the attractive schedule would pull in and keep teachers otherwise turned off by the district’s low salaries.

But a study by Brown University researchers cited in the Keystone report found that experienced teachers were 5 percentage points less likely to return to 27J after the switch to a four-day week. It wasn’t because teachers didn’t appreciate the shorter school week, but rather because the schedule didn’t outweigh the draw of higher salaries elsewhere.

The Keystone report urges policymakers to consider fixes to the teacher recruitment and retention problem, including higher pay for rural teachers and housing help in districts with a shortage of affordable housing.

The report also acknowledges that some research on four-day weeks is mixed, and more research is needed. Some studies have found the schedule helps retain teachers, reduce bullying, and boost attendance. Others link the schedule to reduced graduation rates, higher rates of food insecurity, and more chronic absenteeism among high schoolers.

Schoales said, “We stopped short of saying that folks shouldn’t do it, because we know that there are circumstances in which it makes sense.”

He cited remote districts where students may spend an hour or two a day on school buses.

“Those are rare instances relative to the state’s population,” he said.

While many school districts with four-day weeks offer enrichment programming or child care on the fifth day when there is no school, fewer families than expected use it, district officials told Keystone.

In Pueblo, Becky Medina, chief operations officer of the local Boys and Girls Club, worries about the children who aren’t showing up to the extra programming her clubs offer on Fridays.

“A lot of them don’t have the means. Whether transportation is the barrier or finances, they’re not getting those other experiences,” she told Keystone. “They’re the ones that are behind in school. Are they now falling farther behind?”

Because nobody tracks which students show up to fifth-day programming, “we’re pretty blind to that,” Schoales said. “It would make sense that kids with less are going to have a harder time taking advantage of that,” he said.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Sheridan picks new superintendent after deadlocking on previous finalists

2024-04-29T23:10:17+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.

Sheridan’s school board voted this month to select its next superintendent: Gionni Thompson was approved in a 3-1 vote.

It was the board’s third attempt over the past year at selecting a new leader for the small school district bordering Denver.

The Sheridan school board is supposed to have five members but has had a vacant seat for more than a year now. Throughout the superintendent search process, the four sitting board members have been evenly split.

First, the district was considering appointing the sole internal candidate recommended by the outgoing superintendent. But two board members wanted to open up a national search.

The Sheridan school board voted 3-1 to select Gionni Thompson, seen here in a screenshot from his applicant video, as the next superintendent.

After launching the search and ending up with three finalists earlier this spring, the board was unable to agree to a majority vote on any candidate. So it came up with a new list of finalists.

Out of fewer than 40 survey responses the district received in this round, mostly from district staff, Thompson had the fewest points in favor.

Board President Daniel Stange and Karla Najera, who was the lone vote against Thompson, believe that the Sheridan district needs a Latino leader, perhaps one who speaks Spanish, who can advocate for Spanish-speaking parents who often feel left out. The other two board members have disagreed on the importance of that kind of representation. Thompson is not Latino.

The issue goes back to the selection of the outgoing superintendent, Pat Sandos. There again, the community was split, with many interested in another candidate they thought could be a better advocate for Spanish-speaking families.

Stange said Thompson wasn’t his first pick, but he voted for him to avoid another stalemate.

“I had heard some good recommendations for him,” Stange said. “He seems to be very knowledgeable.”

Thompson, most recently an executive director overseeing 16 schools in the Boulder Valley School District, presented himself as an experienced educator who got into the field of education after seeing the disparities. He got his doctorate of education from the University of Colorado in Denver in 2020.

Thompson described himself as the “the fifth of six kids born in Colorado to an Italian immigrant mother and an African American father.”

“As a child, I witnessed firsthand the barriers my family faced in accessing a formal education. Seeing this, I developed my commitment to ensuring that every individual, regardless of their background, has access to the life-changing power of education and the ability to fulfill their aspirations and dreams,” Thompson wrote in his materials to the board.

In his application, he boasted about improvements he helped lead among schools in the Boulder district as well as in his time as principal of Lester Arnold, an alternative high school in Adams 14.

Thompson said if selected, he would listen to the community before developing a plan.

Sheridan, a tiny district bordering Denver, enrolled just over 1,000 students this year, of which more than 77% are Hispanic and about a third are learning English as a new language. Last year’s enrollment was 1,125. The district also has a high proportion of students experiencing homelessness, this year at about 14%.

The Sheridan district must now negotiate a contract with Thompson and then vote on that.

Stange said the board hopes Thompson can start soon. Sandos’ current contract, which was described as a transition year after his retirement, goes through the end of May.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado Supreme Court: Low ratings don’t harm school districts

2023-10-16T22:18:57+00:00

The Adams 14 school district failed to show that state intervention caused any real harm or injury and has no basis to sue the state, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The ruling leaves the state’s school accountability system intact but could have larger significance. The justices threw out a longstanding precedent known as the rule of Martin, which said that political entities that are subordinate to the state, such as school districts and counties, can’t sue the state for exercising normal oversight.

The justices also noted that the State Board of Education’s actions toward Adams 14 are allowed under the Education Accountability Act and that Adams 14 did not challenge the legality of the law itself.

Justice Monica M. Márquez wrote the opinion, and all six other justices joined in. There were no dissenting opinions.

“A school district is not injured by receiving a low accreditation rating. A low accreditation rating means that the district will receive additional resources from the state to facilitate improved performance — a process intended to help districts and their students, not harm them,” the court ruling states.

Education Commissioner Susana Córdova said the ruling means school improvement efforts in the district can continue “without the risk of being derailed by pending litigation.”

“We welcome the opportunity to continue to work closely with Adams 14 and build on the current work underway in the school district,” she said in a written statement. “We know that a focus on student achievement by working together is the best way forward for the students, staff, families, and community of Adams 14.”

An attorney for the Adams 14 school district hailed the decision as a victory for local control, even though the justices upheld a lower court’s dismissal of the district’s lawsuit against the state.

“My little school district getting rid of a 53-year-old law that was being used against local governments and local school boards, is a big deal,” Adams 14 attorney Joe Salazar said of the rule of Martin. “Sounds like a good day to me.”

Having had the district’s case thrown out didn’t matter, Salazar said.

Facing widespread opposition within the district and from neighboring communities, Córdova already had backed off a state order that the district should reorganize after years of low test scores. That order prompted the lawsuit in the first place.

“We don’t care; we already defeated reorganization,” Salazar said.

After agreeing with Adams 14 that the rule of Martin was harmful, Monday’s ruling says the state should only use another rule, known as the Wimberly rule, which says that to have standing to sue, a plaintiff must prove injury to a legally protected right. Under that rule, the court found Adams 14 still didn’t meet the bar for suing the state for relief.

“The State Board actions that Adams 14 challenges are expressly permitted or required by the Education Accountability Act, the facial legality of which Adams 14 does not challenge,” the ruling states.

Adams 14 had made several arguments that the Supreme Court grouped into four sets. Among them, the district argued that the state violated the district’s right to local control when the State Board used an external State Review Panel to evaluate the capacity of the district’s leadership and when it reviewed its contracts with partners.

The court ruling states that the district’s right to local control has to be balanced with the state’s obligations to oversee schools, and that in simply reviewing leadership or contracts, the state didn’t actually restrict the district’s operations. The ruling also states that the State Board was following the law in taking those steps.

Another argument Adams 14 made was that the state set cut scores for tests that led to school districts with more students from lower income or non-English speaking families being more likely to earn low ratings, causing the districts harm based on their populations.

In this case, the Supreme Court’s ruling found that the cut scores don’t directly cause a district to lose accreditation or be forced into reorganization. “Many intervening steps must take place,” the ruling states, meaning that having that be the potential injury claimed in the lawsuit was “‘overly indirect and incidental’ and too far removed from the State Board’s use of cut scores” to constitute injury.

In the case of Adams 14, the district has been rated low performing since 2010. It has been under state improvement plans of some sort since at least 2017 and has not yet managed to earn higher ratings.

In 2022, the State Board ordered the district to undergo reorganization with neighboring districts. Reorganization could have meant closing some schools, shifting boundaries, or letting neighboring districts take over parts or all of Adams 14. But the neighboring districts that appointed members to the reorganization committee declared their support for Adams 14, and ultimately, the committee submitted a plan that said any reorganization would be harmful.

The new state commissioner this year approved that recommendation and released the district from that State Order.

Adams 14 is still under another State Board order that requires it to be working with an outside group to manage and improve the district. Adams 14 had been working with TNTP, formerly known as The New Teacher Project, but over the summer, negotiations broke down after the district asked the group to scale back its work in the second year.

The Adams 14 school board approved a new contract with TNTP in September, but state education department staff told the State Board of Education that the contract doesn’t meet State Board requirements. State officials said much of the required work is happening, but some is being handled by other subcontractors or district staff.

And despite the state education department increasing school improvement funding to Adams 14 to a total of $1.2 million, the new TNTP contract is worth just $395,587.

The State Board of Education will hold a rehearing on how to approach school improvement efforts in the district next spring.

Córdova said the State Board will continue to work in compliance with state law and the ruling does not make it easier for school districts to sue the state.

Nonetheless, Salazar said he’s sure the state’s accountability law and system are likely to see more legal challenges.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

State Board concerned about Adams 14’s pause to work with TNTP, but some members are encouraged by improvements

2023-09-14T15:02:29+00:00

State Board members Wednesday expressed concern that Adams 14 has not yet resumed work with a partner helping with improvement efforts, even as some also praised achievements that have already been made.

Adams 14, a school district north of Denver, has had the most years of low performance ratings of any other in the state. Because of those continued low ratings, the State Board of Education last year ordered the district to work with a partial manager on its improvement plan.

The state had also ordered the district to begin reorganization, which could have closed schools or split up the district, but has since cleared Adams 14 of that obligation.

The district signed a contract to work with New York-based nonprofit TNTP, formerly called the New Teacher Project, for three years on things like teacher training, coaching of leaders, and reviewing employee policies. But last month, after one year of the contract, the district and TNTP paused the work, unable to reach a new agreement for how the work in the second year should go.

In an update to the State Board Wednesday, Colorado Department of Education staff told the board that the pause has not been as disruptive as when the district also stopped its work with the previous external manager, MGT Consulting. Some professional learning planned for schools was put on hold, but the pause was less disruptive because TNTP did not hold district administration positions the way MGT had, staff told the State Board.

Still, State Board member Karla Esser said she was concerned that this pause in the work meant more inconsistency in a district that has had a lot.

“It feels to me very disruptive to be on this path,” Esser said. “It’s very disappointing.”

District leaders have pointed to budget problems as a reason for needing to scale back.

State Board member Steve Durham pressed department staff for more details on where the disagreements were, and whether they had to do with how much authority or control each party had.

Staff said they had not heard any discussions or disagreements about that.

“It was more about the scope and where we’re reducing services and what outcomes can we expect with TNTP expressing some concern,” said Lindsey Jaeckel, executive director of school and district transformation. “We didn’t hear a discussion over authority. We’ve seen them work collaboratively.”

In an effort to help pay for the contract, the Colorado Department of Education has agreed to give the district more money than it planned this year. Instead of the expected $850,000 in grants for its improvement work, the state will offer an extra $350,000, for a total of $1.2 million. But an agreement has still not been reached.

A vote on a TNTP contract was on the agenda of the Adams 14 school board meeting on Tuesday night. The board instead tabled the item.

The contract with TNTP originally called for $5 million over three years, with the cost going up slightly in the second year. From September through June this school year, the district was to have paid TNTP $1.8 million, up from $1.6 million it paid in the last year.

State Board member Kathy Plomer thanked department staff for their work with the district. She said that while people may want to see “astronomical growth,” the smaller improvements the district is making are good news.

“For a district that’s struggled for so long, I’m encouraged,” Plomer said.

“We are all eager for this work to continue,” Andy Swanson, director of accountability pathways for the Colorado Department of Education told the State Board. “I think we’re hopeful this resolves sooner rather than later.”

Department staff told the State Board that depending on the agreement the district might reach with TNTP, a request for an amendment to the State Board improvement order may come next month.

Correction: Due to an editing error, this article incorrectly identified State Board member Karla Esser as representing the Adams 14 school district. The article has been updated to remove the reference.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Commissioner: Adams 14 school district doesn’t have to reorganize

2023-09-01T18:20:33+00:00

Leer en español.

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to keep up with education news in Denver and beyond.

The Adams 14 school district will not be forced to reorganize.

Accepting a committee recommendation submitted in August, Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova has released the school district from a State Board of Education order that it reorganize — a process that could have led to school closures or seen parts of the district absorbed by neighboring districts.

The state decision was sent to the reorganization committee Thursday evening.

In it, the commissioner finds that the law doesn’t allow for reorganization when surrounding districts are unwilling to redraw their boundaries.

“It would not be in the best interest of any of the districts involved to spend further resources or time on this matter if there is no foundational interest from the surrounding districts,” the response states. “There will be no further expectations for the reorganization process to continue.”

Adams 14 officials celebrated their defeat of the state’s attempt.

“Colorado’s School District Reorganization Act is an outdated, unproven process that does not work and has no place in the accountability system,” said Reneé Lovato, the president of the Adams 14 school board and chair of the reorganization committee, in a statement released Friday. “It did nothing except instill fear and uncertainty among our students, staff and community.”

Superintendent Karla Loría thanked neighboring districts for helping and said in the statement, “it is our fervent hope that the State Board will stop taking negative actions against Adams 14 and allow us to focus on our students.”

The State Board ordered Adams 14 to reorganize in May 2022. In November 2018, the State Board had ordered the district based in the working class community of Commerce City to cede control to an external manager, which began in 2019. The 2022 reorganization order came after a new superintendent pushed that external manager, MGT, out of the district.

Adams 14 leaders had touted ratings improvements this week as evidence that they are on the right track. The ratings improvements aren’t yet enough to get the district off of what is known as the “accountability clock.” Under state law, schools or districts that earn one of the two lowest ratings are placed “on the clock” and have five years to show improvement before facing orders from the State Board of Education.

Adams 14 was the first school district in Colorado to be ordered to reorganize as a consequence of multiple years of low performance ratings. The district has challenged the reorganization order in court, and a Colorado Supreme Court decision on whether the state has the authority to force a district into reorganization is pending.

In the meantime, Adams 14 formed a committee with members from the neighboring districts — the first required step toward reorganization. The group met four times, but instead of crafting a draft plan to close schools, change boundaries, or dissolve the district, they adopted a 40-page recommendation that found that reorganization was not in the district’s best interest.

Córdova’s decision letter notes, “The committee seeks authorization to end the process before community hearings because there are no new boundaries to present to the community.” Because the state turned over the process to be led by the community, the state can now choose to say that the process is complete, Córdova wrote.

Córdova also notes that if parts of current Adams 14 district had to vote on being absorbed into a neighboring school district with a higher property tax burden, they would have to also vote to approve that higher tax — something that is unlikely to happen in the low-income district that has failed to pass its own tax measures multiple times.

While the district will no longer be bound to go into reorganization, the district is still bound by a second State Board order to contract with a partial manager to help with improvement work, the decision says.

“Unfortunately, the State Board was notified this week that Adams 14 is non-renewing their contract with TNTP, and TNTP’s work has been stopped in the district,” the state’s decision notes. “This comes as a surprise.”

District leaders cite the cost of TNTP’s contract as one main reason for stopping their work, and in their notice to the state, said that both the nonprofit and the district mutually agreed to stop the work while they negotiate.

Adams 14 had signed a contract with TNTP in the summer of 2022. The contract was to be for three years and for a total of $5 million over that time.

State officials said late Thursday they had offered to increase school improvement funding for the district by $350,000, bringing the total to $1.2 million this year. “We hope this will help the district continue its work with TNTP,” a statement from the department says.

Read the state’s decision here:

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Adams 14 leaders cite ratings improvements as they make case against state reorganization orders

2023-09-01T00:45:30+00:00

Adams 14 leaders are hoping to stop efforts to reorganize the district and point to improved state ratings as evidence they’re on the right path.

A reorganization committee that was formed in November following state orders, submitted a recommendation earlier this month asking the state to stop reorganization, calling the process “unproven, time-consuming, and resource-intensive.”

Reorganization would hurt the community, the committee argued in its 40-page report.

This year, the Adams 14 district improved from the lowest rating of turnaround, to the second-lowest of priority improvement on the state’s annual ratings. Priority improvement is the same rating the district had in 2019, and four other years in the last decade during which the state gave the district consecutive low ratings.

Superintendent Karla Loría highlighted the improvements on state tests and in performance ratings compared to last year at a press conference Wednesday.

Loría pointed to the improvements as evidence the district is on the right track, and that they don’t need state intervention.

“We still have a lot of work to do, but we are heading in the right direction,” Loría said. “We just need to be given the opportunity.”

Based on the state’s accountability law, the priority improvement rating isn’t enough to release the district from state intervention. But Loría said she’s confident that, with more time, the changes she’s implementing will lead to better results than the district has seen under previous improvement plans in the last decade.

How the district got here

Adams 14 has had one of the two lowest ratings for more than 10 years. State law requires the state intervene and order certain changes after five years in a row of low ratings.

Adams 14 was one of the first districts in the state to reach that mark, and to remain with low ratings after various state-ordered improvement plans.

Current district leaders point to turnover, state pressures, and biased standardized tests that don’t account for many of the socioeconomic factors that impact children in Adams 14. The district has one of the highest percentages of students who are learning English as a second language, as well as a high number of students from low-income families and students with disabilities. The district points to poverty, trauma, immigration fears, and environmental contamination as some of the many factors that impact learning in Commerce City more than elsewhere in the state.

This spring, just 17.6% of third graders met expectations on state reading tests, up from 13.6% in 2022, but still lower than the 21.2% who did in 2019.

In May 2022, Adams 14 was the first district ordered by the state to reorganize when State Board members said they no longer trusted that local leadership could make necessary improvements. The process for reorganization is spelled out in state law, but since it’s never been implemented this way, several questions remain. A Colorado Supreme Court decision that would impact whether the state can order reorganization is pending.

The law requires the district under order to reorganize to form a committee including members of neighboring districts and draft a plan for changes. That could mean anything from rebranding the district, changing district boundaries, closing some schools, or dissolving the district altogether.

The draft plan would be finalized with community feedback and sent to the state commissioner of education for approval. Lastly, voters would have the final say.

Instead, the reorganization committee, after meeting four times, approved a 40-page recommendation that asks the state to stop reorganization.

A spokesperson for the state Department of Education said the commissioner is reviewing the request and will issue a decision to the committee. The recommendation is not being considered a reorganization plan, which would have triggered some timelines for a response.

“Statute doesn’t contemplate a report that is a recommendation to not reorganize,” reads an emailed statement from the department. “The report asks the commissioner to accept the report and absolve the committee of any further obligations related to reorganization.”

The report initially was displayed on the district’s board website, but has since been removed and can only be viewed by search.

Under the law, the committee was supposed to review data, and gather community feedback about their draft plan before presenting it to the state.

In its vote on Aug. 11, all members voted in favor of forwarding the report to the state, except committee member Chris Gdowski, superintendent of neighboring Adams 12, who recused himself because he had not seen or read the 40-page report before the 10-minute meeting.

The report claims the public had ample opportunity to provide feedback, since its meetings were publicized, school board members held individual meetings, and community members could comment at the end-of-year Adams 14 town hall meeting.

However, the announcement for that meeting included no mention of the reorganization process, a draft plan, or recommendation.

An archived online notice for that town hall meeting is just a handful of sentences: “Please join us for an end-of-year town hall meeting on Wednesday, May 31, 2023. The superintendent will share some of our incredible achievements this year regarding state metrics, community engagement, and district initiatives. Join us in the Adams City High School auditorium on May 31 at 5:30 p.m. Dinner and child care will be provided. Interpretation services will be available.”

The report also cites that other local boards, including the neighboring school boards involved in reorganization, and the Adams County Commissioners, have passed resolutions in support of Adams 14. Teachers unions including the local Adams 14 association and the state teachers union also have voiced their support of the district and opposition for reorganization.

District attorney Joe Salazar said that community members always have a right to speak about reorganization or any topic at any meeting.

Salazar said “by and large, people from all four districts didn’t want to take part in reorganization. They are so over this process.”

What is happening in the district now?

Since the state ordered Adams 14 to enter reorganization, the Department of Education is now led by a new state commissioner and has new state board members.

Momentum to make changes to the state’s accountability system have picked up over time and a task force has been formed to make recommendations for changes.

Meanwhile, in the district, Adams 14 worked this past year with consultant TNTP, formerly known as The New Teacher Project. TNTP was supposed to take the place of an external manager the state wanted the district to work with to ensure success.

Adams 14 filed notice with the state this week that they don’t plan to renew TNTP’s contract due to budget constraints. Asked about that decision Wednesday, Loría said “we’re working with the state through that.” A department spokesperson said ending that relationship would put the district in violation of existing orders. However, the state is willing to give the district more money to cover some of the costs.

Two years ago, just after being hired, Loría cut ties with a state-ordered manager, for-profit consultant MGT, by locking them out of the district, and the State Board of Education temporarily removed the district’s accreditation.

This time, Salazar, the district’s attorney, said the district would seek an amendment to the State Board orders to remove the requirement that the district have an external partner. It’s not clear whether the State Board would approve such a request.

Loría said the district is continuously re-evaluating district needs and prioritizing improvement efforts, but said the district’s budget woes also pushed her to the decision.

The contract with TNTP was signed in June 2022, for $5 million over three years.

Loría said among other things, she has restructured administration staff for a savings of about $800,000. The district also closed Hanson, a low-enrollment elementary school, at the end of last school year, and is considering other closures in the coming years.

She said the district has been “bold” against the state’s orders, and now has a strong local vision and that has contributed to the district’s improvements. She also discussed the new career-focused academies that are being started at the high school, the district’s commitment to fund full-day preschool for all 3- and 4 year-olds, and the rollout of the community schools model at Central Elementary, one of the low-performing schools that has improved over 2022.

Loría also announced Wednesday that the district is one step closer to earning an alternative accreditation from Cognia, a Georgia-based nonprofit that conducts reviews of schools, grants accreditation, and offers suggestions and resources for improvement. The district began seeking that one after the state removed its accreditation.

Read the full report from the reorganization committee:

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to add additional information about Adams 14 considering cutting ties with TNTP, including a response from the Colorado Department of Education.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Meet Michael Giles, Aurora Public Schools’ new superintendent

2023-08-09T16:36:06+00:00

A month after taking over the top leadership job in Aurora Public Schools, Superintendent Michael Giles says he’s working on being visible in schools and the community.

The Aurora district started classes Tuesday, and Giles has been greeting students and visiting classrooms.

Giles, who has a three-year, $285,000-per-year contract, was most recently the assistant superintendent of equity, culture, and community engagement for the neighboring Cherry Creek school district. He says he’s interested in fostering student and community engagement.

He doesn’t yet have answers to the big questions facing the district including the future of the previous administration’s Blueprint plan to deal with changing enrollment patterns. Giles said it was a thoughtful plan, but he’s evaluating if it still meets the community’s current needs.

In the first 90 days, Giles said he’s hoping to gather information to inform his longer-term plans.

The following Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Why did you get into education?

I feel like I’ve been called to work with the youth and I was doing it as a corrections counselor but it got to the point where I felt like my work wasn’t effective in the way of prevention. It was more so working with students once they had already committed offenses and they were incarcerated and I wanted to get out on the preventative side. I felt the way I could do that was to go into educational counseling. At one time, I thought that I wanted to be a math teacher, years ago, and that didn’t end up manifesting. But I guess the education piece combined with my counseling background kind of led me back into the education world.

What made you want to take on this superintendent role?

Just living here in the city of Aurora for 25 years, I’ve been a member of this community for so long. I’ve participated in many leadership opportunities, a lot of local events and organizations and this just feels like home. I wasn’t necessarily looking to become a superintendent although I was an assistant superintendent in my previous district but when this one came up right here, in what I consider to be my home, it felt like a great fit.

Is there a particular achievement in that previous role as equity officer that you learned something from and you now think you can apply to your work here in Aurora?

I can name many but there are two that come to mind: The involvement of student voice. I ran several student issue groups and had many different opportunities to engage with students to ascertain what has their experience with school been? And what do they need to make it more meaningful? We use that to help create systems and structures for them to thrive.

The other piece is involvement of community. Bringing community voice in the space so they can also talk about what their experience with our district has been and what are the things that they need to feel that they have some agency in the learning of their children and the kids in the community.

As superintendent, how do you see your role in fostering a productive relationship between your district and the community?

I have to get out and be visible. It starts with me. I lead that effort on behalf of the district so I have to be visible. I have to be intentional about creating opportunities to engage with the community to be able to receive feedback. But also to educate the community because that goes both ways. As I model it, as the superintendent, there’s an expectation that that same kind of engagement goes through the leadership team and then also at specific sites, that our building leaders are finding creative and intentional ways to engage the community.

What do you see as the biggest challenges facing the district right now?

There’s so many. The first one that pops in my mind is safety. Always concerned about the safety of our children. To make sure not only that we have structural and other measures in place for their safety, but I want them to feel safe when they come to school. I want them to feel included in the school environment so that they feel available to actually take advantage of the academic opportunities and avail themselves to learning.

Another is mental and social emotional health. And that’s not just germane to Aurora Public Schools, but I think we’re seeing that across the nation. So how do we provide supports for our students to navigate if they are struggling with emotional concerns or mental health issues. What can be put in place to help them with that?

And then also just the teaching and learning. I won’t say it’s necessarily a concern, but it’s a huge focus of mine to show that we’re teaching at a very high level. We have high expectations and we’re providing the greatest opportunities for our students to learn.

One of the issues between the district and the previous superintendent seemed to be about teacher diversity. Do you think the district needs to take steps specifically to retain Black teachers? Would that look different than a broader push for teacher diversity?

I think that many of our districts across the nation are facing the same issue of hiring a diverse staff. I absolutely think that’s something I want to focus on here in Aurora. I think that my approach is hiring for greater diversity across the board and that includes, it’s not limited to, but it includes Black educators. But it also includes educators of many different identities, many different races and so forth.

Do you see any issues that are specific to one of those communities?

I think I need more time to assess and gather more data.

Aurora has one of the larger percentages of students learning English as a second language. What is your belief on what the district needs to be doing to ensure those students are also getting a good education?

We do need to be doing everything we can to ensure our students are having access to the greatest learning opportunities. In my short tenure, I would give myself some time to find out what is occurring right now. What supports, what structures do we have in place and those that are serving our students well, we’ll continue with, and if there’s opportunities to create other structures or supports, then we’ll look at that as well.

With regards to accountability, the Aurora district has one of the high schools that has been rated as low-performing for many years. Have you spent some time there yet, and what are your thoughts on the direction of that school?

I have not yet had an opportunity to spend time in the school yet, this being my fourth week. But what I can tell you, in talking to my chief of staff and my leadership team, I feel like there’s some really solid plans that are in place to elevate the learning and the outcomes for students at Aurora Central. And I will continue to dig into that and provide as much support as I can to make sure that that happens.

Anything else you want the community to know about you and your priorities?

There’s great talent in our school district. We have great community partnerships that I want to continue to leverage and push upon to help support and provide our students meaningful learning opportunities. I’m extremely passionate about that and engaging our community to educate our students and then also just elevating our student voice so that they have agency in what their experience looks like and how do we create meaningful opportunities for them.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Giles said his priority is being visible, not to be invisible.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Rico Munn discrimination complaint linked to long-simmering disagreements about approach to Black teacher retention

2023-06-29T18:38:35+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to keep up with education news from Denver and around the state.

Update: On Wednesday the Aurora school board voted unanimously not to take action on the recommendations related to Rico Munn’s discrimination complaint.

For years Black and Hispanic teachers in the Aurora school district have complained of mistreatment and discrimination — even as the district was led by a Black superintendent and equity efforts to hire and retain more teachers of color ramped up.

Whether that superintendent, Rico Munn, did enough to support Black educators is behind a discrimination complaint Munn filed as he departed the district under a negotiated agreement.

According to two independent investigations, Munn alleged that Black board members Stephanie Mason and Tremaine Duncan called his Blackness into question and expected him to act in certain ways because he was Black while holding him to unwritten expectations — actions that he said ultimately created a hostile work environment and led to him being unjustly removed from his position.

Rodrick D. Holmes, an outside investigator who interviewed Munn, the seven board members, and a consultant who has worked with the board for years, concluded that poor leadership, interpersonal conflicts, and an intense focus on race all contributed to the board’s decision not to renew Munn’s contract. But Holmes did not find evidence of racial discrimination.

But a second outside investigator working off the Holmes fact-finding report reached the opposite conclusion.

Doug Hamill found that the board as a whole — and specifically Mason and Duncan — engaged in a pattern of discrimination, calling Munn’s “Black card” into question and that the board as a whole essentially fired Munn. That investigator recommended that the board censure Mason and Duncan, post the conclusions of the investigation online for the public to read, and that the board undergo training.

The board has an executive session scheduled Wednesday evening to get legal advice about the complaint. While the agenda doesn’t include a public discussion, the board could still choose to talk about it. School board members have refused interviews ahead of that meeting. Munn said he is dealing with a family medical issue and is not doing interviews.

The two investigations and conflicting conclusions shed light both on Munn’s departure and on long-standing challenges faced by one of Colorado’s most diverse districts when it comes to hiring and retaining educators who reflect the students they serve.

The district’s next superintendent, Michael Giles, will be charged with making improvements the board majority felt Munn couldn’t achieve, including to retain Black educators, to significantly improve outcomes for Black students, and to work with a board that has struggled to get along with each other and with their superintendent.

Aurora district’s focus on equity has evolved

The Aurora school district serves about 40,000 students, including 86% who are students of color. Aurora is home to many refugee communities.

In the 10 years of Munn’s tenure, the percentage of students of color in the district has increased slightly, even though the percentage of Black students has decreased slightly.

When a school board with no Black members hired Munn in 2013, equity was one of his stated priorities, but in recent years, other more diverse school boards pushed him to do more.

Munn worked to reduce the number of students who were expelled, attempted to increase the number of principals of color, and paired schools with programs that aimed to cultivate teachers from the district’s diverse student body. Later, he launched a mentoring program for young men of color.

The school board has created goals around equity targets and regularly has discussions about how that work progresses. At times, those discussions have been tense.

The district did see improvements in some student outcomes. Hispanic students made some of the largest gains in graduation rates in the state. Aurora Black students made huge gains too, and have a higher graduation rate than the state average for Black students. In one metric the board monitored — how many Black and Hispanic sixth grade students were on grade level in English tests — Black students made progress and were doing better than the district’s Hispanic students, though both groups still lag behind white and Asian American students.

But when it came time to evaluate Munn against these targets, the board decided to skip his evaluation, citing lack of test data during the pandemic. When the school board voted 4-3 late last year not to renew Munn’s contract, all they would say was that there had been a conflict in their vision. Munn negotiated to continue consulting for the district through this fall to help onboard a new superintendent.

After he stepped down from his superintendent position, Munn filed a discrimination complaint. According to district policy, such complaints are reviewed first by a fact finder and then by a separate decision maker who recommends corrective action if appropriate. In this case, the district decided to contract out both roles to avoid any conflicts of interest since the complainant was the former superintendent. The district spent more than $30,000 on the two contracts.

Much of the investigation centers on Mason, who joined the board in 2019 and whose term is up this year. She has not said if she’s going to run for re-election. Mason has focused primarily on teacher issues. In early 2020, she presented a resolution that would hold the district more firmly to goals around recruitment and retention of educators of color.

It helped spur more work, including with consultant Promise54 to draft a plan addressing the challenges teachers have identified, such as a lack of data, unclear goals, and inconsistent initiatives.

The district also has written more goals around equity, including one that at least 60% of respondents in staff surveys should report that they believe “APS has an explicit commitment to equity.” In 2020, 58% agreed but by May 2022, that dropped to barely over half.

Teacher retention goals central to complaint, fact-finding report

According to both Holmes’ fact-finding report completed in May and Hamill’s decision-making report released a month later, Munn’s discrimination complaint was closely tied to how the board interpreted district goals around equity, especially teacher retention.

At board meetings, Mason raised concerns she had heard from Black educators and questioned statistics that showed progress.

Munn alleges that Mason insisted Munn “act more Black” to achieve policy outcomes. He said the board judged him exclusively on retaining Black educators when the board goals talked about educators of color. He said that the way board members expressed their concerns frequently crossed the line into harassment. He said other board members allowed mistreatment to continue unabated.

After interviewing all seven board members, Holmes concluded there were insensitive communications and poor leadership on the part of the board, but he did not believe those problems constituted discrimination because board members Mason and Duncan are also Black. Holmes also states that because Munn negotiated a transition out of the district, as opposed to being fired, it means he doesn’t have an adverse outcome from the discrimination to be able to contest. And he said the evidence did not amount to a hostile work environment.

“Munn asserted in his complaint and during his interview that Board members commented on his Blackness and the racial makeup of his leadership team, both publicly and privately. However, not a single member of the Board substantiated Munn’s allegations,” Holmes wrote.

Based on Holmes’ fact-finding report, Hamill reached the opposite conclusion. Hamill cited court cases to say that if Munn resigned because he knew he was being pushed out, that constitutes being discharged, or fired, meaning he did suffer as a result of the harassment, and that it doesn’t matter his critics were also Black. Hamill also concluded that Mason and Duncan not believing that Munn was “Black enough” — as reported by Munn and some witnesses — is enough evidence to determine that the termination was racially motivated.

“Mr. Munn’s ‘Black Card’ was constantly questioned or ‘up for examination,’” according to Board consultant Crabill. Further evidence of pretext includes the lack of factual basis for the Board’s decision not to renew Mr. Munn’s contract,” Hamill wrote.

AJ Crabill, a consultant who has been working with the Aurora school board for years, told Holmes that it was obvious that some school board members wanted Munn to “focus his efforts on the retention of Black and Brown staff, rather than just people of color. Crabill emphasized that it is important for the Board to be explicit and candid about its goals and expectations,” and suggested that they change the language in their goals to reflect that.

The board did just that in September 2022 — updating their guidance to say the superintendent “will not allow the retention rate of Black and Hispanic/Latino educators to be significantly below the retention rate of all educators in APS-operated schools.” This was around the same time board members were privately discussing whether to renew Munn’s contract.

In November 2022, Munn gave his first and only progress report on that goal. The data he presented showed Black teachers have the lowest retention rates in the district — a worrying contrast from January 2020, when Munn reported that Black and Hispanic teachers had higher than average retention rates.

In his interview with investigators, Crabill noted that Munn’s data on retention rates for employees of color was often challenged, but that board members “never had any countervailing data to present, and the attacks on Munn’s data were supported only by opaque anecdotal experience.”

Since Munn was hired in 2013, the district has increased the number of non-white teachers. The number of Black teachers went from 74 to 104, or 4.3% of all teachers. Hispanic teachers went up from 205 to 230, to 9.7%.

The district also slightly increased the number of Asian teachers, from 49 teachers to 56, just barely more than 2% of all staff.

The Holmes report describes Munn accusing Mason of making anti-Asian remarks and not considering members of the Asian community to be people of color. The comments came in the context of criticizing Munn’s leadership team, which Mason did not consider to be diverse enough.

According to the report, Mason denied making anti-Asian remarks, but said she did tell Munn that “one Asian person does not make his Leadership Team diverse… [and] that his executive team was not diverse because it did not have adequate Black representation.”

When Munn stepped away from the role of superintendent, at least three of the members of his leadership team were Black.

In her interview with Holmes, Mason also admits that she “‘probably’ used the term ‘Black’ more often in reference to diversity, but during meetings with the Board she meant ‘everyone’ not just Blacks.”

Duncan, whom the decision-maker Hamill also found to have discriminated against Munn, denied wrongdoing in his interview with Holmes, the fact-finder. But he did say that when Munn asked for guidance on diversity work, “the Board told Munn the focus should be on retaining Black and Brown teachers.”

The reports could further drive a wedge between school board members who already struggle to agree on issues.

The Hamill report that concludes board members Mason and Duncan discriminated against Munn in part uses comments made by other board members to reach that conclusion. For example, board member Michael Carter, who is also Black, told Holmes that he thought firing Munn was “BS,” and “recalled APS staff and Board members remark that Munn was not black enough, but Carter could not identify any specific individuals.”

Hamill concludes with several major recommendations: that Mason and Duncan be publicly censured by their colleagues, that they be barred from holding leadership positions on the board, that the board publicly post the findings favorable to Munn on the district website for at least a year, and that the entire board receive training on the district’s anti-discrimination policy and federal Equal Employment Opportunity laws.

Crabill, who has worked with the board for years to try to prevent them from micro-managing Munn and stick to setting policy, told the investigator that training might not make a difference, because it would “not change engrained life-long beliefs.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Sheridan necesita un nuevo superintendente. El proceso ha dividido a la comunidad — otra vez

2023-06-20T22:57:44+00:00

Chalkbeat Colorado es un noticiero local sin fines de lucro que informa sobre las escuelas públicas en Denver y otros distritos. Suscríbete a nuestro boletín gratis por email en español para recibir lo último en noticias sobre educación dos veces al mes.

Read in English.

El distrito escolar de Sheridan no tiene superintendente este mes — y tampoco un plan claro para abrir una búsqueda.

Algunos miembros de la junta escolar quieren nombrar al candidato interno recomendado por el superintendente saliente, Pat Sandos. Esta propuesta ha dividido a la junta, y uno de sus miembros está acusando al presidente de intentar sobornarla para que esté de acuerdo.

Mientras tanto, la junta ha acordado pagarle a Sandos su salario completo durante un año de transición a partir de julio, aunque se haya jubilado oficialmente el 31 de mayo. Los miembros de la comunidad han lanzado una petición para poner fin a la extensión de Sandos. Dicen que por mucho tiempo el distrito ha pasado por alto e ignorado las necesidades de padres y estudiantes, y es hora de un nuevo liderazgo.

El distrito, situado en el suroeste de Denver, atiende a unos 1,100 estudiantes, que incluyen un gran porcentaje de estudiantes de familias con bajos ingresos o identificados como sin hogar. Como muchos en el área metropolitana, el distrito está luchando con una reducción en la inscripción, lo que significa menos ingresos y presupuestos más ajustados.

El sindicato de maestros está buscando aumentos similares a los que se han acordado en los distritos vecinos, pero las negociaciones se han estancado. Mientras tanto, tanto los maestros como los padres reportan una alta rotación de personal y que hay puestos importantes vacantes.

Alejandra Balderrama, una madre de Sheridan, se involucró en la petición para solicitar que el superintendente actual se vaya antes porque a ella le preocupa la rotación de personal, especialmente la salida repentina del director de la escuela primaria después de que la escuela fuera reconocida por el crecimiento académico excepcional de sus estudiantes.

“No me parece justo”, dijo Balderrama.

Ella dijo que espera que un nuevo líder represente más estabilidad entre el personal y una mejor comunicación con los padres.

“Me gustaría que hubiera una comunicación constante no solo entre los maestros y los directores o la administración, sino también con los padres”, dijo Balderrama. “Es importante que nos permitan participar de verdad”.

La junta está dividida en cuanto a cómo buscar un superintendente

El superintendente Pat Sandos fue contratado en 2018 en medio de resistencia por los miembros de la comunidad que preferían a uno de los otros candidatos — un educador hispano del suroeste de Denver. Sandos, un candidato interno, fue elegido en una votación dividida.

En aquel momento, el miembro de la junta Daniel Stange dijo que el distrito necesitaba a alguien externo que escuchara las peticiones de cambio de la comunidad.

Esta vez Stange es presidente de la junta y cree que no es necesario gastar miles de dólares en una empresa de búsqueda de superintendente si hay un buen candidato interno.

“Nos envían el mismo tipo de superintendentes, filtran a su manera, y obtienes lo que obtienes”, dijo Stange. “Si queremos un resultado diferente, un tipo nuevo de superintendente, ¿por qué gastar dinero en contratar a una empresa de búsqueda?”

“Nuestra búsqueda interna está realmente enfocada en la cultura de nuestras escuelas”, añadió Stange. “Queremos una mujer bilingüe. La mayoría de la junta apoya a un candidato interno que cumpla ese requisito”.

Pero la veterana miembro de la junta Sally Daigle, que votó por Sandos en 2018, cree firmemente que la junta necesita hacer una búsqueda exhaustiva. El desacuerdo comenzó en la misma reunión de diciembre, cuando Sandos anunció su jubilación.

Sandos le recomendó a la junta que nombrara a su directora académica, Veronica Maes, como reemplazo. Él podría capacitarla durante su año de transición.

Daigle abogó por que el distrito contratara a la Colorado Association of School Boards, de la que es miembro activo, para encargarse de la búsqueda. A ella le preocupa que solo se considere a un candidato interno.

“Hay algo que no encaja en todo este asunto”, dijo Daigle. “Si no lo pensara, no hubiese argumentado por hora y media que debemos hacerlo así”.

En una tensa reunión de la junta celebrada esta primavera, que en ocasiones se convirtió en un griterío, Daigle leyó mensajes de texto de Stange que ella describió después como un intento de sobornarla para que aceptara el plan utilizando los pagos de reembolso como palanca. Sheridan es uno de los pocos distritos escolares de Colorado que les paga a los miembros de la junta, y permite que se les reembolse por ciertas reuniones y gastos.

“Te dije que aprobaría los costos para que trabajes con CASB si no mostrabas tanta resistencia con este tema”, dice el mensaje de texto de Stange que Daigle compartió con Chalkbeat. “Parece que nos quieres empujar a un proceso largo y costoso. Espero que recuerdes que somos una junta de 5 miembros. La mayoría manda, pero tener consenso siempre será una imagen de confianza a nuestros electores”.

“Fue amenaza, coacción o como quieras llamarlo. Estaba bastante enojada”, dijo Daigle.

Daigle es quien cuida a su mamá a tiempo completo y también es parte de un comité CASB que requiere reuniones mensuales. Ella quiere recibir compensación cuando el trabajo le requiera conseguir a otra persona para que cuide a su mamá.

Stange dijo que el mensaje no era soborno ni coerción, pero dijo que sabe que “a algunas personas les puede sonar así”.

Stange dijo que estaba molesto porque Daigle estaba “haciendo un alboroto” sobre la búsqueda de superintendente y dijo que había desacuerdo sobre si el trabajo de la conferencia CASB de Daigle debería contar como trabajo de la junta escolar.

Según una solicitud de expedientes, hasta el 21 de mayo solamente dos miembros de la junta habían recibido un pago desde que esa política entró en vigencia. Daigle recibió $1,725 y María Delgado-García, $1,093.

Las escuelas de Sheridan, incluida la Academia SOAR de la escuela secundaria alternativa, vista aquí en agosto de 2020, ofrecieron aprendizaje en persona durante la mayor parte de la pandemia.

La candidata interna dijo que su pasión es trabajar para cerrar las brechas de igualdad

Maes, que llegó a Sheridan como directora académica el año pasado, dijo que quiere ser superintendente para seguir trabajando en proyectos importantes.

“Toda mi vida, mi pasión ha sido cerrar brechas de igualdad, trabajar con estudiantes multilingües — es la razón por la que trabajo”, dijo Maes. “De niña solamente hablaba español, y mi experiencia para aprender inglés no fue notable. Cuando llegué a Sheridan el año pasado, este trabajo realmente fue de gran satisfacción”.

“Cuando Pat anunció que iba a jubilarse, me preocupó el trabajo”, dijo. “Estamos logrando mucha tracción”.

Stange se mostró encantado de contratar a Maes para ocupar el puesto más alto del distrito, y alabó su enfoque de la igualdad y el hecho de que es una mujer hispana.

Maes ha estado de acuerdo en no solicitar un salario más alto durante el año de transición para que el pequeño distrito solamente pague un sueldo de superintendente — el de Sandos. Sandos, por su parte, dijo que él todavía se considera como superintendente.

Daigle dijo que una búsqueda más amplia garantizaría que el distrito encuentre al mejor candidato. Y si ese candidato es Maes, ella se destacará aún más, dijo Daigle.

La junta podría votar para nombrar a Maes este mismo mes. En ese momento la junta espera recibir un informe sobre la opinión de la comunidad acerca de los objetivos y la dirección del distrito basado en una encuesta y en algunas reuniones. Si Maes está de acuerdo con las prioridades de la comunidad, tiene sentido nombrarla, dijo Stange.

Daigle está frustrado porque el distrito le ha pagado $12,000 a un par de consultores, el doble de lo que CASB habría cobrado, por llevar a cabo una búsqueda de superintendente que incluyera la participación de la comunidad. Stange señaló que los contratos de consultoría incluyen un plan estratégico, y que las opiniones de la comunidad también servirán de apoyo a ese plan.

Aunque los padres están de acuerdo con el presidente de la junta en que la representación es importante en un líder, a algunos les preocupa que cualquier candidato interno, hispano o no, pueda seguir ignorando sus peticiones.

Alexis Márquez, líder del grupo de defensa Sheridan Rising, dijo que el año pasado los padres de Sheridan presentaron una lista de peticiones al distrito — incluyendo que el distrito proporcione intérpretes de español para las reuniones de la junta escolar para que más padres puedan participar.

“No era una petición difícil, pero esta carta fue completamente ignorada. Ni siquiera se habló de ello”, dijo Márquez. “Esto es una evidente indiferencia hacia la comunidad. Si no hablas el idioma, no puedes participar”.

Sandos dijo que le gustaría añadir intérpretes a las reuniones de la junta escolar, pero que la logística y el costo han sido un reto. Otros distritos escolares con muchas familias hispanas, como Adams 14, han ofrecido servicios de interpretación desde hace años.

Maes dijo que no tenía conocimiento de la carta ni de la petición. Ella se ha asegurado de que las escuelas ofrezcan intérpretes para las reuniones con los padres, dijo. No era algo que había considerado para las reuniones de la junta escolar.

Maes dijo que una mejor comunicación con la comunidad sería una prioridad si ella es elegida como superintendente, junto con el reclutamiento de estudiantes y maestros nuevos.

“Solo quiero hacer el trabajo”, dijo. “Este tipo de cosas se interponen en ese camino”.

Yesenia Robles es reportera de Chalkbeat Colorado y cubre temas sobre los distritos escolares K-12 y la educación multilingüe. Para comunicarte con Yesenia, envíale un mensaje a yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

State agency approves two charter schools rejected by Adams 14

2023-06-20T22:36:39+00:00

Two charter schools received approval Tuesday to open in Adams 14 despite the school district’s opposition.

The school district north of Denver had tried to block both schools — University Prep and Be the Change — from opening, but the State Board of Education last month took away the district’s exclusive say in approving or denying charter schools within its boundaries.

Adams 14 is under state reorganization orders after years of low test scores, and a majority of State Board members said it seemed the district showed a pattern of being unfair to charter schools.

Because the district lost its chartering authority, the two schools were able to apply through the state agency, the Charter School Institute. Now, both schools are expected to open in fall 2024.

At a special meeting Tuesday, the CSI board of directors unanimously approved both schools.

Joe Salazar, an attorney for Adams 14, said the district had asked CSI to hold off on their vote because of pending litigation. The district has sued the state for removing their exclusive chartering authority and requested that the judge issue a stay on the order. Salazar said the judge has not issued a ruling.

“If they issue a stay, then what CSI did today is void,” Salazar said.

The Adams 14 school board initially approved University Prep, a charter network that already operates schools in Denver, but then contract negotiations broke down. The charter network successfully appealed to the State Board of Education — twice — but the district still said it could not reach an agreement to open the school.

Leaders of University Prep said they worked with parents in the community, some of whom already drive their kids out of the district to attend the network’s Denver schools. Together they designed a school that is to include a preschool and programming in Spanish.

The school now has plans to open in fall 2024 serving students in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, expanding over time to enroll students up to fifth grade.

Adams 14 leaders cited uncertainty about whether the school would offer preschool in the first year as the issue that began the breakdown in negotiations. At that time, the network still hoped to open in fall 2023.

Be the Change leaders also say they had a lot of community engagement in designing their high school under a community school model with a biliteracy approach. The district denied their application after criticizing the plans as not rigorous enough.

On an appeal, State Board members sided with the district. That didn’t stop Be the Change founders from trying again, though.

Now, Be the Change expects to open in the fall of 2024 with students in grade 9, eventually serving students through grade 12.

“We are absolutely honored by the approval and thrilled for our Commerce City community to have an additional high school option in order for families to make the best decision for their children,” said Amanda Gonzales, Be The Change co-founder, in a written statement.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Denver board divided on competing school policing proposals

2023-06-01T23:55:08+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to keep up with education news from Denver and around the state.

A divided Denver school board failed to find much common ground in an hourlong debate Thursday over two competing proposals on the role of police in schools.

The meeting concluded with no decision, with no scheduled vote, and with uncertainty about next steps. The board even discussed setting aside both proposals until they held an up-or-down vote on the policy that was in place for almost two years — a ban on armed police officers on Denver campuses.

Superintendent Alex Marrero had asked the board to decide whether to allow police on campuses and in what circumstances as he finalizes a new school safety plan, and board members presented two different visions.

Board member Scott Baldermann’s proposal would allow Marrero to decide when, where, and for how long to station police at Denver schools. The proposal says police would not get involved in discipline but would be present for ensuring safety, deterring crime, mentoring students, and building community.

Baldermann said he hopes Denver schools can benefit from the presence of police without seeing a return to disproportionate discipline, tickets, and arrests that affected students of color.

“I don’t want to fall back,” Baldermann said.

Board member Scott Esserman countered: “This policy is falling back.”

Esserman backs a proposal from Vice President Auon’tai Anderson to direct the superintendent to negotiate a memorandum of understanding with the Denver Police Department to create community resource officers who would receive special training and get to know schools within regions of the city — without being stationed inside buildings.

Anderson called it a “third way” between having school resource officers on campus and the recent status quo, in which school leaders called 911 when safety issues arose and any on-duty officer responded.

“We need to center the needs of our students and not make reactionary decisions,” Anderson said.

With Anderson leading the charge, the Denver school board voted in 2020 to remove school resource officers amid the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis. Community groups such as Movimiento Poder, formerly known as Padres y Jóvenes Unidos, had been working toward that change for a decade.

Then in March, after a student shot two administrators inside East High School, the board temporarily suspended the ban. Marrero had already publicly stated his intention to bring police back to schools, and after spring break, Denver police officers were stationed at 13 Denver campuses.

The first version of Marrero’s safety plan would have allowed building principals to decide whether police should be stationed at their schools. After many principals said they didn’t want that responsibility, Marerro asked the Denver school board to make a long-term decision.

In a written statement emailed to Chalkbeat, Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas said he would work with the district wherever the board lands but has a “clear preference” for full-time school resource officers in every large high school.

“They will serve as a layer of safety planning and, more importantly, maintaining positive relationships with youth in schools,” Thomas said. “This position was shared with members of the school board. The decision will ultimately be that of DPS. DPD will comply with the direction of the DPS Board and School Administration.

“There are still a number of uncertainties with multiple options still on the table. While the department has begun logistical planning internally for different options, we will not comment about those plans until after a final determination has been made.”

The unanimous March vote to temporarily allow police on campuses occurred after a five-hour closed-door meeting and with no public discussion. Thursday’s meeting gives the public more insight into how board members are thinking about safety and policing. Esserman said the disagreement is a sign of healthy democracy in action, not dysfunction.

Board President Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán called the return of police “inevitable” and said the board should set guidelines such as proposed by Baldermann for what their role should be.

But board member Michelle Quattlebaum said the decision only becomes inevitable after the board votes. She said the board’s first decision should be whether it wants to stick with the policy in place from 2020 until March of this year — a ban on police in schools. Only once that policy has been overturned should the board consider a new policy.

Quattlebaum said she wanted to name the “elephant in the room.”

“I have Black sons who have gone through DPS and I know what their experience was,” she said. “We are talking about policing Black children. That is what we are talking about, without saying it. How do we make sure the white students are safe when they are in school with Black students?”

“I’m just as concerned as about my brown boys and my brown community,” Gaytán said. “What I want is a say in what that looks like.”

Board member Charmaine Lindsay says she has seen the impact of disproportionate policing and discipline on her 10 grandchildren, who are all children of color. Lindsay, who is white, said she also has seen children meet a bad end that might have been avoided if there had been earlier intervention.

“I’ve seen kids end up dead and kids end up with 20- or 30-year prison sentences that could have been prevented if someone said, ‘you’re going to get a ticket’ or ‘you’re going to go to a pathways school,’” she said.

She also said school resource officers could help teachers feel safer, and that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Board member Carrie Olson, who was attending remotely, did not weigh in.

With the board reaching a self-imposed deadline for wrapping up the discussion, Anderson suggested holding an up-or-down vote on the previous ban at a future meeting before taking up either of the new proposals. It takes three board members or the president to place something on the agenda.

Baldermann said he feared that ending the ban without agreement on a replacement policy — one possible outcome of an up-or-down vote — would leave Denver students without protections and the superintendent without guidance.

The board’s next meeting is Monday, when the board is scheduled to hear public comment. However, the board doesn’t have a meeting allowing voting until June 15. The board could also schedule a special meeting.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Denver school district hires safety chief from Aurora schools, filling 6-month vacancy

2023-06-01T22:26:33+00:00

Denver has hired longtime Aurora Public Schools safety chief Greg Cazzell to be the district’s next chief of climate and safety.

The key position has been vacant for more than six months as Denver Public Schools grapples with rising community violence and shootings both inside and just outside school buildings. Superintendent Alex Marrero is developing a new safety plan, the school board is debating the role of police in schools, and community groups are advocating for competing visions.

In a press release announcing the hire Thursday, the district said Cazzell would be responsible for overseeing and implementing the safety plan set to be finalized later this month. Cazzell is scheduled to start July 10.

Greg Cazzell

“I am very proud to accept this role with Denver Public Schools,” Cazzell said in the press release. “I am very aware of the work in front of us, and I am excited to get started on implementing the safety and security features of the new plan in support of our students, staff and community.”

A district spokesman said Cazzell is on a family trip and not available for interviews.

Cazzell has worked as Aurora Public Schools’ director of safety and security for eight years. Before that, he spent 22 years with the Glendale, Colorado, police department. He also has been an adjunct professor teaching criminal justice classes at Johnston & Wales University.

The neighboring Aurora school district has dealt with similar challenges with community violence. In 2021, within weeks, nine students were shot and injured in two incidents, one in the parking lot of Hinkley High School and the other in a park near Aurora Central High School.

Aurora, though, has maintained school resource officers throughout social justice protests and student advocacy. Then-Superintendent Rico Munn said the district put its own money toward mental health supports and restorative justice, while the city paid for police salaries, striking a good balance.

During his tenure, Cazzell implemented ID check procedures at Aurora schools that raised concerns among advocacy groups that work with immigrant parents and faced questions about the use of drug-sniffing dogs in schools.

“I know that Chief Cazzell will help DPS move forward in our ongoing commitment to providing a safe environment for every student to thrive,” Marrero said in a press release. “He will play a pivotal role in safeguarding our students and building trust among parents and staff.”

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

This Colorado district needed teachers. It found them in the Philippines.

2023-05-19T21:53:34+00:00

Leer en español.

The day Nicole Oyson interviewed for a science teacher job at Carmel Community School in Colorado Springs last July, she woke at 3 a.m. to get ready, apply makeup, and put on a blouse and blazer over shorts.

At 4 a.m., from the town of Mabinay in the Philippines, she nervously joined a video call with two interviewers in Colorado, where it was the middle of the afternoon. By 4:30 a.m. her time, Oyson had a job offer.

“I was shocked,” she said. “I was about to cry when I was accepting it.”

Oyson is among a growing number of international teachers filling vacancies in some Colorado school districts facing a dearth of homegrown applicants, especially in areas like math, science, special education, and bilingual education. District leaders say international educators help plug holes in the teacher pipeline and expand students’ cultural horizons.

Oyson, who previously taught for five years in the Philippines, said when she arrived at Carmel Community School last September, she showed her eighth grade students a PowerPoint presentation about her country — the flag, food, culture, and the beaches.

Students said, “If I lived near that I’d go swimming every day,” Oyson recalled. “Some of them said they’ve never seen a beach or an ocean.”

The Philippines is composed of more than 7,000 islands and has a population of about 114 million people.

Students also asked lots of questions: How long did it take to travel to Colorado? What kind of music do Filipinos like? Several kids wanted to know how to say words and phrases in Tagalog, one of two Filipino languages Oyson speaks.

“They are very funny,” she said.

Christine O’Brien, public information officer for the 12,600-student Harrison district where Oyson works in Colorado Springs, said the district began hiring teachers from the Philippines in the 2015-16 school year, and aside from a break during the pandemic, has almost every year since.

“It really was an innovative solution to the teacher shortage in those hard-to-fill areas,” she said. “We weren’t finding qualified candidates in those areas no matter how many teacher recruitment events we went to.”

O’Brien said teaching is viewed as an attractive profession in the Philippines and universities there turn out many qualified candidates. Plus, American teaching salaries are often well above what Filipino schools pay.

Oyson, who is now working on her master’s degree, said beginning teachers in the Philippines make about $460 a month. She makes nine times that here.

Nicole Oyson stands in the hallway at Carmel Community School in the Harrison district.

A path to cultural exchange, not immigration

This year, Harrison has nine Filipino teachers, with 33 more set to start in the fall. Most of them teach math, science, or special education, with a few serving as speech-language pathologists or occupational therapists. In total, Filipino teachers will make up about 7% of the district’s teacher workforce next year.

Like many international teachers, Oyson is in the United States on a J-1 visa, which is designated for educational and work exchanges — not as a route to immigration. The visa is also available to professors, medical students, nannies, and camp counselors. For teachers, the visa is good for three years, with the option to extend to five.

“This is a temporary visa,” said Nelson Molina, executive director of program development at the Global Ambassador Programs, which sponsors J-1 visa holders on behalf of districts. “It’s not for immigration purposes. It’s for cultural exchange.”

Molina said to be eligible for a J-1 visa, teachers must have a bachelor’s degree and at least two years of full-time teaching experience in their home countries. School districts are required to pay visiting teachers the standard salary given to American teachers with the same education and experience.

Molina’s organization sponsors J-1 teachers from about 34 countries, including Spain, France, England, the Philippines, and Mexico, on behalf of school districts in 10 states. In Colorado, Global Ambassador Programs works with four districts, including Harrison, Fort Lupton, and two mountain districts, Eagle County and Summit.

The Colorado Department of Education doesn’t track the number of Colorado teachers with J-1 visas. They can apply for one of three types of state credentials, including a three-year initial teacher license, a seven-year professional teachers license, or a one-year “Exchange Educator Interim Authorization.”

Adele Wilson, chief human resources officer in the 6,600-student Eagle County district, said her district has hired international teachers for years — from Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, and Spain, among others. This year, around 60 of the district’s 500 teachers are from abroad, including a few from the Philippines.

Most international teachers fill bilingual teaching positions in Eagle County, where about half of students are Hispanic and 30% are English learners.

“In the state of Colorado, it has been tremendously challenging to find bilingual candidates,” said Wilson.

At teacher job fairs, where school district booths are often arranged alphabetically, she said Eagle is often next to Denver and Douglas County, districts where the pay is higher and where housing — while not cheap — may be somewhat more affordable.

“The housing piece is a real stumbling block for us,” said Wilson.

For International teachers, who stay for a few years and don’t have families with them, it’s a little easier.

“They’re a little more OK with kind of living dorm-style, having roommates,” Wilson said.

International teachers face different student dynamics

For many international teachers, it’s surprising at first how students in the United States behave in school compared to students in their home countries.

“In other countries, a teacher is on the same level as an attorney, as a doctor,” said Wilson, adding that some international teachers working in American classrooms are “just flabbergasted that kids can get away with some of the things they get away with.”

It gave Oyson culture shock when she first arrived in Colorado Springs.

“It’s just so different from our children in the Philippines,” she said. “In terms of behavior, we don’t have kids that are cursing everywhere … They listen to the teacher all the time, minimal behavior problems over there.”

During Oyson’s first week in the classroom at Carmel Community School, she was very strict, gradually relaxing the rules in weeks two and three. She said she also tried to look at the situation from a different perspective and ”embrace the culture of the kids.”

Today, she has close bonds with some of her students and is excited to serve as a mentor to the 33 Filipino teachers arriving this summer, including two good friends she taught with previously.

Living and teaching in the United States wasn’t easy at first. Oyson was homesick — missing the humidity of the Philippines, the beach, and her husband among other things. But she also grew to appreciate the experience — better-equipped American classrooms, friendly people, and road trips to Denver, Breckenridge, Vail, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“I love it here,” she said. At the same time, Oyson is clear-eyed about the challenges. “You need to be tough. You need to adjust to be a master of what you do.”

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org

Beacon Network seeks injunction to block Denver board’s revocation of innovation zone

2023-05-04T17:20:56+00:00

A lawsuit filed Wednesday has the potential to test the strength of school autonomy in Denver Public Schools, a former stronghold of school reform that has since reversed course.

The nonprofit organization Beacon Network Schools, one of three innovation zones in DPS, is suing the district to stop the revocation of the zone. The Denver school board voted April 10 to revoke the zone, which is made up of two middle schools: Kepner Beacon and Grant Beacon.

Under the zone, the leaders of Kepner and Grant are overseen by a nonprofit board of directors and not by DPS, which gives the schools increased autonomy. Revoking the zone returns Kepner and Grant to district control.

The lawsuit argues that revocation causes “irreparable harm” to students, families, and teachers. “Beacon Zone students and families face uncertainty regarding the type of educational environment in which they will participate and will face a degraded school experience next year without the support of the Beacon Zone,” the lawsuit says.

DPS spokesman Scott Pribble said the district doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

Beacon Network Schools is also appealing the revocation to the State Board of Education.

The state board’s ruling won’t be binding. Instead, the state board can review the revocation and make a recommendation to the Denver school board, which has the final say. The appeal is the first time an innovation zone has taken advantage of a new state law passed last year.

In its lawsuit, Beacon Network Schools claims the Denver school board illegally revoked the zone. Beacon argues that a zone can only be revoked for one reason under state law: because students at one or more schools in the zone are not making sufficient academic progress.

In this case, Superintendent Alex Marrero recommended the zone be revoked for several reasons, including inadequate financial oversight by the zone board and concerns about the zone’s organizational health. He raised concerns with the unique employment arrangement of the Beacon zone’s executive director, Alex Magaña. Although Magaña is a DPS employee, he answers to the Beacon zone board, not to DPS administrators.

Beacon argues that none of those are legitimate reasons to revoke a zone.

Marrero also cited low student test scores at Kepner Beacon. Only 21% of students met expectations in literacy on state tests last spring, while 6% met expectations in math.

But Beacon claims the data is limited and flawed. DPS officials had previously said in an email to principals that academic data from last school year was “not an accurate representation of an entire student body” because “far fewer” students took the test than usually do.

Beacon officials have said they suspect Marrero’s recommendation to revoke the zone was based on a disagreement with Magaña. Marrero testified at the state Capitol against the bill to allow innovation zones to appeal to the state board. Magaña testified for it.

Eliot Lewis, chair of the Beacon Network Schools board and a former Grant Beacon parent, wrote in a signed statement attached to the lawsuit that he believes the school board’s decision to revoke was “based primarily on personal enmity between District personnel, specific Board members, and BNS Executive Director Alex Magaña.”

Marrero has said the bill testimony had nothing to do with the revocation.

Beacon is asking the Denver District Court to grant both a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to stop DPS from taking over Kepner and Grant.

DPS has already started the process, the lawsuit says, including by suggesting that Kepner and Grant staff may be required to attend “district-mandated summer programming” as opposed to summer programming put on by the Beacon zone.

The lawsuit argues that Beacon is in a time crunch. DPS has asked Kepner and Grant to submit new school-level innovation plans that erase all references to the zone by May 10. The temporary restraining order is meant to pause that timeline while the court considers the preliminary injunction and the state board considers the appeal.

The state board has 60 days from Wednesday to hear the appeal.

There are only three innovation zones in the entire state that the appeal law applies to, and all three are in DPS. Beacon is one of them. Another, the Luminary Learning Network, was renewed by the Denver school board last month.

The other zone, the Northeast Denver Innovation Zone, is regrouping after teachers at its largest school, Northfield High, voted to exit the zone in March. The school board has not yet decided whether to renew the NDIZ zone or revoke it.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Complex community needs and a divided board: Next Aurora superintendent must tackle big challenges

2023-03-24T22:11:59+00:00

A divided board. A mistrustful public. Lagging academic achievement. Rising youth violence.

The Aurora school board is searching for a new superintendent, who will face these issues and more.

“It’s the superintendent who sets that tone and builds that team and drives that momentum,” said Aurora school board President Debbie Gerkin. “So what’s at stake is whether we get a leader who can do that or one who can’t.”

Aurora’s next superintendent will be the district’s first new leader in nearly a decade. That person will have to navigate a feuding board, restore trust with the community, and get buy-in for their vision. At the same time, the ideal candidate would figure out how to meet the needs of a diverse student body, improve mental health services and academic performance, and find a fair way to deal with school closures and shifting enrollment.

A look at recent years shows how challenging the job is. Superintendent Rico Munn abruptly announced in December that he’d leave at the end of the school year, and stepped into the background while the board named an interim leader.

Board members declined to speak on reasons for Munn’s departure and about whether they want a change in course for his long-term projects. Recent disagreements in public meetings included anger over school closures and a lack of trust in efforts to engage the community.

School board members are interviewing six unnamed semi-finalists from among 28 applicants and are expected to announce three finalists as soon as next week.

The search profile describes an ideal candidate as having a background in education, something that the previous superintendent didn’t have, and a track record working with diverse communities and in a large school district.

An immediate challenge would be navigating dynamics of a divided board, which could change in the fall, when three of seven members are up for election.

A divided board splits on priorities

How the school board relates to its next superintendent will affect how much trust people feel in the district.

For a superintendent to be effective, they need clear guidance from the board. But the school board has struggled to agree on how the superintendent should manage the district.

A report on the community’s views of the district named board governance as one of the district’s main challenges.

“Comments included that the Board does not appear to understand their role and the governance model, can be ineffective in their communication, unfocused, and have appeared divisive and not aligned on priorities resulting in the appearance to work against each other and district leadership,” the report presented earlier this month said.

Board members have not contradicted the finding. In an interview, Gerkin said that it didn’t come as a shock.

“It is hard to see it in writing of course, but not a surprise,” she said.

She said that the board is committed to addressing their challenges and is united in understanding the importance of selecting the next superintendent.

“We’re seven different individuals, and every one of us is passionate about kids and passionate about education,” she said. “Different people with different ideas and lots of passion don’t always agree on how to put that together.”

Linnea Reed-Ellis, president of the teachers union, said she thought “productive disagreement” among the board members was OK. The board majority often has voiced similar criticisms of the district to those of the union, particularly in discussions about the facilities plan Blueprint APS and certain pandemic-era measures.

The report also mentioned a lack of trust across the organization, which search firm associate Scott Siegfried speculated was driven by issues with the Blueprint APS.

Reed-Ellis framed the issue as “a lack of clarity in vision as to what we are pursuing as a district.”

Whether or not the district’s next leader and the board want to change course, they still will face the same issue of changing enrollment patterns.

Aurora enrollment has fallen as families flee the western parts of the district closest to Denver, where rents and home values are rising faster than family incomes, and as lower birth rates contribute to fewer students. However, new developments out east are attracting more families with children. The demographics of the two sides differ. Munn wanted to make changes equitable, to avoid putting the new schools only in the east and closing campuses only in the west.

Gerkin said that ensuring that the Blueprint changes are implemented transparently and equitably will be a critical task for the new superintendent.

“We definitely don’t want the east side of town to be all new and shiny and older parts of the district to just look old and uninviting,” she said. “It depends on what the buildings look like, what kind of resources you’re putting into the buildings, all those things are important for the next superintendent to be working on.”

Aurora Public Schools opened a college and career center at every high school in the district, including this one at William Smith High School.

Achievement has risen in Aurora

Munn’s administration boosted student achievement. Graduation rates rose, expulsions dropped, and the gap in graduation rates of students of color and their white peers narrowed. Together, those gains lifted Aurora off the state’s watchlist for low performance.

Still, some schools have struggled to raise academic achievement. Student engagement plummeted when the pandemic forced students to learn remotely. And now, academic achievement at those schools still lags.

That worries Mordecai Brownlee, president of the Community College of Aurora and a parent in the school district.

To boost opportunities for Aurora graduates, the community college partners with Aurora schools on concurrent enrollment — where students earn college credit for classes taken in high school — and plans for a new program in construction management on the college’s CentreTech campus.

“You’ve certainly got to look at the amount of students who are failing to achieve a credential of higher education once they leave APS,” Brownlee said. “We owe it to this community to figure that out together.”

The school board set goals to close achievement gaps and accelerate learning but set them aside two years ago to focus on the emotional and social needs of children.

Munn worried that would hurt school ratings once the state’s accountability system returned in full force. In Colorado’s system, schools that have five years of low ratings face state-mandated improvement plans that could include closure. This past year’s ratings were meant to only give the public an indication of where academics stand and don’t move schools closer to outside intervention. But if Aurora schools score similarly this year, many more may be on a path toward state intervention.

For schools with multiple years of low ratings, Munn’s approach was to create district plans to turn them around before the state stepped in. He succeeded in preempting state-ordered plans. That approach is one of many things that may change with new district leadership.

Reed-Ellis said she hopes that the new superintendent will be willing to see students “holistically” and investigate other ways to measure learning and growth besides standardized testing.

“We all know our students are more than a test score,” she said.

Aurora’s diversity is a strength and a challenge

The superintendent search firm’s community surveys and forums found that people view the diversity of the Aurora school community as special and a challenge. The district struggles at times to meet the needs of all of its students and to retain a workforce that is reflective of its student body.

According to the district’s website, the district’s 38,000-plus students come from over 130 countries and speak more than 160 languages. About 56% of students are Hispanic, 18% are Black, 13.4% are white, and 5% are Asian. Nearly 75% of the district’s students qualify for subsidized meals, an indicator of poverty.

“We need a good leader in our school because schools often serve as anchors for the community and often serve as safe spaces for immigrants and refugee youth,” said Harry Budisidharta, executive director of Aurora’s Asian Pacific Development Center.

“We need a leader that has experience working with diverse communities and has a track record of building bridges.”

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman said he hopes the district continues its after-school programs, supported by a 2018 voter-approved tax increase. They are a great place for kids when parents are working late, he said, and the city needs to offer students safe spaces. These programs also offer physical activities and help students with academics and social and emotional needs.

“Here you have essentially working families that are relatively poor and to relieve them of essentially a lot of day care costs and in a great environment for the kids, we couldn’t replicate that as a city, yet it’s something we’re trying to do,” Coffman said.

Community members overwhelmingly said APS needs someone who has a record of addressing the needs of a diverse student body, including breaking barriers for non-English speaking students and their families.

“We’re quick to talk about diversity, how diversity-rich Aurora is, but that also comes with responsibility,” said Brownlee of the Community College of Aurora. “We can’t just dwell here; we’ve got to take care of and create these pathways for economic mobility for these families. The American dream has to be realized, and education is critical in that.”

Students in an Aurora elementary school work on massaging pressure points in their hands that help relieve tension. Many Aurora leaders want the next superintendent to focus on mental health support.

Student needs include mental health alongside academics

Several people said the next superintendent must ensure the district cares for its diverse community — including its mental health.

Students in Aurora are dealing with a lot. Teachers report that many are disengaged after frequent pandemic-related school disruptions. Some are juggling jobs and caring for siblings or have lost housing due to rising rents.

In 2021 two shootings outside high schools injured nine students and renewed conversations about gun violence and youth gang activity. More recent shootings haven’t occurred on school property, but community violence continues to affect students.

In focus groups with high school students, the search firm found that two main issues were violence and drugs in schools. Some students don’t feel safe walking to school and have called for better transportation options.

Aurora’s school district added mental health supports for students and staff and budgeted millions of dollars in federal pandemic relief funding for social and emotional learning programs designed to boost students’ well-being.

Reed-Ellis said that she believes continuing to provide these types of support — for employees as well as students — is paramount.

“How do we create schools that are truly responsive to our new world?” she said. “A lot of that seems to be around mental health and social emotional learning for students and adults.”

Budisidharta agrees that youth mental health is one of the area’s most pressing issues.

“We need a leader that will champion and prioritize mental health services and work with local community partners to make sure these youth get the mental health services they need regardless of their ethnicity or immigration status or income,” he said.

None of this will be easy, but the right superintendent candidate will see more than challenges, community leaders said.

“You don’t see problems, you see opportunities,” Brownlee said. “For someone that’s looking at this opportunity, it needs to be purpose work. It needs to be why you’ve been put here to do this work.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Carina Julig is a reporter for Sentinel Colorado covering education in Aurora. Contact Carina at cjulig@sentinelcolorado.com.

Denver school board wants better communication with parents as district weighs school closure

2023-02-24T05:14:23+00:00

Denver school board members said Thursday night that they expect better communication with parents and educators as district officials consider next steps — including possible closure — for 15 schools with low enrollment.

At the same time, board members who previously voted against school closures said they now believe some schools have such low enrollment that the situation is unsustainable.

Superintendent Alex Marrero presented an update on enrollment and possible steps toward closure at Thursday’s board meeting. He identified three schools with especially low enrollment that could close as soon as the end of the school year: Denver Discovery School, Math and Science Leadership Academy, and Fairview Elementary.

Marrero emphasized that he has not yet made a formal recommendation to close those schools or any others, and that he’s open to new ideas from the community. He said he is approaching the process differently than he did in the fall, when he made a recommendation to close 10 small schools and then directed school leaders to hold community meetings to hear from affected families.

The board rejected a narrowed down version of that recommendation in November, saying the process was rushed and didn’t give families enough of a chance to weigh in.

This time, Marrero is proposing meeting with the affected school communities before making a recommendation — a change that school board members said they appreciated.

“Yes, these three schools can be recommended for closure, and these 12 schools can be recommended for closure next year, but that’s not what I’m bringing forward today,” Marrero said in an interview after the board meeting Thursday night. “I want everybody to be prepared that that could be the case, but we’re also looking for creative solutions.”

Marrero said the process could move quickly for the three schools with “critically low enrollment.” He said district staff could begin engaging with families and teachers at Denver Discovery School, MSLA, and Fairview Elementary immediately, and he could bring a formal recommendation to the board next month.

Board Vice President Auon’tai Anderson, who was sharply critical of the school closure recommendation process this fall, said he feels differently now about the three smallest schools.

“I believe that we are at a point with the three schools that we need to take action immediately,” Anderson said. “I’m seeing a number of 62 kids at a middle school and it’s not feasible. And I think we have to have some tough decisions.”

Denver Discovery School is projected to have just 62 students next year, while MSLA is projected to have 104 excluding preschoolers. Fairview Elementary is projected to have 118. Denver schools are funded per student, and schools with low enrollment struggle to afford enough staff.

Anderson acknowledged that families may have avoided schools previously flagged for closure in the just-closed school choice window, leading to even lower enrollment at those schools.

“I do wonder if some parents were scared off from enrolling their kids because they saw these schools on a list before,” he said, referring to Marrero’s previous recommendations.

The process would move more slowly for 12 schools Marrero identified as having “concerning enrollment,” meaning they are projected to have fewer than 215 students next year.

A proposed timeline calls for district staff to meet with the 12 school communities from March to August, and for Marrero to present a formal recommendation to the school board in September. Any closures or other changes, which the proposal says could include revising school boundaries or co-locating one small school with another, wouldn’t happen until fall 2024.

The 12 schools are Ashley Elementary, Beach Court Elementary, Cole Arts and Sciences Academy, Colfax Elementary, Columbian Elementary, Eagleton Elementary, Hallett Academy, International Academy of Denver at Harrington, Kaiser Elementary, Palmer Elementary, Schmitt Elementary, and Whittier K-8. Projected enrollment ranges from 131 students excluding preschoolers at IAD at Harrington to 209 students at Cole Arts and Sciences Academy.

Board members offered suggestions Thursday for what they’d like the meetings with the school communities to look like. Anderson said Marrero should lead the meetings himself.

Families should be assured their children will get priority to enroll at other schools if their school closes, Anderson said, and staff should be assured they’ll get other jobs in the district. He also suggested the meetings be held both in-person and virtually so more families could participate.

Board member Carrie Olson said one of the most uncomfortable parts of the meetings this fall was when parents would ask questions that principals didn’t know the answer to. She requested that “people who can answer questions” be in the room at all community meetings.

“Clear communication with answers at meetings is going to be vital and imperative,” she said.

The board is considering a new policy that directs the superintendent on how to approach school closures. It acknowledges that district enrollment is declining and says the board “believes it is necessary to consolidate and unify schools to maintain the financial viability of the district and to maximize the resources, staff, and programs offered to students.”

Consolidation and unification are how Denver officials describe school closures.

The policy outlines a long list of information that the district should provide to families and educators at schools recommended for closure, including the “positive implications of proceeding” and the “negative implications of not proceeding.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado school case study highlights need for collaboration in turnaround work

2023-02-17T17:24:37+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Subscribe to our free Colorado newsletter to keep up with education news from around the state: ckbe.at/subscribe-colorado

When Centennial Elementary in Greeley was facing state intervention in 2016, Superintendent Deirdre Pilch, who was new at the time, decided to try something different.

She surprised then-Principal Anthony Asmus by letting him decide how he wanted to turn things around at the school.

“She backed us up,” recalled Asmus. “We had the choice for this. That was big.”

Seven years later, Centennial is being cited as a success story in a new study commissioned by the state that highlights the importance of local leaders and classroom teachers taking ownership of school improvement efforts.

Officials with the Colorado Department of Education are using the findings to improve how they help schools in turnaround. The state on Wednesday approved the latest round of school improvement dollars.

The case study, presented to the State Board of Education in October, follows Centennial Elementary and Prairie Heights Middle School, two Greeley schools that joined the state’s Transformation Network and have maintained their improvements over time.

Researchers found that narrowing the focus to fewer improvement strategies, empowering teachers to lead change in their classrooms, and having good relationships between state, district, and school leaders, are key.

And, importantly, the study found, local educators such as teachers and school leaders have to feel ownership of the work that’s happening, rather than being told what to do.

“There was a need to go a little deeper on what happened to those schools that had left the program and sustained success,” said Elena Diaz-Bilello, a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, and author of the report. The study was done by the Center for Assessment, Design, Research and Evaluation (CADRE) at the CU Boulder School of Education.

“There’s a big part of the picture that’s always missing,” Diaz-Bilello said. “You don’t capture the richness that turnaround schools undergo when they are going through this work.”

Schools that join the network receive state or federal funding for three years as well as support from state experts in improving their school. To join, schools have to be identified as struggling either by state or by federal measures, and then apply. Schools that are struggling and looking for funding and state support have a long menu of program options to pick from, including the Transformation Network. State leaders say more schools have been joining.

This year, the governor allocated additional funds for school improvement work. For all school improvement grants, Colorado has $8.1 million in state dollars and $16.4 million from federal dollars. Some of the awards will be split over four years.

Sixteen schools will join the Transformation Network this year. Seven of them will receive $945,000 in state grants, while another nine will share $1.2 million in federal funds.

Many of the schools that take part in the Transformation Network, including the two in Greeley, receive benefits that last beyond the participation in the state program. Since it began, 97 schools have participated in the network.

According to state data, a majority of schools that completed three years in the network and started with one of the two lowest ratings – turnaround or priority improvement status – raised their marks to get off the state’s watch within three years.

Of all schools that have participated in the Transformation Network, about one in four had a low rating in 2022, the most recent year. That’s a marked improvement since almost all start with low ratings.

Researchers note that there isn’t evidence showing that top-down mandates for improvement– such as the state board’s directed orders that aim to force change — work.

Colorado is engaged in an ongoing debate about how well the school accountability system works to improve student outcomes. An audit found that it was largely working as designed, but superintendents still want to see changes. Meanwhile, the Adams 14 school district is resisting state-mandated reorganization orders.

One of the two recommendations in the report is to find a way to either make the Transformation Network an option for schools that reach year five of low performance, or to find a way to design state improvement orders with a focus on relationships and local ownership.

Current law lays out four pathways for schools with persistently low test scores: external management, converting to a charter, closure, or using the state’s innovation status to earn more autonomy from certain laws or union contracts.

Making the Transformation Network an official pathway option would require policy or law changes, something that’s not in the works. But state staff are working on incorporating the same relationship building into all of their other work.

“We see real power in that partnership and growing each other together,” said Lindsey Jaeckel, executive director of the state education department’s school and district transformation unit. “Just having time to coach and grow leaders and teacher leaders specifically — it affirms it’s really important to have a supportive staff culture.”

When there is collaboration, local leaders can take ownership of the work and “lean in more,” said Adam York, a research associate with the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. He also worked on the case study.

“When the spirit of the turnaround is taken up this way by the schools, CDE are finding schools and districts are positively responding and they see a lot of improvement,” York said.

State officials also realized through the study that district-level support is often missing from rural schools where staff are limited. Rural schools are underserved in the network in general, so state officials have now been recruiting those schools to participate and finding ways to create relationships between them, so they can have that added level of support they may be missing.

What worked for the schools highlighted in the case study?

The schools highlighted were Centennial Elementary and Prairie Heights Middle School, both in Greeley, a growing working-class city a little more than an hour north of Denver. Researchers also looked at Dos Rios Elementary, which didn’t officially join the network, but where the district used many of the same supports.

Both Centennial and Prairie Heights had higher than average numbers of students from low-income families, and students whose home language wasn’t English. For example, this school year, about 45% of Centennial’s students identified as English learners, 7% identified as homeless, and more than 86% qualified for free or reduced-price meals.

Before joining the Transformation Network in 2016, the two schools had multiple years of low ratings and were facing state intervention if they didn’t improve. In the case of Prairie Heights, the school was put on a state-approved improvement plan the following year, but it was the plan pitched by the district. By 2018, the schools’ ratings improved.

Researchers who interviewed staff and spent time at the schools documented four key strategies that helped the schools improve:

Using a state provided tool to define limited and focused areas of improvement, goals, and to measure progress toward them;
Routine classroom observations connected to training;
A collaborative culture where teachers have leadership roles in the improvement work;
Alignment between the support provided at the school, district, and state level.

When Centennial joined the network, then-Principal Asmus, his assistant principal, and his district supervisor all used the grant money to attend training through the New York-based Relay Graduate School of Education.

“In turnaround status, you’re just grasping for things that will work. You just don’t get any traction,” Asmus said. “We thought let’s just focus. What is a program that helps us get clarity? And we were fortunate that our supervisor went with us.”

Asmus said that allowed him to receive coaching from his supervisor, who knew what he was trying to change. State leaders were also helpful, he said, but it was nice having someone closer.

The state recognized that the district’s support made a difference. So this year, it is rolling out a new rubric for participating schools to measure how well districts are supporting their schools. It’s part of trying to foster relationships so that school, district, and state leaders are working toward the same goals.

In the report, researchers also highlighted distributed leadership, a collaborative culture of helping each other improve and allowing teachers to take on leadership roles for various improvement strategies.

Asmus said that teacher training at his school changed. He started having teachers practice scripting and getting feedback on what they may say in class as part of each training.

“If things are not right, the leader takes the responsibility,” Asmus said. “I just owned that. I wasn’t afraid to jump in and model the instructional practice and get feedback myself.”

Asmus said that teachers seeing him open up and take feedback allowed them to be more open to it themselves.

“That continued on into the classroom where they would work and support each other, observing each other,” he said.

Researchers noticed that too.

“It becomes part of the ritual for teachers to model for each other and to have open classrooms so they can get feedback,” Diaz-Bilello said. “There was no risk in trying out new things because we can always correct ourselves.”

That’s good practice, Diaz-Bilello said, and not just for turnaround schools. Now that Asmus is an assistant superintendent overseeing 11 Greeley schools, that work is spreading to those schools as well.

At Prairie Heights Middle School, teachers told researchers that once they joined the network, they had a say in “everything.”

“We made decisions together and talked about what action steps we were going to take…we had a say on professional development and getting even more staff involved in that … we were even creating professional development for other staff!” teachers quoted in the report said.

And researchers saw that teacher participation continues today.

“The amount of energy, work and dedication it takes to move a school — I can’t stress enough how impressive it was to be in these schools,” said Diaz-Bilello. “Sometimes that piece is lost. You lose the human element of the stories. But it’s just such an important part, the way these schools have grown because they have nurtured such strong relationships.”

Correction: The original story only listed schools joining the Transformation Network using state funds. The list has been updated to include schools that are receiving federal funds.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

New Colorado State Board of Education blocks a charter appeal against Adams 14

2023-01-12T22:54:23+00:00

The State Board of Education voted 5-3 Thursday to deny an appeal from a charter school seeking to open a new high school in Adams 14.

The Adams 14 school board had denied the application from Be the Change Community School for a high school with biliteracy and project-based learning in November.

This was the first charter appeal heard by a State Board of Education with an expanded Democratic majority and two new members who previously served on school boards. Just last month, the State Board unanimously sided with a charter school and against Adams 14 in a different case.

The Be the Change appeal saw both new members and some who had previously ruled against Adams 14 instead side with the district.

State Board members who sided with the district were most swayed by the concern that Be the Change had submitted only around 30 intent-to-enroll forms for its opening ninth grade level. The school wanted to have 100 students to open.

“I am not convinced, based on the enrollment numbers, that people are looking for this particular option,” said new state board member Kathy Plomer. “I don’t think it’s my job to sit here and decide what Adams 14 parents are interested in.”

In November, the Adams 14 school board voted unanimously to reject the charter application for the school at a special meeting without public discussion and without public comment. The district had held three community meetings to hear feedback from the public about the charter school but they were not well-attended.

At Thursday’s appeal hearing, a lawyer for the charter school argued that if approved, the school would agree to pre-opening conditions laid out in a contract and not open if it didn’t ultimately get more students to enroll.

But State Board members who voted to deny the appeal said such conditions could cause other problems for parents, who would be left uncertain if the school would be able to open. If the school did open and then had to close soon afterward, that would also be bad for the community, board members said.

For State Board president Rebecca McClellan and the board’s two Republican members Steve Durham and Deb Scheffel, who sided with the charter school, those conditions should have been enough to allow the charter application to proceed.

“It’s really a non-issue,” Durham said. “There will be a flight to quality.”

An estimated 900 high school students who live in Adams 14 go to schools in other districts, state officials said. District officials, who said they don’t know how many students leave, said some students from other districts also choose to enroll in Adams 14 schools.

Durham urged his fellow board members to accept the appeal because about 75% of students at the district’s existing high school, Adams City High School, can’t meet expectations on state tests. In his opinion, Durham said, it was unlikely that a new school led by experienced educators would do any worse.

In the appeal hearing, the district also argued that the local board had reasonable concerns about some of the curriculum not being fully developed, and that the governing board of the charter school would only include one parent.

Leaders for the proposed charter said they haven’t yet fully developed the curriculum because they are working with a design team of community members, teenagers, and parents to design the school’s project-based curriculum. They did submit an overview of the programming.

At the hearing on Thursday, district representatives said they would have also liked to have seen a timeline for the project to develop the curriculum, but charter leaders said that was not requested prior to Thursday.

Charter leaders also said they were considering revising their bylaws to allow for more parent involvement, but noted there are other ways they envisioned parent involvement in multiple advisory committees.

Last month, the State Board heard an appeal from University Prep, an existing Denver charter operator, that attempted to open an elementary school in Adams 14. In that case, the State Board did overturn the Adams 14 decision and asked the district to reconsider approval of that charter school’s contract.

State Board member Lisa Escárcega said she was also concerned about ordering Adams 14 to focus on even more than the current three State Board orders: for reorganization, implementing a turnaround plan in the meantime, and reconsidering the University Prep charter contract.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Los líderes de Adams 14 prometen mejorar la educación vocacional y ayudar más a los estudiantes de inglés

2022-12-15T23:50:26+00:00

Read in English.

Chalkbeat Colorado es un noticiero local sin fines de lucro que informa sobre las escuelas públicas en Denver y otros distritos. Suscríbete a nuestro boletín gratis por email en español para recibir lo último en noticias sobre educación.

Antes de la pandemia, la Escuela Primaria Rose Hill del distrito Adams 14 llevaba cuatro años teniendo malas calificaciones. Eso cambió este otoño cuando los estudiantes de Rose Hill demostraron una mejora en los exámenes del estado, y fue la única escuela primaria de Adams 14 en lograrlo.

Los cambios fueron el resultado de un liderazgo consistente y de un experto equipo de maestros que se esforzó arduamente para mejorar cómo atienden las necesidades de los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés.

“No hemos tenido una cantidad masiva de gente yéndose de Rose Hill,” dijo el director Luis Camas. “Este es mi quinto año, y la mayoría de los maestros está todavía aquí. Está marcando una diferencia”.

Los líderes de Adams 14 están ahora compartiendo planes de cómo esperan apoyar que más escuelas progresen como la Rose Hill, que lo logró a pesar de haber tenido años de desempeño deficiente y una intervención del estado que no funcionó.

Ellos también insisten en que a sus estudiantes les está yendo mucho mejor de lo que sugieren las puntuaciones en los exámenes estatales, y continúan resistiendo la intervención externa en los tribunales.

Los planes del distrito incluyen asegurar que los directores tengan el tiempo y las destrezas necesarias para trabajar con los maestros en temas de instrucción, desarrollar una escuela de la comunidad en la Escuela Primaria Central que les preste servicios a toda la familia, establecer academias vocacionales en la Escuela Secundaria Adams City, y brindarles más recursos a los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés, que representan la mitad de la matrícula.

Algunos de esos planes son nuevos — como el de la escuela en la comunidad — mientras que otros fueron propuestos o intentados antes, pero con seguimiento limitado. Los líderes del distrito dicen que esta vez es diferente porque están trabajando con la comunidad y desarrollando una estrategia completa, no solamente una ‘lista de tareas’ con programas nuevos.

María Zubia, miembro de la junta escolar, dijo que en esta ocasión está viendo acción real para cambiar y cree que los planes subsistirán más que la administración actual, y por lo tanto el trabajo no tendrá que volver a comenzar con cada cambio de administración.

“Eso es lo que nos entusiasma”, dijo Zubia. “Son las cosas que vemos. Estoy cansada de la gente que habla, habla y habla, pero no hay acción. Yo soy realista; necesito verlo”.

Algunos miembros de la comunidad y expertos todavía se muestran dudosos. Nicholas Martinez, que dirige el grupo local Transform Education Now, dijo que los líderes no le han explicado claramente a la comunidad lo que está pasando ni por qué.

“Desde mi punto de vista, no mucho ha cambiado”, dijo Martinez. “Los datos del estado se publicaron, y no hay muchos que se salgan de la norma. No hay un montón de gente diciendo, ‘Ahí se ve un punto brillante’. Me encantaría saber cuál ha sido la estrategia del distrito”.

Cómo Adams 14 llegó aquí

Hace ocho meses, la Junta de Educación del Estado ordenó la reorganización del distrito escolar Adams 14 — la medida más drástica disponible según las leyes del estado. El distrito había batallado con puntuaciones bajas en los exámenes del estado por más de una década. La reorganización podría resultar en cierres de escuela o en la pérdida de control de algunas partes de Adams 14 a los distritos vecinos, pero el plan sería dirigido por miembros de la comunidad de Adams 14 y personas de distritos cercanos que apoyan al distrito.

El distrito ha dedicado bastante tiempo y esfuerzo a resistir las órdenes del estado. Un comité de reorganización se reunió una sola vez, y el grupo ahora está buscando un facilitador.

Mientras tanto, la Superintendente Karla Loría ha formado un equipo nuevo de líderes mayormente compuesto de personas que ella conoce de empleos anteriores. El distrito también tiene un contrato de tres años y $5 millones con TNTP, una entidad sin fines de lucro, para que ayude con la mejora a las escuelas.

De todos modos, muchos en la comunidad se preguntan qué está haciendo el distrito para mejorar el desempeño de los estudiantes.

Los maestros en Rose Hill dicen que las mejoras de los estudiantes se deben a un liderazgo consistente y al aumento en apoyo para los que están aprendiendo inglés.

Con el tiempo, los estudiantes de inglés han tenido más apoyo

Adams 14 tiene una matrícula de un poco más de 6,000 estudiantes al norte de Denver, y más o menos la mitad están clasificados como estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés o linguistically gifted, como el distrito los llama ahora. Una queja ante el gobierno federal y una investigación iniciada en 2010 con el tiempo indicó que el distrito estaba violando los derechos civiles de esos estudiantes y discriminando contra sus familias. Una orden federal obligó a Adams 14 a mejorar sus servicios para los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés.

El distrito está agregando más instrucción bilingüe y ha traído maestros bilingües de otros países.

“Me parece excelente contar con instrucción en dos idiomas que apoyará no solamente a los estudiantes que quieran aprender un segundo idioma, sino también a los que quieran fortalecer su primer idioma”, dijo Loría. “Estamos viendo progreso en esa área, pero creo que todavía quedan cosas por mejorar”.

Este año el distrito agregó maestros dedicados al desarrollo del idioma inglés a cada escuela primaria.

Raven-Syamone Wattley, maestra en la primaria Rose Hill, dijo que esto ha marcado una gran diferencia, aunque muchos maestros en la escuela han recibido capacitación especial también. Antes, los maestros en Rose Hill tenían que dividir sus clases y clasificar a los estudiantes según su dominio de inglés cuando llegaba la hora de la clase de inglés.

Esto significaba que ella recibía estudiantes adicionales que tenía que atender además de sus clases regulares.

Ahora al tener un maestro o maestra de desarrollo del idioma de inglés asignado, ella se puede enfocar en sus estudiantes y en cómo incorporar la instrucción de inglés en el resto del día.

“Ha sido una diferencia enorme al momento de planificar. Ahora es una materia menos” dijo Wattley. “El desarrollo del idioma inglés ha mejorado drásticamente”.

Mientras los líderes del distrito trabajan para mejorar la instrucción de los estudiantes bilingües, ellos creen que el sistema estatal los juzga injustamente porque muchos de esos estudiantes todavía no dominan el inglés. Cuando los estudiantes de primer y segundo grado tomaron este año el ampliamente usado examen STAR, casi un 60% de los estudiantes que lo tomaron en español cumplieron las normas, en comparación con solo un 23.5% de los que lo tomaron en inglés.

Luis Camas, director de Rose Hill (en el centro), asegura que los niños se suban a los autos de sus padres después de la escuela. Sus cinco años en la escuela han ayudado a tener consistencia y crecimiento académico.

Enfoque del distrito en el liderazgo de los directores

Antes de la pandemia, Rose Hill enfrentaba la posibilidad de una intervención estatal si recibía otra mala calificación de desempeño.

Pero este otoño la calificación estatal de Rose Hill subió a nivel de Improvement (mejoró), el segundo nivel más alto. Este nivel de mejora necesita continuar el próximo año para que la escuela no tenga una intervención por el estado.

Camas dijo que su tiempo en la escuela le ha permitido establecer una cultura y sistemas en los que los maestros saben cómo analizar los datos y hablar sobre la planificación de lecciones. Él también es uno de siete directores de Adams 14 que asistieron a un programa de liderazgo en la Universidad de Virginia.

Loría dijo que le ha dado prioridad a que el personal del distrito apoye a los directores para que ellos puedan enfocarse, como Camas, en dirigir la labor educativa de los maestros en vez de tener cargas administrativas pesadas o asistir a largas juntas sobre los aspectos de administrar una escuela que no están relacionados con instrucción.

En Rose Hill, Camas ha agregado un periodo nuevo de planificación para los maestros, que ahora tienen dos cada día. Aunque él hubiese preferido no darles más tareas a los ya sobrecargados maestros, ellos se le acercaron y pidieron que empezara un programa de tutoría en las tardes.

Los estudiantes de Rose Hill tienen acceso a programas en las tardes, entre ellos un club de competencias para apilar vasos.

Se acercan programas vocacionales en Adams City

La Escuela Secundaria Adams City es la única secundaria de programa completo en el distrito. Ha obtenido calificaciones deficientes del estado desde 2010, y tiene su propio plan de mejoras.

Por más de una década, los líderes del distrito han hablado acerca de crear programas vocacionales más estructurados, o academias, en adición a las clases vocacionales que la escuela ya ofrece.

Muchos padres quieren estos programas, y los educadores piensan que motivaría a los estudiantes y les abriría puertas después de graduarse. Los estudiantes que participan en programas vocacionales tienen más probabilidad de graduarse, pero en 2019 solamente una cuarta parte de ellos estaban participando.

Ahora el distrito quiere crear programas integrados que conecten el enfoque vocacional de cada academia durante todo el día en materias como matemáticas, lectura, y otras. Las cuatro academias serán: ciencias de salud y servicios humanos; arquitectura, construcción, ingeniería y diseño; negocios, hospitalidad y turismo; y finalmente, información y tecnología.

El próximo año, los estudiantes de noveno grado explorarán todas las cuatro durante el primer semestre y luego seleccionarán una para el resto de sus años en la secundaria.

“No importa si esa será su profesión o no, de todos modos estarán preparados para entrar el mundo laboral”, dijo Ron Hruby, el director de educación vocacional y técnica del distrito. “Por ejemplo, nuestros estudiantes van a poder trabajar a tiempo parcial como flebotomistas — imagínense la cantidad de dinero adicional que podrían recibir”.

Una subvención estatal de $900,000 pagará por parte de las modificaciones a la secundaria.

Misael Díaz (al centro), en décimo grado en la Secundaria Adams City, elabora un plato durante una clase de cocina 2019 ProStart en la escuela.

Escuela de la comunidad es parte clave de los esfuerzos del distrito

La Escuela Primaria Central también tiene su propio plan de mejoras después de haber tenido calificaciones deficientes desde 2012. La escuela está destinada a ser la primera escuela de la comunidad en el distrito — un modelo que trata de resolver factores externos al salón de clases que afectan el aprendizaje.

Un coordinador a tiempo completo está trabajando con la escuela para determinar las necesidades de las familias e identificar qué servicios se necesitan. Esos servicios podrían incluir un banco de alimentos, una clínica, o un programa de ayuda para encontrar empleo para los padres. Es un modelo que algunas personas quisieran expandir a otras escuelas aparte de la Primaria Central. Más de un 71% de los estudiantes de Adams 14 califican para comidas gratuitas o a precio reducido (una medida de pobreza) y muchas familias tienen problemas de salud que ellos entienden están relacionados con factores ambientales.

El distrito también ha creado incentivos especiales para que las personas trabajen en la primaria Central.

Jason Malmberg, presidente de la unión de maestros del distrito, dice que a su entender, esta es la mayor diferencia en estos planes de mejora del distrito.

“El distrito ahora ha asignado el dinero donde lo han prometido” dijo Malmberg. “Esto es como todo — no se puede simplemente comprar una etiqueta para ponérsela al edificio. La idea es que se estaría respondiendo a las barreras de aprendizaje específicas para esa comunidad. Hay un contexto importante en las vidas de los niños. Y ya no es algo que opinan solo los maestros o las familias. Es una idea que viene desde arriba, es un cambio en la cultura”.

Yesenia Robles es reportera para Chalkbeat Colorado y cubre asuntos relacionados con los distritos escolares K-12 y la educación multilingüe. Para comunicarte con Yesenia, envíale un mensaje a yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Adams 14 gives superintendent new contract and large raise

2022-12-14T21:51:22+00:00

The Adams 14 school board approved a new contract for Superintendent Karla Loría Tuesday night, giving her a substantial raise reflecting her new duties since the district regained management.

The contract, which takes effect July 1, will run through at least June 30, 2026. After that it will automatically renew for up to three more years unless the board notifies Loría otherwise. She will make $250,000 per year, with annual raises based on a consumer price index for the region.

Loría’s new salary puts her close to the top salaries in the largest districts in the state. Superintendent Alex Marrero in Denver and Superintendent Tracy Dorland in Jeffco each make $260,000 salaries.

The Adams 14 school board approved the contract unanimously as part of a consent agenda.

“I am so thankful for your work Dr. Loría,” Board President Reneé Lovato said just before the vote. “You have done so much to not only elevate our school district but done so on a state and national, international level so thank you for that.”

Karla Loría

In part, Lovato was referring to a presentation earlier in the meeting where the board heard an update about the district beginning its evaluation from Cognia, a nonprofit organization that reviews and accredits schools and districts around the world.

Maria Zubia, another Adams 14 board member, told Loría she appreciated her integrity.

Loría’s original contract signed in 2021 paid her $205,000 annually, more than previous district superintendents earned. Her predecessor Javier Abrego made $169,125 before leaving the district.

“The increase is in recognition of the increased duties of the superintendent that resulted from the return of the district’s authority by the State Board of Education,” the new contract states.

Loría’s original contract stated that she would not receive a raise when she received an unsatisfactory performance evaluation, but that stipulation is not in the new contract.

When Loría took charge of the 6,100-student district, Adams 14 was under a state order to be fully managed by an outside group, due to many years of low test scores. The plan was for the management company to slowly release more duties to the district as they phased out their work over the next two years.

Not long after Loría started, she asked the board to end its relationship with the management company. Loría now says she was blocked from many decisions by the management company.

The early termination of that contract led the State Board to order the district begin a reorganization process. The district has formed a reorganization committee with neighboring districts and must design a plan, which could range up to merging or dissolving Adams 14.

Read the new contract:

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Community schools, career academies, better planning: How Adams 14 leaders plan to improve learning

2022-12-08T00:36:26+00:00

Leer en español.

Before the pandemic, Rose Hill Elementary in the Adams 14 district had four years in a row of low ratings. That changed this fall when Rose Hill students showed improvement on state tests — the only Adams 14 elementary school to do so.

The changes came from consistent leadership and an experienced team of teachers working hard to improve how they serve English learners.

“We haven’t had the massive numbers of people just leaving Rose Hill,” said principal Luis Camas. “This is my Year Five, and most of my teachers are still here. It’s making a difference.”

Adams 14 leaders are now sharing plans for how they hope to support more schools in making progress like Rose Hill despite years of low performance and failed state intervention.

They also insist their students are doing much better than dismal state test scores suggest, and they continue to fight outside intervention in the courts.

The district’s plans include making sure principals have the time and skills to work with teachers on instruction, developing a community school at Central Elementary that will provide services to the entire family, building career academies at Adams City High School, and providing more resources to the English learners who make up half the student body.

Some of these plans are new — like the community school — while others were proposed or tried before, but with limited follow-through. District leaders say this time is different because they’re working with the community and developing a comprehensive strategy, not just a “to-do list” of new programs.

Board member Maria Zubia said this time she’s seeing real steps toward change and believes the plans will outlast the current administration, so the work doesn’t have to restart next time there’s a change.

“That’s what’s exciting to us,” Zubia said. “There’s just things we see. I’m tired of people who talk, talk, talk, and there’s no action. I’m one of the realists; I need to see it.”

Some community members and experts are still skeptical. Nicholas Martinez, who leads the local advocacy group Transform Education Now, said leaders have not clearly explained to the community what’s happening or why.

“From my vantage point not a lot has changed,” Martinez said. “State data was released, and there’s not a ton of outliers. There’s not a ton of folks that said, ‘There’s a bright spot.’ I would love to know what has been the strategy for the district.”

How Adams 14 got here

Eight months ago, the State Board of Education ordered the reorganization of the Adams 14 school district — the most drastic step available under state law. The district has struggled with low test scores for more than a decade. Reorganization could lead to school closures or losing control of parts of Adams 14 to neighboring districts, but the plan will be led by Adams 14 community members and people from neighboring districts who support the district.

A few months prior to the state order, at the request of Superintendent Karla Loria, the school board had terminated its contract with the outside consulting firm that had run the district under state orders since 2019. State Board members were concerned Loria didn’t have enough details for a plan with a new management partner and that she wasn’t willing to give up enough control.

The district has spent much of its time and effort fighting the state’s orders. A reorganization committee has met just once, and the group is now looking for a facilitator.

Meanwhile, Loria has built a new leadership team largely made up of people she knows from past jobs. They’re turnaround experts, she says, from districts with experience serving students like those in Adams 14. Of the leadership team she inherited, Loria said she fired just one out of about eight people who have left. She said she simply made her high expectations clear and let people decide whether to stay.

The district now has a three-year, $5 million contract with national nonprofit TNTP, a consulting group that has traditionally focused on teacher evaluation systems, among other projects, to help with this work. Officials with TNTP did not respond to an interview request but released a joint statement with district officials outlining their work and the start of a strategic planning process.

After having lost state accreditation briefly twice in the last year, the district has also applied for an alternative accreditation from Cognia, an outside agency. Loria said she hopes it will give the community a sense of pride if they can say their district is nationally accredited. The process will also help the district get feedback from an external group about what is working and what’s not.

Still, many in the community wonder what the district is doing to improve student outcomes.

Teachers at Rose Hill credit consistent leadership and more support for English learners for the gains students have made.

Over time, English learners have gotten more support

Adams 14 serves a little more than 6,000 students north of Denver, and about half of them are classified as English learners, or linguistically gifted, as the district now calls them. A federal complaint and investigation launched in 2010 eventually led to a finding that the district was violating the civil rights of those students and discriminating against their families, and has been under federal orders to improve.

Under the guidance of MGT, the previous state-ordered management company, the district finally completed a plan in 2020 for how to serve its English learners that met federal approval.

Since then, the district has been working on rolling out that plan, including dual language programming. Under Superintendent Loria, the district has brought in teachers from out of the country to provide students with more bilingual teachers.

“I see a great strength in supporting the dual language programming that will support not only students learning a second language but also strengthening their first,” Loria said. “We’re seeing progress there, but I think we have room to improve.”

This year the district added dedicated English language development teachers to each elementary school.

Raven-Syamone Wattley, a Rose Hill elementary teacher, said it’s made a big difference on top of previous efforts.

Wattley estimates about half the teachers at her school have a master’s degree in culturally and linguistically diverse education or English learner endorsements on their teachers’ license, with help from the district. She already has an endorsement and expects to finish her master’s this summer.

The district had also started providing a coach who helped her learn how to design lessons for English learners. But teachers at Rose Hill still had to split up their classes and shuffle students based on their English proficiency levels when it was time for English language development instruction.

That meant she got extra students whose needs she had to learn in addition to her regular classes.

Now, having a dedicated English language development teacher means she can focus on her students and how to incorporate English language development work throughout the rest of the day.

“It has made a huge difference for planning. That’s one less subject we have to plan for,” Wattley said. “English language development has improved drastically.”

Even as district leaders work to improve instruction for bilingual students, they believe the state system judges them unfairly because many students aren’t yet proficient in English. When first and second graders took the widely used STAR early literacy assessment this year, almost 60% of students who took it in Spanish met benchmarks, compared with just 23.5% of students who met benchmarks in English.

Rose Hill Principal Luis Camas, center, makes sure kids get in their parents’ cars after school. His five years at the school have helped provide consistency and academic growth.

The district is focusing on principal leadership

Before the pandemic, Rose Hill faced the possibility of targeted state intervention if it were to receive one more bad rating.

But this fall, Rose Hill’s state rating went up to Improvement, the second highest level. The improvement needs to stick next year for the school to avoid state intervention.

Camas said his time at the school has allowed him to develop a culture and systems where teachers know how to look at data and talk about lesson planning. He is also one of seven Adams 14 principals who have gone through a University of Virginia leadership training program.

Loria said she’s made it a priority to have district staff support principals so they can focus, like Camas, on leading their teacher’s instructional work instead of having heavy administrative loads or long meetings about non-instructional tasks of running schools.

Staff retention is another priority in a district that has struggled with high turnover. District officials said in September that they’re on track to meet a goal of retaining 80% of high-performing teachers and administrators, but they did not provide Chalkbeat with current data.

At Rose Hill, Camas has added a new planning period for teachers so they each have two per day. Although he wanted to give overworked teachers a break from additional duties, teachers came to him and asked to start an after-school tutoring program.

Teachers at Rose Hill also lead other after-school programs, including a step club, archery club, and speed stacking. Those things help students want to come to class, and maintain good enough grades to participate, Wattley said.

Students at Rose Hill have access to after-school programs including a speed cup stacking club.

Career paths at Adams City are in the works

Adams City High School is the district’s only comprehensive high school. It has received low state ratings since 2010 and has its own improvement plan.

For more than a decade — ever since the school moved into its new building off Quebec Parkway — district leaders have talked about plans to create more structured career pathways, or academies, in addition to the career classes the school already offers.

Many parents want these programs, and educators think they would motivate students and open doors after graduation.

MGT, the previous outside manager, was working to expand apprenticeships, certifications, and opportunities for college credit. The group said in 2019 that less than a quarter of the school’s students were participating in one of the school’s five career pathways, and data showed those students were more likely to graduate.

But Superintendent Loria said those plans weren’t substantial enough to lead to lasting improvement or aligned with other programs. Mostly, she said, they were documents with “just a list of things to do.”

This time, with the academies model, the district is working on integrating projects that tie to the career focus of each academy throughout the day in math, reading, and other classes. Loria has enlisted the help of nonprofit Connect Ed with a contract for $411,300 to help develop a more rigorous plan at the high school.

So far, the group has surveyed students to identify the four career areas that will become academies. The four academies are: health sciences and human services; architecture, construction, engineering and design; business, hospitality and tourism; and digital information and technology. Students in ninth grade next year will explore all four in their first semester, then commit to one academy for the rest of their high school experience.

District leaders say they aren’t worried about losing students to other districts if they don’t feel like they fit in any of the four pathways.

“Regardless if that’s going to be their career or not, they’re prepared for the workforce,” said Ron Hruby, the district’s director of career and technical education. “Our students are going to be able to do part time jobs as phlebotomists — think about the amount of extra money they would have.”

A $900,000 state grant will pay for some of the high school changes.

Adams City High School sophomore Misael Diaz, center, works on a dish during a 2019 ProStart cooking class at the school.

Community school is key part of district effort

Central Elementary is the other Adams 14 school with its own improvement plan after receiving low ratings since 2012. The school is set to become the district’s first community school — a model that tries to address outside factors that affect learning.

The district has created a full-time coordinator position and enlisted the help of several partners. The State Board has signed off on the plan.

The coordinator is working with the school to survey the needs and identify services that can be offered to families. Such services could include a food bank, a clinic, or job help for parents. It’s a model some would like to see expand beyond Central Elementary. More than 71% of Adams 14 students qualify for free- or reduced-price lunches, a measure of poverty, and many families have health issues which they believe are tied to environmental factors.

The district has also worked on giving Central Elementary some additional flexibility. In recruitment, for instance, the district has created special incentives for people who want to work specifically at Central.

Jason Malmberg, the president of the district’s teachers union, says he feels this is the biggest difference in district improvement plans this time.

“The district has put their money where their mouth is,” Malmberg said. “This is just like everything else — you can’t just buy a label and slap it on the building. The idea is you’re responding to the barriers of education specific to that community. There is context that matters in children’s lives. And that’s not just coming from teachers or families anymore. That’s top to bottom, a culture shift in values.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Adams 14 rejects a charter proposal for a new community high school

2022-11-30T18:39:43+00:00

The Adams 14 school board voted Tuesday to reject an application for a new charter high school with a community school model. Charter leaders said the decision was disappointing, but they would keep fighting to open.

The charter, Be the Change, would have served students in ninth through 12th grade using a biliteracy approach designed and overseen by a group of community and parent members.

The district did not allow the charter leaders to present to the school board. The vote was taken at a special meeting without public comment, and without the district having presented any recommendations on the application beforehand.

The district did hold prior community meetings to talk about the charter application, but cited low attendance at those meetings as one of the reasons to reject the charter application.

Board members did not discuss the application prior to the vote on Tuesday. Board president Reneé Lovato was the only member to comment, saying that she read the application, the district’s review of the application, and the review from the district accountability committee.

“There were a lot of great things, and I just want to thank you for your time,” Lovato said.

The board voted unanimously to approve the previously drafted resolution rejecting the charter.

The resolution says the district found “numerous and substantial concerns” the school didn’t resolve, including that the charter board only required one community member and ran a risk of not being representative of the community; there was no detailed plan for recruiting students from out of the district; and programming and services were not developed to meet the “varying needs of special populations.”

Amanda Gonzales, one of the co-founders of Be the Change and a former Adams 14 teacher, said the district’s process has felt hurtful.

“It shows a lack of organization within the district but it also shows just a lack of respect to us as community members and to our families that we serve,” Gonzales said. “It doesn’t feel like we’re getting a fair shake.”

More than 3,000 additional students living within the boundaries of the 6,000-student district leave to attend other school districts each year. At the high school level, the district only has one high school and a small alternative high school for at-risk students. The district currently has a state order for reorganization, after years of low state performance.

Be the Change had planned to apply in the spring, but two weeks before submitting the application, it learned that Adams 14 did not have an authorized process to approve charters in the spring. The school asked the district to vote instead on releasing it to apply for authorization through the state Charter School Institute. The district never took up the issue, so instead the school applied in the fall.

Now, Gonzales said she isn’t giving up.

“This fight is too important to just let it die,” she said. “Unfortunately our families have experienced let downs so many times. We don’t want to be part of that same narrative.”

Before Tuesday’s meeting, Gonzales said parents who had been excited while helping design the school, were disappointed. She said many were upset they weren’t going to be allowed to speak, questioning whether the drafted resolution was an indication that the decision had already been made.

Gonzales said she questioned the rationale cited by the district in part because the charter application had just received praise from state reviewers in a grant process.

The school was awarded a Colorado Charter Schools Program Start-up award, and was given extra funding for being a “high scoring” application. The award total is for $350,000 for the first year, and could have totaled more than a million dollars over time, depending on the number of students enrolled. The grant, however, is contingent on the school being authorized to open.

The school got 100% of possible points in some of the award’s rubric sections including for having a research-based program. “Applicant does an excellent job of connecting the research-backed curriculum to the proposed student demographics (extremely student-centered),” reviewers commented.

The Adams 14 district is already facing an appeal from University Prep, another charter school that wanted to open an elementary school in the district. In that case, Adams 14 voted to approve the charter, but then the district recommended the board reject signing a contract with the school, after claiming that the school’s plans had changed and were inadequate.

There are currently two charter schools in the district boundaries, an elementary school and a 6-12 secondary school, both run by the same leaders. The charter schools are authorized under the state’s Charter School Institute, and the district has at times had a contentious relationship with the charter leaders.

“Adams 14 needs a different option because it’s what families have requested,” Gonzales said. Be The Change Community School is “about the empowerment of our young people who are not just underserved but underestimated.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Superintendents, parents, and a mayor will be among the people considering Adams 14 reorganization

2022-11-15T23:20:34+00:00

The committee tasked with helping transform Adams 14 into a better functioning school district will convene next week.

Adams 14 and three neighboring school districts each have appointed a mix of elected officials, district staff, and parents to the reorganization committee that the state ordered Adams 14 to form.

The committee will hold its initial meeting virtually at 3 p.m. Tuesday. The district will provide a link for the public on Monday.

Adams 14 has received names of all the appointed members from the neighboring districts, but Mapleton’s appointees are still tentative, pending approval by the district’s accountability committee and the school board.

The State Board of Education in May ordered Adams 14 to reorganize itself after years of low ratings and some of the lowest test scores in the state. The state had previously put the district on different improvement plans. But after the district’s superintendent stopped implementing the state order by kicking out a management company, the State Board turned to a reorganization order.

State law requires the State Board to intervene after a district has had low ratings for five years in a row, but gives the state limited options for what it can order a district to do to improve.

Adams 14 is the first district the state ordered to reorganize, and the district is challenging the order in court. A district judge dismissed the case, but the district filed an appeal that is pending.

In the meantime, Adams 14 leaders said at a board meeting this week that they plan to follow the law in going forward with the reorganization committee.

“We are really going to work diligently in this legal battle to make sure our district stays intact,” Adams 14 board member Maria Zubia said. “Yes, this is something we have to do. It is ridiculous to be spending so much time and effort and actually money, but we have to abide by it.”

The process for the reorganization committee will take time. The committee will have to consider the boundaries of all districts, among other factors, and come up with a plan that could be to change boundaries, dissolve Adams 14, or keep everything the same. If the plan involves changing boundaries, then it also has to include information about facilities, school board representation, and how affected districts would share properties and cash assets.

Once the committee drafts a plan, it must hold community meetings to share the proposal and gather feedback. The committee then is supposed to take that feedback into account to finalize the plan for state approval. The final organizational plan must be approved by the state education commissioner and the reorganization committee within 120 days of the last public hearing.

After the commissioner approves the plan it will go to voters in all the affected districts — who will have the final say over the plan.

The state did not set a timeline for producing a reorganization plan. State law sets the timeline for some of the process, but doesn’t set a limit on how long the reorganization committee may meet before coming up with a draft.

The leaders of the neighboring school districts who are participating in the committee have expressed support for Adams 14 and opposition to its dissolution, making it unlikely the district will be dissolved.

Mapleton’s district accountability committee will vote Monday night to appoint a parent, and the school board will meet Tuesday evening to vote on the other appointments.

Updated: This story has been updated to reflect a change in a member representing Mapleton Public Schools.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

School board members and parents question Denver superintendent’s proposal to close 10 schools

2022-11-04T04:58:46+00:00

Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero’s proposal to close 10 schools received a rocky reception from the school board Thursday, with some board members grilling him about a recommendation that has roiled school communities.

Three of the seven board members — Auon’tai Anderson, Michelle Quattlebaum, and Scott Esserman — said during Thursday’s meeting or in interviews afterward that they oppose the closures, which Marrero has said are necessary to address declining enrollment.

Two more — Scott Baldermann and Charmaine Lindsay — said they are undecided.

Board President Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán declined to say how she will vote. But she said she’s concerned some students, including English language learners, are not getting the robust services they deserve at the 10 schools because funding is short. Board member Carrie Olson was absent from Thursday’s meeting due to a family emergency.

Several board members suggested sending Marrero back to the drawing board by revoking the resolution that directed him to come up with a plan for consolidating schools in the first place. They said the process has felt rushed, top-down, and not transparent.

“There are a lot of unknowns that are not giving our families and community comfort in this process,” Quattlebaum said.

Marrero is billing the closures as consolidations because students and staff from the 10 schools would be reassigned to schools nearby. The school board is scheduled to vote on the package — all 10 closures or none at all — on Nov. 17.

In the nine days since the recommendation was announced, parents and family members at the 10 schools have gathered in meetings scheduled by principals to hear more and vent their concerns about a proposal that many say blindsided them.

At several of the meetings, the principals have stood with mid-level district administrators in cafeterias, facing rows of frustrated parents and grandparents, some with toddlers in tow. The meetings have been full of questions and short on answers.

Parents have wanted to know how big class sizes will be at the consolidated schools. But officials said that’s impossible to know until they see how many students show up next year.

Parents asked for assurances that the district won’t turn around and close the receiving schools in a year or two, disrupting their children’s education yet again. But officials couldn’t give it.

Families wanted to know how the district will provide transportation to the consolidated schools in the midst of a bus driver shortage. The district will do its best, officials said.

Above all, families wanted to know if they could save their schools from closure.

“Is this just a foregone conclusion and our elected officials are not persuadable?” asked Rick Levy, the father of a preschooler at Eagleton Elementary, one of the 10 schools recommended for closure, at a Thursday morning meeting in the school’s cafeteria.

“They absolutely want to hear from you,” said Dana Williams, an administrator who oversees a group of elementary schools, including Eagleton.

But no elected officials attended that meeting. School board members have attended some meetings at the 10 schools recommended for closure, but not all. There weren’t any board members at a 3:30 p.m. meeting at Columbian Elementary the day before, either.

In some cases, the meetings overlapped, making it impossible for board members to be in two places at once. In other cases, board members weren’t notified until an hour before.

At least two community organizations have called for more robust engagement.

EDUCATE Denver, a coalition of civic leaders, and Denver Families for Public Schools, a nonprofit that among other initiatives aims to increase participation in school board elections, separately called on the district to hold at least one meeting at each school that could close and at each school that might receive their students. The superintendent and the local board member should attend those meetings, both groups said.

Both groups also called for the board to hold an extended public comment session, and for the district to facilitate one-on-one meetings with families affected by the closures.

But thus far, the only opportunity for parents and community members to plead their case before all seven board members who will vote on the recommendation is a single public comment session scheduled for Nov. 14, three days before the vote.

Marrero defended the tight timeline Thursday. Slowing down the process would cause staff and students to flee from the schools recommended for closure, he said, further draining them of per-pupil funding. Consolidations work best when everyone can move to a new school together, he said. But some board members pushed back.

“When we have not had direct conversations with the impacted communities until we have come forward with the plan, that is district led, that is not community led,” Esserman said.

Families at Columbian and Eagleton agreed that the district isn’t providing enough opportunity for them to speak out. Parents are finding they don’t have much time to organize. At Columbian, parent Darcy Cornish Lovato handed out handwritten “Save our school” lawn signs. At Eagleton, Tara De La Fuente urged other parents to scan a QR code and sign a petition.

“One or two meetings at each school is not going to cover all the households,” said Arturo Orozco, the father of a fifth grader at Eagleton. Many parents, he said, have to work and can’t attend in-person meetings on a weekday morning or afternoon.

“This is more than just a school. This is a community,” Orozco said.

“Our community is going to hurt because of this.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Denver superintendent recommends closing 10 schools

2022-10-25T23:37:25+00:00

Eight Denver elementary schools, one K-8 school, and one middle school could close at the end of this school year if the school board follows recommendations Superintendent Alex Marrero announced Tuesday. The 10 schools would consolidate with other schools in the district.

All 10 of the schools are district-run schools. The school board will hear a presentation on the recommendations Nov. 3. A vote is scheduled for Nov. 17.

“We know that these decisions are not easy for our community, but they are necessary for our scholars,” Marrero said in a press release.

“These recommendations will not only help right-size our school district,” he said, “they will allow our scholars access to more well-rounded educational experiences, and will also put the school district in a position to better address our staffing needs across the district.”

The schools Marrero is recommending for closure are:

Columbian Elementary. Columbian students would be reassigned to Trevista at Horace Mann, though all students can choose to attend any school in the district.

The district didn’t include this year’s enrollment numbers in its announcement, but Columbian had 218 students last year, according to district data. Of those 218 students, 74% were Hispanic, 15% were white, and 7% were Black. More than three-quarters of students — 78% — qualified for subsidized school meals, an indicator of family poverty.

Palmer Elementary. Most Palmer students would be reassigned to Montclair School of Academics and Enrichment. Kindergarten through fifth grade would be at Montclair and preschool would be at Palmer.

Palmer had 258 students last year, according to district data. Of those 258 students, 56% were white, 17% were Hispanic, and 16% were Black. Less than a third of students — 26% — qualified for subsidized school meals.

Math Science Leadership Academy. MSLA students would be reassigned to Valverde Elementary.

MSLA had 154 students last year, according to district data. Of those 154 students, 86% were Hispanic, 6% were Black, and 4% were white. Nearly all students — 95% — qualified for subsidized school meals.

Schmitt Elementary. Schmitt students would be reassigned to Godsman Elementary.

Schmitt had 201 students last year, according to district data. Of those 201 students, 68% were Hispanic, 18% were Black, and 8% were white. Nearly all students — 93% — qualified for subsidized school meals.

Eagleton Elementary. Eagleton students would be reassigned to Cowell Elementary.

Eagleton had 258 students last year, according to district data. Of those 258 students, 84% were Hispanic, 8% were white, and 3% were Black. Most students — 90% — qualified for subsidized school meals.

Fairview Elementary. Fairview students would be reassigned to Cheltenham Elementary.

Fairview had 174 students last year, according to district data. Of those 174 students, 49% were Hispanic, 39% were Black, and 7% were white. Nearly all students — 95% — qualified for subsidized school meals.

Colfax Elementary. Most Colfax students would be reassigned to Cheltenham Elementary. Kindergarten through fifth grade would be at Cheltenham and preschool would be at Colfax.

Colfax had 255 students last year, according to district data. Of those 255 students, 66% were Hispanic, 16% were Black, and 11% were white. Most students — 88% — qualified for subsidized school meals.

International Academy of Denver at Harrington. IAD at Harrington would close and its students would join a new enrollment zone containing Columbine Elementary and Swansea Elementary. Students who live in enrollment zones are not assigned to a specific school but rather asked to choose between several schools in the zone.

IAD at Harrington had 167 students last year, according to district data. Of those 167 students, 75% were Hispanic, 11% were Black, and 2% were white. Most students — 88% — qualified for subsidized school meals.

Denver Discovery School. Denver Discovery would close and its students would be sent to other schools in the Greater Park Hill/Central Park Enrollment Zone.

Denver Discovery had 113 students last year, according to district data. Of those 113 students, 44% were Black, 36% were Hispanic, and 5% were white. Most students — 83% — qualified for subsidized school meals.

Whittier K-8. Whittier would close and its students would be sent to other schools in the Greater Five Points Elementary Enrollment Zone and the Near Northeast Middle School Enrollment Zone.

Whittier had 227 students last year, according to district data. Of those 227 students, 49% of were Black, 39% were Hispanic, and 7% were white. Most students — 90% — qualified for subsidized school meals.

Denver’s seven-member elected school board has the final say on which schools close. Four of the seven board members have past experience with school closures, and some have said they oppose them. The board recently pushed back on a recommendation to close an alternative school, Montbello Career and Technical High School, which spared it from closure.

Marrero cited declining enrollment as the reason for recommending closing schools. The 90,000-student Denver Public Schools has lost about 6,000 elementary students since 2014, when elementary enrollment peaked.

Decreasing birth rates and rising housing costs that push families out of the city will cause continuing enrollment decline, district officials predict.

Fewer students means less funding. Denver schools are funded per pupil, and schools with low enrollment struggle to afford a robust staff of teachers, mental health workers, and others, which sometimes leads the schools to cut programming or combine classes.

But closing schools is a controversial solution. Closures can be traumatic for students, families, and teachers, who all often vehemently oppose the option.

Closures also often have an outsize impact on low-income communities of color. That’s true of Marrero’s recommendations, too. At nine of the 10 schools, most students are Black and Hispanic and come from low-income families.

Marrero’s recommendations are informed by criteria developed by a committee of parents, teachers, and community members. In June, the committee recommended Denver close elementary and middle schools with fewer than 215 students, as well as those with fewer than 275 students that expect to lose 8% to 10% more students over the next two years.

The committee also recommended that charter elementary or middle schools that have not been financially solvent for two or more years should close.

Charter schools are publicly funded and approved by the Denver school board but independently run by their own boards of directors. In the past four years, 11 charter schools have closed on their own, many due to low enrollment.

In a separate announcement Tuesday, Denver’s STRIVE Prep charter network said it is closing one of its middle schools, STRIVE Prep - Lake, at the end of the school year.

Marrero refers to the closures he’s recommending as consolidations or unifications. The difference, district officials have said, is that in a consolidation, some of the norms, values, and programs from the closing school — such as dual language or arts programs — would move to the school receiving its students.

Denver is not the only district considering school closures. The superintendent of neighboring Jeffco Public Schools has recommended closing 16 elementary schools due to low enrollment. Jeffco announced that recommendation Aug. 25, and its board is set to vote Nov. 10, giving the community about 11 weeks to provide feedback.

Denver will have a little more than three weeks until its vote.

If you are having trouble viewing this form, go here.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

State orders Adams 14 to appoint reorganization committee

2022-10-18T22:49:43+00:00

Colorado’s Commissioner of Education has ordered Adams 14 and neighboring districts to begin reorganization.

With a notice sent Monday, the state is giving Adams 14 and the neighboring districts of Mapleton School District, Brighton School District 27J, and Adams 12 Five Star Schools 30 days to appoint three members each to a reorganization committee. The first meeting must be held by Nov. 16.

In the letter to Adams 14, Commissioner Katy Anthes also announced that the state will make available an extra accountability grant for up to $100,000 to help pay for the costs of the committee, including hiring a facilitator.

In a news release from Adams 14, the district notes that the beginning of “forced reorganization” doesn’t have any immediate impact on staffing or students.

“The Colorado State Board of Education has been advised that its efforts to reorganize Adams 14 will fail,” the district says in the press release. “The four school districts now must reallocate time, resources, and finances from its students and redirect them towards reorganization efforts. All the school districts agree that reorganization of Adams 14 is not in the best interest of our students, parents, community, and neighboring districts.”

The Colorado Board of Education voted in May to direct Adams 14 to reorganize — the first time it has used the drastic measure of intervention for a low-performing district.

Adams 14 has been on the state’s radar for low performance for more than 10 years after receiving consecutive low ratings for lagging student achievement. The district has dealt with high turnover at the leadership level as well as among teachers. With the latest superintendent, the district had come out of compliance from previous state’s orders requiring a management company to take over daily operations, when the district locked out MGT Consulting officials and eventually terminated the contract.

The new superintendent asked the state for more time to implement her own plan for improvement, but State Board members questioned the proposal. After asking for a more fleshed-out plan, the board rejected it, saying her plan alone would not be enough to help the district improve. Instead, in May, they ordered reorganization.

At least one of the three members that each district appoints to the reorganization committee has to be a parent selected by the District’s Accountability Committee. In addition, reorganization committee meetings must be open to the public.

The plan the committee creates also needs state approval from the Education Commissioner and voter approval in the affected districts.

The plan could leave things as is, reshape boundaries to allow neighboring districts to absorb parts of Adams 14, close schools, or dissolve the district altogether.

Leaders of neighboring districts have voiced their support for Adams 14 and the current leadership.

The district filed a lawsuit against the state attempting to stop the reorganization orders, but a Denver district judge dismissed the case. Adams 14 is still planning to appeal.

Read the full letter sent to the districts on Monday:

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

State board restores Adams 14’s accreditation, citing unintended consequences

2022-09-14T22:59:00+00:00

The Adams 14 school district will regain its accreditation from the state of Colorado.

The State Board of Education on Wednesday afternoon voted 6-1 in favor of the state education commissioner’s recommendation to restore accreditation immediately. However, the change does not affect the state’s orders to reorganize and potentially dissolve the district.

Education Commissioner Katy Anthes said she made her recommendation after learning and reflecting on some of the district’s problems after the state removed accreditation in May. Mainly, she pointed to the district’s difficulty in hiring bilingual teachers from abroad. During a court hearing last month, the district testified that previously secured sponsors for the teachers’ visas had backed out after learning the district was no longer accredited.

Anthes noted the challenge that Adams 14 and its outside manager, TNTP, have in improving achievement in the struggling district, while “reorganization is considered.”

“I don’t want any unintended consequences around the loss of accreditation to make that road any harder than it already is,” Anthes said.

The state removed Adams 14’s accreditation as a largely symbolic move, with officials saying their May vote wouldn’t affect students’ ability to learn in school and earn a diploma, nor the district’s ability to receive funding.

“Little by little, the state board is understanding that its heavy-handed order has had unintended consequences on the children of Adams 14,” Joe Salazar, the district’s lawyer said in a released statement. “We are pleased with this recent development, and we hope this further builds on a more positive relationship between the state board and Adams 14.”

Board member Joyce Rankin, the sole vote against restoring accreditation, expressed concern about the district’s training of teachers in the science of reading. She said it was still unclear how many Adams 14 teachers have been trained, and wondered if international teachers would also be trained in the science of reading.

“I would like to focus more on the students rather than the adults in the situation,” Rankin said. “I think if we were going to emphasize this, and we were serious before, I believe I’m serious now.”

Board member Rebecca McClellan, who voted in favor of restoring accreditation, said she just wanted the public to be clear on the state’s reasons. “If there’s any chance at all that this makes the road or the pathway toward success more likely, then it’s the right thing to do.”

Two other board members, Steve Durham and Deb Scheffel who voted to support restoring accreditation, mentioned ongoing concerns with the district.

“The student achievement data in this district is heartbreaking,” Scheffel said. State achievement data released last month shows Adams 14 achievement declined on most tests in the 2021-22 school year. The one improvement was in sixth grade math where 5.3% of students met or exceeded expectations, up from 4.2% in 2019.

The state’s May reorganization order requires Adams 14 to set up a committee to consider redrawing district boundaries. Potentially, that process could ultimately cost the district control over some schools or areas. The process hasn’t yet started, and the district is challenging the order in court.

“We’re trying to figure out, what can we do? The district has a lot of wonderful teachers, but something is amiss and it’s been amiss,” Scheffel said. “I think we’ve been bending over backwards to do what we can… while still saying that it can’t just go on. We’re really trying to figure out what would matter and we hope that what we’re trying to do in partnership with you really matters on behalf of your students.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Judge dismisses Adams 14 lawsuit, clearing way for reorganization

2022-09-08T18:12:09+00:00

A Denver district judge on Wednesday dismissed an Adams 14 lawsuit against Colorado’s State Board of Education that attempted to stop the state’s orders to reorganize the district.

The ruling states that school districts don’t have the right to request a judicial review of State Board of Education action under the state’s accountability act and acknowledges that school districts don’t have absolute authority under the state constitution.

“Adams 14 maintains that it cannot ever be considered a subordinate agency because Article IX, Section 15 of the Colorado Constitution accords local school boards with local control over instruction in public schools. The Court disagrees,” Denver District Judge Shelley I. Gilman wrote in her ruling.

While many laws allow government bodies to appeal to the courts, the judge wrote that the state accountability law only allows school districts to have a hearing before the State Board of Education, which Adams 14 has already received. The state accountability law requires intervention in school districts that have many years of low test performance.

On Thursday, district officials said in a press release that the decision hurts students, detracts from the district’s turnaround efforts, and allows the State Board to operate without checks and balances. The district plans to appeal.

A spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Education said that the ruling means the state can move forward with reorganization. That would start with Education Commissioner Katy Anthes sending a letter to the district and starting the clock on putting together a committee to plan for how it might redraw the boundaries of Adams 14 and its neighbors. The process could lead to the closure of some schools and the district losing authority over portions of its territory.

During a two-day hearing last month on this case, Anthes said that the reason she hadn’t initiated that work was because she was waiting on a decision regarding the lawsuit.

“Today the court confirmed that these difficult decisions cannot be challenged or slowed down by litigation in the courts,” said Dana Smith, spokesperson for the department. “This outcome recognizes that time is of the essence in school improvement and turnaround efforts.”

“We believe that all students are capable of achieving high levels of academic success with the right resources and support. Our goal all along has been to support Adams 14’s work to ensure that educators have consistent leadership and professional development opportunities they need to provide high quality instruction for students. This ruling settles the questions around this work and allows us to continue supporting the district.”

Even so, the lawsuit may lead to at least one change for the district. A State Board agenda for next week says that Anthes plans to ask the board to consider restoring the district’s accreditation. Removing accreditation was largely symbolic but had larger consequences for the district, including making it harder for the district to hire international bilingual teachers to work with the district’s large population of Spanish-speaking students.

In a letter to the State Board, Anthes wrote the request does not mean Adams 14 has improved but that she doesn’t want the state to stand in the way of changes that would help students.

“We have a long and challenging road ahead to see sustained improvement in Adams 14,” Anthes wrote. “During that time, I do not want any unintended consequences from the loss of accreditation to make that road any bumpier than it needs to be.”

Read the full ruling:

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Claiming students are already harmed, Adams 14 seeks to block reorganization

2022-08-23T00:02:43+00:00

State efforts to reorganize the Adams 14 school district after years of low performance have already hurt students, including causing the district to lose out on contracts with international teachers who could have served the community’s many Spanish-speaking students.

That’s one argument attorneys for the Adams 14 school district made in a two-day court hearing in Denver last week as they seek to block Colorado’s first major intervention into a low-performing school district.

Attorneys representing the Colorado Department of Education and the State Board of Education countered that what’s really hurting students is more than a decade of poor education in the school district serving parts of Commerce City. Students will suffer more if state intervention is further delayed, they said.

“The children of Adams 14 have been waiting for the turnaround work to start in earnest for far too long,” a state attorney said. “Every week makes a difference.”

But the judge interrupted the state attorney’s argument to question if the public interest would actually be harmed by proceeding with reorganization while a lawsuit is pending.

“There’s just a lot of ifs. Talk about uncertainty to children and the community,” said Denver District Judge Shelley I. Gilman. “How does that affect the child? Isn’t there something that makes sense about waiting until the court resolves these issues before taking actions that can’t later be reversed?”

Gilman has two months to decide if a state reorganization order should proceed or if she’ll grant Adams 14’s request to block the order while the lawsuit plays out.

Adams 14 is challenging both the state reorganization order, which could lead to school closures or the loss of control to neighboring districts, and the entire state accountability system that allows this type of intervention. The state wants the lawsuit dismissed.

The State Board of Education removed Adams 14’s accreditation and ordered that the district be reorganized in May. The district was previously under external management after more than eight years of persistently low test scores. But before the external manager completed the four years it was supposed to oversee Adams 14, the local school board voted to fire the external manager after a new superintendent Karla Loria raised questions about mismanagement.

State Education Commissioner Katy Anthes hasn’t formally started the reorganization process, saying in testimony that she was waiting for the outcome of these legal motions. Adams 14 students returned to class on Aug. 9.

Joe Salazar, the attorney for Adams 14, described seven ways he claims the district and the larger community are already being harmed by the State Board’s order.

Students and staff have left the district out of fear that schools will shut down. The district’s bond rating has been lowered twice since the order, meaning future bond requests may end up costing the district a lot more in higher interest payments. Leaders of Adams 14 and neighboring districts have spent hours discussing the state’s orders, reassuring families, and thinking about how to prepare for all the potential impacts.

The state pointed out that the district has dealt with declining enrollment and high staff turnover for several years. Current debt payments are fixed and not at risk of costing more, the state also argued.

Loria, the superintendent, described how the district is missing at least 16 bilingual teachers it expected to hire for this school year. The district had signed a contract in the spring with a company called IAG that would find teachers from other countries and take care of the paperwork and visas necessary for the teachers to legally work in the U.S..

But the sponsor the company had secured for the teacher’s visas backed out after learning that Adams 14 had lost its accreditation. Commissioner Anthes helped the district when it was attempting to reassure a new sponsor that Adams 14 is still able to educate students in Colorado, despite its loss of accreditation.

Loria testified that Anthes apologized for the ordeal as she tried to help, and said Anthes described it as an “unintended consequence.”

Two weeks into the start of the school year, an estimated 400 students who would have been taught by the international teachers have substitute teachers, and it’s unclear if the bilingual teachers will eventually come.

Loria also testified that one of the potential sponsors was willing to continue to help the teachers if they worked at only one of the district’s schools. But those stipulations essentially remove the district’s local control to decide where teachers are needed, Loria said.

The state’s attorneys tried to argue that the fact that the second sponsor was willing to place teachers at one school meant that the criteria was not about the loss of accreditation, since that affected all the district’s schools in the same way. The judge questioned that argument, since the court didn’t hear testimony about the sponsor’s reasoning for its decision. The judge also pointed out that the problem may be more than just a delay.

“There was a willingness before. Now it hasn’t happened,” Judge Gilman said. “I’m not sure it’s just a delay. There’s no certainty. Folks are making phone calls and sending letters and trying their best, but there’s no assurance.”

In another case of a possible unexpected harm from the loss of accreditation, the district called as a witness La Crea Dixon, an alumna and district paraprofessional who enrolled this summer at Colorado Christian University, planning to study to become a special education teacher.

Dixon planned to pay with a TEACH grant, funded by the federal government. But after weeks of getting the runaround, she said an administrator at the university told her the grant had been denied because Adams 14 was not an accredited school district.

The state attorneys said they believe there is some confusion as to where that information came from, since they are not aware of any rules that would require the district to be accredited.

When questioned, Anthes said she is still looking at the implications of the State Board order and hasn’t decided if she will kick off the reorganization process if the judge doesn’t pause the order. But she also said she does not have the authority to reverse the State Board’s orders.

Reorganization will require Adams 14 and neighboring districts to appoint a committee tasked with coming up with a plan for reimagining district boundaries. Anthes also said in court that the group could decide it’s best to keep everything the same.

State attorneys said that if the court allows the state’s orders to move forward, it’s still unlikely the group would finalize any changes before the lawsuit is resolved.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Adams 14 sues state, challenges reorganization order

2022-06-29T01:04:26+00:00

The Adams 14 school district, with help from the state teachers union, filed a lawsuit this week challenging both the state’s order to reorganize the troubled district and the system that allows the state to intervene in low-performing districts.

The Adams 14 school district north of Denver has experienced several firsts as one of the only districts that has consistently earned the state’s lowest performance ratings. Previous legal challenges to state intervention have been unsuccessful.

Last month, after other state-ordered improvement plans had fallen apart, the State Board of Education ordered Adams 14 to begin a reorganization process that could result in the district being dissolved.

In its lawsuit the district argues the state doesn’t have the authority to take away a district’s local control, which it says is what would happen if the district were dissolved. It also argues that the State Board was biased, seeking to take away the district’s authority from the beginning, and that the accountability system itself is biased because districts with more affluent students aren’t vulnerable to the same orders as a district like Adams 14 serving lower-income families.

State accountability laws require Colorado to intervene in low-performing school districts, yet limits what the state can order districts to do. The law lists reorganization as one option, but that had never been used.

The State Board in May ordered Adams 14 to begin reorganizing. The district has a timeline for complying, but the clock won’t begin running on creating a committee to draft a plan until the state education commissioner notifies Adams 14 and neighboring districts that it’s time to form the committee. That hasn’t happened yet.

As in a previous lawsuit, the challenge filed this week in Denver District Court heavily relies on arguments about the State Board’s procedures, including claiming that the state has failed by not creating an appeals process for districts.

In the filing, the district wants a judge to halt and set aside the state’s order pending a judicial review. It also wants the courts to give the district more trial-like procedures that would allow the district to cross-examine witnesses and evidence given to the State Board.

In describing the damage the state has caused, the lawsuit describes large numbers of staff resigning following the state’s May order and says schools received notices from parents that students are moving to other districts.

The lawsuit also notes that Moody’s credit rating agency downgraded the district’s bond rating following the May order. Moody’s announcement said the ratings change was based on “substantial enrollment loss” and governance issues. The ratings may be further downgraded, according to the agency.

That can make it more expensive for the district to borrow money and issue bonds.

A spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Education said the state doesn’t discuss ongoing legal matters, but noted “the State Board of Education has followed their obligations to intervene in a struggling district as statute dictates.”

In past challenges to State Board orders, the courts have dismissed the cases, but not necessarily because of the claims.

In a 2019 case in which the teachers union challenged state orders that required Adams 14 and Pueblo 60 districts to enter into outside management agreements, a judge said the union had no standing to bring the case. In reviewing whether Colorado’s accountability law is unconstitutional because it allows the State Board to order external management, a judge wrote, “the court declines to define the scope of the State Board’s authority.”

In the filing this week, the Colorado Education Association joined as a secondary plaintiff to Adams 14. The lawsuit argues that the union has standing because its employee contracts with the school district are at risk, and because union staff are resigning.

Earlier this year, Adams 14 filed another lawsuit trying to delay new state hearings and to change the process. A judge dismissed the case, stating that the district’s harms weren’t irreparable.

The latest lawsuit’s 12 claims include just one on the accountability system being unconstitutional. In making that case, the lawsuit cited the Westminster school district’s complaints in 2017 that it was being targeted as a district with many low-income students.

At the time, Westminster was also facing state action. However Westminster then managed to improve its rating and is no longer on the state’s watchlist.

Still, critics have continued to criticize the state’s rating system and the laws governing how the state should intervene, known as the accountability system, as inequitable. Legislators have asked for an audit of the accountability system, due later this year.

“Since 2017 the State Board has done absolutely nothing to stop its unconstitutional and discriminatory application of Colorado’s accountability system on districts that serve primarily students of color who are poor and are fluent in languages other than English,” the lawsuit states.

In the other 11 claims in the lawsuit, the district targets State Board member Steve Durham, using his comments to claim that he influenced the State Review Panel in requesting recommendations that would remove Adams 14’s authority.

The lawsuit also states that Adams 14 school board members had filed claims of racism against the State Board but that the state never investigated, and never removed Durham from decision making.

Additionally, because Durham read a motion that had been prepared ahead of time, the lawsuit claims “the State Board entered into the hearing predisposed to vote in a particular manner — demonstrating bias (due process violation) and a possible violation of the Colorado Open Meetings law.”

Reading or using motions prepared ahead of time is a common practice for the State Board of Education.

The district also argues that after Adams 14’s board cut ties with its previous external manager, the state’s immediate request for an external review panel to visit the district and create recommendations was “in outright retaliation.”

The district’s lawsuit also criticizes the fairness of that external panel, including because it didn’t include experts in bilingual education, and calling out one member for coming from a district where leaders had signed an agreement with the Justice Department to settle complaints of race and national origin discrimination, although Adams 14 itself has signed similar agreements.

“The State Review Panel’s visit was a sham, and was a rubber stamp mission to produce a report that would legitimize Board Member Durham’s desired outcome to ‘disempower the district,’” the lawsuit states.

Three others on the seven-member State Board joined Durham in voting to reorganize the district.

Ordering reorganization, and requiring neighboring districts to participate, also violates the district’s local control, the lawsuit argues, because it will require them to use resources and money for the process.

“The Colorado Constitution, as interpreted by the Colorado Supreme Court, forbids the State Board from interfering with local control powers, which involves the power to decide what to do with locally-raised funds,” the lawsuit states.

Read the full lawsuit here.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Denver school board may reverse parts of controversial innovation policy

2022-06-10T03:23:30+00:00

Denver’s semi-autonomous innovation schools could get back control over school calendars, teacher hiring timelines, the structure of school leadership, and other flexibilities leaders say are key to providing a better educational experience.

Citing unintended consequences, a majority of Denver school board members said during a heated discussion Thursday that they support moving forward with a proposal to overturn parts of a controversial new policy adopted in March. The board is set to vote on the proposal at a special meeting next Thursday.

Key parts of the new policy, which was meant to shore up teacher job protections, would remain in place. Innovation schools would have to abide by Colorado’s version of tenure. They’d also have to follow certain provisions of the teachers’ union contract, including one related to grievance rights.

But they wouldn’t have to follow the entire contract, a change that would preserve more school autonomy.

“This is truly the middle ground people were looking for,” said board Vice President Tay Anderson.

The revisions were introduced by Anderson at a board meeting Thursday. The discussion that followed was unusually tense, with board members interrupting each other, arguing about procedure, and animatedly reading aloud opposing emails they got about the proposal.

The recently adopted policy requires Denver’s 52 innovation schools to follow the state’s tenure law and the entirety of the district’s teachers union contract. At the heart of the disagreement among board members is whether the policy will have unintended consequences. Some board members said they feel they were misled about what the policy would do and why it was needed. Board member Scott Esserman said the process of passing it was rushed and flawed.

“We jammed this down people’s throats without knowing what the outcome of this policy would be,” Esserman said. “It is incumbent upon us as a board to correct that.”

Board President Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán and member Scott Baldermann disagreed.

“I see no unintended consequences,” Baldermann said, explaining that he doesn’t believe any school should be able to waive any tenet of a teachers union contract.

The board passed the new policy in March after weeks of heated debate. The vote was split, with Anderson and member Michelle Quattlebaum voting against it. The teachers union supported the policy, while innovation school leaders and parents vehemently opposed it.

Some board members said they didn’t fully understand the ramifications of the new policy until two weeks after it passed, when district staff wrote a memo outlining the new restrictions. For instance, board members said they didn’t realize that requiring innovation schools to follow the union contract would prevent schools from developing their own calendars to provide teachers with more training days or recognize Islamic holidays that the district does not.

Innovation school leaders who received the memo were upset.

“When the board passed the [policy] … we were assured by several of you that we would not see the unintended consequences we’re now seeing,” Frank Coyne, a leader at the Denver Green School, told the board in April. “I feel like I’ve been lied to.”

After reading the memo, four board members — Anderson, Quattlebaum, Esserman, and Carrie Olson — requested a school-by-school analysis of the implications of the new policy, known as an executive limitation because it directs the superintendent.

Esserman and Olson voted for the policy but issued a joint statement afterward that said they acknowledge their votes caused harm to “some members of our communities.” Esserman and Olson wrote that they’d been assured by district staff that “with some exceptions, innovation schools will be able to continue implementing their innovation plans,” and added that the board “retains the right” to revise the policy if it has unintended consequences.

Both Esserman and Olson, along with Anderson and Quattlebaum, expressed support Thursday for revisiting the policy. The four represent a majority of the seven-member board.

The district and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association are currently negotiating a new contract, as well as a memorandum of understanding regarding which provisions of the contract should be flexible and which should not. Union President Rob Gould said in an interview Thursday that the board should not intervene by revising the policy mid-negotiation.

But Quattlebaum and others pointed out that the board’s original vote in March also occurred in the middle of negotiations, which began in February.

The debate over Denver’s innovation schools has caught the attention of state leaders. Innovation status is enshrined in state law and has long been used as a way to spur school improvement efforts. It also serves as a middle ground between district-run and charter schools.

In the aftermath of the original Denver vote, lawmakers passed a bill creating a mediation process to handle disagreements between districts and innovation zones, though Denver succeeded in protecting school board authority in the final version.

And at a recent State Board of Education progress report on Denver’s Abraham Lincoln and Manual high schools, State Board members grilled Marrero about the importance of innovation waivers to the two schools’ improvement efforts and to the district’s other schools. Even under the new policy, schools facing state intervention like Abraham Lincoln and Manual retain a higher level of autonomy and can apply for more waivers.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Adams 14 gets state approval to turn Central Elementary into a community school

2022-06-09T00:51:28+00:00

The Adams 14 school district won state approval Wednesday to use its own improvement plans at Central Elementary. The approval avoids more drastic options like closure or charter conversion even as the state has ordered the entire district to reorganize.

Members of the State Board of Education voted 6-1 in favor of the district’s plan. Central Elementary had ended up on the state watchlist, separately from the district. The state board heard the initial proposal from the district in April, and asked leaders to flesh it out with more detail.

Board member Steve Durham cast the only no vote Wednesday, but other members joined him in expressing concern about whether the plan would be implemented well and whether it has enough academic focus.

Central enrolls 432 students including more than half who are identified as English learners. While the school has received seven years of low state ratings, in the most recent ratings in 2019, the school fell only 1.4 percentage points away from a higher rank.

But state officials worried early this school year that Central’s progress may have stalled.

Central’s plan will make it the first school in the state to incorporate three paths for improvement: autonomy through innovation status, a community schools model, and partial management by an outside group.

TNTP, the partial manager the district has selected, will oversee the school’s transition to a community school model that will offer supportive services such as counseling or health care for students. The plan qualifies as an improvement plan by getting innovation status, which allows schools to request waivers from state laws, district policies, and labor contracts.

The plan calls for TNTP to focus on academics and guidance for teachers. The district and TNTP also will plan services to help families eliminate barriers to learning or attending school. The services could include things like after-school care, mental health services, and a health clinic.

In opposing the plan, Durham expressed concern that it did not seek enough waivers for teacher hiring or for different pay based on performance.

Many innovation proposals request waivers that grant school-level officials sole authority to hire or fire staff and set pay. Principals or other school teams might hire teachers who don’t meet state requirements but have skills that align with the school’s specific educational plans. And principals generally get more authority under innovation status.

The district’s plan for Central asks for waivers including to add 20 minutes to the school day, and to add five days to the teacher work year, to train before the school year starts.

The school must continue to pay teachers according to the district’s salary schedule but may offer incentives to retain teachers.

The plan allows Central some flexibility around recruitment, but the district and TNTP will still make hiring decisions.

Superintendent Karla Loria said that the school staff already have had to reapply for their positions, and mentioned that with incentives, teachers at Central may earn up to $13,000 above what they might earn at other district schools.

Board member Lisa Escárcega, who said she’s had experience with crafting innovation plans when she worked in school districts, said she has seen successful innovation plans with fewer waivers.

Still, she told district leaders, she hoped they would continue to explore additional waivers.

State board member Joyce Rankin said she was concerned that 20 additional minutes per day was not a lot, and that the plan lacked urgency in its academic provisions. In particular, she worried that only 51% of the required teachers at the school have completed literacy training requirements so far.

“If you are really serious, they’re already trained,” Rankin said. “The urgency is with the process. It’s with what we have to do to get by.”

Despite her reservations, Rankin said she would vote to approve the innovation proposal because she didn’t think closing the school would be a good option.

“I wish we had other options,” she said.

Last month, the state board came down harder on the district as a whole, and ordered it to reorganize as well as hire a new external manager. The district hasn’t begun reorganizing, which likely will take a long time. Several school districts and parents will have to join a committee and draft a plan that could include changing boundaries or governance of parts of the district.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Criterios para cierre de escuelas presentados a la junta escolar de Denver

2022-06-07T15:00:00+00:00

Read in English.

Aunque el cierre debería ser la última opción, el distrito escolar de Denver debe considerar cerrar o consolidar las escuelas con menos cantidad de estudiantes, según las recomendaciones del comité presentadas el jueves ante la junta escolar.

Las escuelas primarias e intermedias con “matrícula críticamente baja” (menos de 215 estudiantes matriculados para el próximo año) y las escuelas con menos de 275 estudiantes que esperan perder entre un 8% y 10% del estudiantado en los próximos años deben ser consideradas para consolidación, dicen las recomendaciones. Estos números no se aplican a las escuelas secundarias.

No todas las escuelas identificadas para consideración terminarán realmente cerradas. El distrito debe trabajar de cerca con la comunidad y aplicar una serie de “protectores de equidad”, considerando qué tan lejos tendrían que viajar los estudiantes a la escuela y cuáles escuelas tienen programas especializados, sobre todo para estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés y para estudiantes discapacitados, dicen las recomendaciones.

Los miembros del comité dijeron que no se fijaron intencionalmente en qué escuelas estarían afectadas en el límite de matrícula, y por eso no podían decirles a los miembros de la junta exactamente cuántas escuelas serían.

“No se están considerando escuelas específicas”, dijo el Superintendente Alex Marrero. “No hay una lista.”

Las primeras escuelas se identificarían el próximo año escolar, basándose en los datos de ese año, y excepto en circunstancias sumamente extremas, ninguna escuela va a cerrar antes de que termine el año escolar 2023-24.

Los datos de matrícula del estado muestran que este año en Denver hay 27 escuelas primarias e intermedias con menos de 275 estudiantes. De esas, 19 atienden a poblaciones estudiantiles que son más de un 90% estudiantes de minorías raciales o más de un 90% estudiantes de hogares con pocos ingresos, o ambos. Solamente tres de las escuelas tienen un estudiantado mayormente de raza blanca.

La junta escolar no necesita aprobar la política, dijo un portavoz del distrito, pero sí tendrá que aprobar cualquier cierre escolar futuro. En la reunión del jueves, los miembros hicieron preguntas insistentemente, sugiriendo que no están del todo de acuerdo en seguir las recomendaciones del comité.

El vicepresidente Tay Anderson dijo que él no quiere cerrar escuelas en las que los estudiantes de minorías raciales estén progresando académicamente. El comité no recomendó fijarse en el aspecto académico ni en si las escuelas han podido mantener sus programas académicos a pesar de los límites de presupuesto.

Carrie Olson, miembro de la junta y ex educadora bilingüe, dijo que le preocupa cerrar escuelas que ofrecen el tipo de programas bilingües requerido bajo un decreto federal que rige a los distritos. Aunque exista un programa similar a un par de millas de distancia, dijo ella, algunas familias podrían sacar a sus hijos de los programas bilingües en vez de agregar otro viaje en auto o caminata a sus ya complicadas vidas.

Michelle Quattlebaum, miembro de la junta, preguntó si la matrícula del distrito se está estabilizando y señaló que Denver abrió muchas escuelas nuevas durante un periodo en el que — según resulta — la matrícula de las escuelas primarias ya había alcanzado la cifra máxima.

Marrero dijo que iba a buscar retroalimentación de la comunidad en cuanto a los criterios y a programar más discusiones de la junta antes de finalizar cualquier plan.

Denver no es la única ciudad que está teniendo dificultad para responder a bajas en la matrícula, y las decisiones pueden a menudo ser desgarradoras. El Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Aurora pasó por un proceso de cinco años de planificación basado en complicados criterios regionales para identificar qué escuelas se cerrarían, pero aún así los miembros de la junta dudaron cuando los padres lucharon por salvar sus escuelas. Primero votaron por mantener dos escuelas primarias abiertas pero cambiaron de parecer dos meses más tarde.

El Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Jeffco cerró dos escuelas en dos años sin mucho aviso antes de empezar un proceso de planificación esta primavera.

Como las escuelas de Denver son financiadas según la cantidad de estudiantes matriculados, las escuelas pequeñas batallan para poder ofrecer experiencias educativas completas. Es posible que los estudiantes no puedan tomar cursos electivos o que hasta no reciban servicios vitales, y los maestros casi no dan abasto cubriendo múltiples grados. Pero muchas familias aprecian sentirse parte de una comunidad en la que todos los adultos conocen a sus hijos.

Denver usó $6.7 millones en fondos de alivio federales este año para respaldar los presupuestos de las escuelas pequeñas y espera gastar otros $9.8 millones el próximo año.

Denver primero identificó 19 escuelas para posible cierre el año pasado basándose en las reducciones de matrícula proyectadas. Como Marrero recién empezaba su rol y la comunidad estaba revuelta, el distrito hizo pausa en ese proceso y comenzó el otro proceso, difícil al principio, que resultó en estas nuevas recomendaciones. Cinco escuelas en la lista del año pasado ahora tienen una matrícula que supera el límite creado por el comité nuevo, y por lo tanto ya no se considerarían.

Un grupo de escuelas chárter de Denver tampoco cumplen el límite de matrícula. Las leyes estatales no permiten que el distrito unilateralmente cierre escuelas chárter con poca matrícula. El comité recomendó usar la viabilidad financiera para identificar las escuelas que deben considerarse para cierre, y luego incorporar esos criterios en el proceso de contrato y renovación. Algunas escuelas chárter han cerrado voluntariamente debido a poca matrícula.

Las recomendaciones usan la palabra “consolidación” en todo el documento en vez de decir “cierre”, que es mucho más fuerte. “No recomendamos cerrar, sino que siempre se considere consolidar las escuelas” escribió el comité.

Chalkbeat le preguntó al Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Denver cuál es la diferencia entre consolidación y cierre. La diferencia, dijo el portavoz Scott Pribble, es mantener la mayor continuidad posible en programas, normas y valores.

“Si una escuela es identificada en este proceso, pero tiene un excelente programa de arte o una celebración anual valiosa, es posible que se puedan preservar esos aspectos de la escuela durante el proceso de consolidación”, escribió en un email.

Las normas de implantación dicen que todos los estudiantes de una escuela cerrada deben poder asistir a la misma escuela nueva a menos que opten por ir a otra. A todo el personal de la escuela cerrada se le debe garantizar puestos en esa misma escuela nueva. Los programas especializados, como los de dos idiomas, Montessori, o un enfoque en ciencia y tecnología, deben pasar de la escuela cerrada a su escuela de reemplazo designada.

Las recomendaciones también exhortan a las primarias e intermedias a considerar unirse para formar escuelas de Kinder a 8vo grado, o que las intermedias pequeñas se unan a una secundaria para crear una escuela de 6to a 12mo grado.

Este año, el distrito tuvo 90,200 estudiantes desde preescolar hasta el 12mo grado, en comparación con 93,800 en 2019. Sin embargo, la matrícula en las escuelas primarias del distrito tuvo su nivel máximo en 2014, y la de las escuelas intermedias en el 2018.

En Denver, más de un 85% de los niños de edad escolar asisten a las Escuelas Públicas de Denver. Más o menos un 6.6% asiste a escuelas privadas y otro 8% van a escuelas de otro distrito cercano.

Aunque algunas familias buscaron otras opciones debido a la frustración con el aprendizaje remoto durante la pandemia, los funcionarios de Denver dicen que la razón principal de la reducción en la cantidad de familias ha sido una baja en las tasas de nacimiento y el aumento en precios de vivienda. La población de menores de 18 años se redujo drásticamente en la última década en las comunidades gentrificadas del suroeste de Denver, el norte, y Elyria-Swansea, pero aumentó en el sureste de Denver.

Erica Meltzer, Jefa de Redacción, cubre temas de educación y política y además supervisa la cobertura sobre educación de Chalkbeat Colorado. Para comunicarte con Erica, escríbele a emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Las escuelas más pequeñas de Denver

Estas escuelas primarias e intermedias de Denver no cumplen el límite de matrícula recomendado y podrían considerarse para cierre. No todas las escuelas consideradas se cerrarían, y los criterios todavía no se han finalizado.

Escuelas con menos de 215 estudiantes este año:

Denver Discovery School

International Academy of Denver at Harrington

Mathematics and Science Leadership Academy

Fairview Elementary School

Schmitt Elementary School

Columbian Elementary School

Kaiser Elementary School

Hallett Academy

Whittier ECE-8 School

McKinley-Thatcher Elementary School

Palmer Elementary School

Colfax Elementary School

Escuelas que tienen entre 216 y 274 estudiantes este año:

Columbine Elementary School

Beach Court Elementary School

Cheltenham Elementary School

Eagleton Elementary School

Center for Talent Development at Greenlee

Valverde Elementary School

Ashley Elementary School

Oakland Elementary School

Cowell Elementary School

Lincoln Elementary School

Cole Arts & Science Academy

Godsman Elementary School

McAuliffe Manual Middle School

College View Elementary School

Newlon Elementary School

Fuente: Departamento de Educación de Colorado

Recommended school closure criteria presented to Denver school board

2022-06-03T03:41:43+00:00

Leer en español.

While school closure should be a last resort, the Denver school district should consider closing or consolidating schools with the fewest students, according to committee recommendations presented to the school board Thursday.

Elementary and middle schools with “critically low enrollment,” meaning fewer than 215 students next school year, as well as schools with fewer than 275 students that expect to lose 8% to 10% of their students in the next few years, should be considered for consolidation, the recommendations said. The thresholds wouldn’t apply to high schools.

Not all schools identified for consideration would actually close. The district should work closely with the community and apply a series of “equity guardrails,” considering how far students would have to travel to school and which schools have specialized programming, especially for students learning English and those with disabilities, the recommendations said.

Committee members said they intentionally did not look at which schools would be affected by the enrollment threshold, and they could not tell board members how many schools would be affected.

“There are no schools being considered,” Superintendent Alex Marrero said. “There is not a list.”

The earliest schools would be identified is next school year, based on that year’s data, and barring exceptional circumstances, no schools would close until the end of the 2023-24 school year.

State enrollment data shows 27 Denver elementary and middle schools with fewer than 275 students this school year. Of those, 19 serve student populations that are more than 90% students of color or more than 90% from low-income households, or both. Just three of the schools are majority white.

The school board doesn’t need to approve the policy, a district spokesman said, but it would have to approve any future school closures. At Thursday’s meeting, members asked insistent questions that suggest they are hesitant to go down the path laid out by the committee.

Vice President Tay Anderson said he doesn’t want to close schools where students of color are making academic gains. The committee did not recommend looking at academics or at whether schools have been able to maintain programming despite budget constraints.

Board member Carrie Olson, a former bilingual educator, said she’s concerned about closing schools that offer the type of bilingual programming required under a federal consent decree that governs the districts. Even if similar programming is available a few miles away, she said, some families may remove their children from bilingual programming rather than add a drive or a long walk to their already complicated lives.

Board member Michelle Quattlebaum asked if district enrollment could be stabilizing and noted that Denver opened many new schools during a period when — it turned out — elementary enrollment had already peaked.

Marrero said he would seek community feedback on the criteria and schedule more board discussions before finalizing any plan.

Denver is not alone in struggling with how to respond to declining enrollment, and the decisions are often wrenching. Aurora Public Schools engaged in a five-year planning process that used complex regional criteria to identify schools for closure, but school board members still hesitated when parents fought to save their schools. They first voted to keep two elementary schools open then reversed themselves two months later.

Jeffco Public Schools closed two schools in two years with little notice before starting a planning process in earnest this spring.

Because Denver schools are funded based on how many students they have, small schools struggle to offer complete educational experiences. Students may go without electives or even vital services, and teachers are stretched thin covering multiple grades. But many families appreciate feeling part of a community where every adult knows their child.

Denver used $6.7 million in federal relief money this year to shore up the budgets of small schools and expects to spend another $9.8 million next year.

Denver first identified 19 schools for potential closure last year based on projected enrollment declines. With Marrero new on the job and the community in an uproar, the district put that process on hold and started the process, bumpy at first, that led to these new recommendations. Five schools on last year’s list have enrollment higher than the threshold created by the new committee and wouldn’t be considered.

A number of Denver charter schools also fall below the enrollment threshold. State law doesn’t allow the district to unilaterally close charter schools with low enrollment. The committee recommended using financial viability to identify schools that should be considered for closure and incorporating that criteria into the contract and renewal process. Some charter schools have closed voluntarily due to low enrollment.

The recommendations use the word “consolidation” throughout, rather than the more jarring “closure.” “We do not recommend closure, but rather that schools are always considered to be consolidated,” the committee wrote.

Chalkbeat asked Denver Public Schools the difference between consolidation and closure. The difference, spokesman Scott Pribble said, is maintaining as much continuity of programming, norms, and values as possible.

“If one school is identified in this process, but has a strong arts program or a valued annual celebration, those aspects of the school could live on through the consolidation process,” he wrote in an email.

The implementation guidelines say that all students from a closed school should be able to attend the same new school, unless they choose to go elsewhere. All staff from the closed school should be guaranteed positions at the same new school. Specialized programming such as dual language, Montessori, or a science and technology focus should carry over from a closed school to its designated replacement.

The recommendations also encourage small elementary and middle schools to look at merging into K-8s or small middle schools to join a high school to create a 6-12 school.

This year, the district had 90,200 students in preschool through 12th grade, compared with 93,800 in 2019. But the district’s elementary enrollment actually peaked in 2014 and its middle school enrollment in 2018.

More than 85% of school-age children in Denver attend Denver Public Schools. Roughly 6.6% attend private schools and another 8% attend school in a neighboring district.

While some families sought other options due to frustration with pandemic remote learning, Denver officials say the main culprit is declining birth rates and rising housing prices that force out families. The population under 18 plummeted over the last decade in gentrifying neighborhoods in southwest Denver, the Northside, and Elyria-Swansea, while it grew in southeast Denver.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Denver’s Small Schools

These Denver elementary and middle schools have enrollment below the recommended threshold to be considered for closure. Not all schools considered for closure would actually close, and the criteria have not been finalized.

Schools with fewer than 215 students this year:

Denver Discovery School

International Academy of Denver at Harrington

Mathematics and Science Leadership Academy

Fairview Elementary School

Schmitt Elementary School

Columbian Elementary School

Kaiser Elementary School

Hallett Academy

Whittier ECE-8 School

McKinley-Thatcher Elementary School

Palmer Elementary School

Colfax Elementary School

Schools with between 216 and 274 students this year:

Columbine Elementary School

Beach Court Elementary School

Cheltenham Elementary School

Eagleton Elementary School

Center for Talent Development at Greenlee

Valverde Elementary School

Ashley Elementary School

Oakland Elementary School

Cowell Elementary School

Lincoln Elementary School

Cole Arts & Science Academy

Godsman Elementary School

McAuliffe Manual Middle School

College View Elementary School

Newlon Elementary School

Source: Colorado Department of Education

Denver superintendent’s goals include dismantling ‘oppressive systems’

2022-05-23T21:51:38+00:00

In anticipation of the Denver superintendent’s first evaluation in October, the school board has approved the criteria for evaluating his first year on the job.

The metrics are related to the retention of educators of color, the adoption of social and emotional learning curriculum, the rate of out-of-school suspensions, and more.

Superintendent Alex Marrero started the top job in Denver Public Schools in July. His arrival coincided with the school board’s adoption of a new type of governance that requires it to set overarching goals called “ends statements.” The board has five.

In summary, they are:

The district will be “free of oppressive systems and structures rooted in racism.”
Students will receive a well-rounded and culturally relevant education. All students will score at grade level on district tests, and students who score below will achieve “significant academic growth.” Students with disabilities will have the resources they need.
Students and staff will be mentally and physically healthy.
The district will be a safe environment where the impacts of COVID are minimized.
Graduates will be independent, lifelong learners who can make well-informed decisions.

As the school board’s sole employee, the superintendent is in charge of making sure the district is moving toward those overarching goals. To that end, Marrero has crafted a set of metrics, called “reasonable interpretations,” by which the board will measure his success.

Last week, board members unanimously approved metrics related to four of the five goals. They delayed voting on metrics related to the second goal because Marrero said he needed board members to further define what they meant by a well-rounded education.

Per Marrero’s latest contract, which was approved in December, five months after he started the job, the board must evaluate his performance by Oct. 31 each year. Documents prepared by Marrero and approved by the board say he will be successful if he achieves 75% of his targets. Marrero wrote that he expects to achieve some targets by the end of this school year, but it will take until the end of the next school year to achieve others.

The metrics board members will use to evaluate Marrero direct him to:

Open at least four “community hubs” by the start of next school year. The community hubs will offer “programs and services that support social, emotional, physical and academic needs of students,” according to a document written by the superintendent. Marrero has said he will pay for these hubs with savings from job cuts in the central office.
Identify at least two “enduring systems of oppression” within the district to be dismantled.
Retain educators of color and multilingual educators at the same rate as other educators, as measured by preliminary teacher retention data available in September.
Establish a community advisory panel that includes representation from at least 10 organizations that serve historically marginalized communities.
Increase the percentage of students and families of color who report feeling a sense of belonging in the district, as measured by an annual survey. Last year, 68% of Black students and 69% of Latino students said they feel they belong at their school, while 91% of Black families and 93% of Latino families said they feel welcome at their child’s school.
Increase from 33% to at least 85% the number of schools that have a curriculum dedicated to social and emotional learning.
Increase from fall to spring the percentage of staff members who quantify their well-being in a twice-yearly survey as a 7 or higher on a scale of 0 to 10.
Ensure the rate of out-of-school suspensions doesn’t exceed the rate in 2018-19, the last school year before the pandemic. In that year, 4.25% of students were suspended, though the rate was higher for Black students, who were disproportionately suspended.
Keep in-person schooling “a priority when our current health conditions allow.”
Ensure every district-run high school offers a financial literacy course. As of now, 21 of 23 high schools offer these courses. A group of recent Denver Public Schools alumni called Ednium has been pushing the district to prioritize financial literacy.
Re-establish benchmarks for graduation rates after pandemic-related disruptions. Graduation rates dipped statewide in 2021, with Denver posting a 74% graduation rate.

The board is set to vote next month on the metrics related to the last overarching goal, about offering a well-rounded education. According to a draft, those metrics will include:

Re-establishing baselines for participation in and achievement on state literacy and math tests. In 2021, more than half of Denver students in grades three through eight opted out of the Colorado Academic Measures of Success, or CMAS, tests. Scores were lower, too.
Ensuring that students who score below grade level on state tests experience high academic growth year to year, as measured by student growth percentiles.
Reducing the number of students in kindergarten through third grade reading below grade level. Last fall, just 46% of students were reading at or above grade level.
Ensuring that 70% of students in district-run schools report in an annual survey that their lessons are culturally and linguistically relevant.
Ensuring that 50% of students in district-run schools report they have “student agency.” That’s measured by five questions including, “I get to choose some things I learn in school” and “I know my strengths and weaknesses.”
Ensuring that all students learning English as a second language receive high-quality instruction as determined by a program review.
Ensuring students with disabilities receive the support they need, as measured by metrics including the timely completion of initial special education evaluations. A Chalkbeat investigation found the number of initial evaluations fell during the pandemic.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Adams 14 resists reorganization, neighboring districts pledge support

2022-05-16T17:55:11+00:00

Leer en español.

Adams 14 leaders plan to resist state efforts to reorganize the long-struggling school district, and they’re getting support from their neighboring districts, a united front that suggests the state will face an uphill battle in its efforts to force change on the community.

“I think we’re going to have far more allies on this than the State Board,” said Joe Salazar, an attorney for Adams 14.

The Adams 14 school district north of Denver has tested the power of the state’s accountability law as it has faced many firsts. Unlike other states, Colorado does not have the authority to directly take over the operations of school districts.

In 2018, when the state ordered the district to submit to an external manager after years of low academic performance, the local school board remained in place. And in 2021, when that board hired its own superintendent, Karla Loria, she soon pushed out the management company, MGT Consulting.

Now, concerned that district leaders don’t have what it takes to lead new plans to improve student performance, and that they’re unwilling to share enough responsibility with outside help to do so, the State Board of Education has stripped the district’s accreditation and ordered that it be reorganized, a move that could mean the dissolution of the district, school closures, and students being absorbed by neighboring districts.

But Colorado has never done this before, leaving many unanswered questions about how the process would work. Meanwhile, the law gives local communities significant leverage over the state.

Neighboring leaders rally to Adams 14’s side

While Adams 14 has had a tenuous relationship with some of its neighbors in the past, Loria this year rallied colleagues and has received their support. District leaders hope others will join them, even if it’s just to defend local control.

The state has named Mapleton, 27J, and Adams 12 Five Star school districts as participants in the reorganization process along with Adams 14. According to the law, a committee made up of members appointed by the school boards and district accountability committees of each district would draft a plan for new district boundaries. Once a plan has been approved by the committee and the education commissioner, it must go to the voters of the affected districts.

Speaking to how new and uncertain the process is, the state education department originally put out a fact sheet that indicated the school boards themselves would need to sign off on the plan. But that requirement actually pertains to a different reorganization process in another section of state law.

When he briefed the Adams 14 school board last week, Salazar also believed local boards would need to vote on the plan. That means state officials have a problem, he said.

“You want to mess with Adams County, we’re going to rally like Adams County,” he said.

While the process doesn’t require the approval of school boards, they can shape the outcome by appointing committee members.

And if they don’t want to create a plan, there’s little the state can do to force compliance. Removing accreditation is mostly symbolic — though it has been the threat behind state orders in the past. It’s meant to show parents that the district has been consistently low performing. But parents already know the district has challenges, and many have been outspoken in support of local leadership and believe the state accountability system judges them unfairly.

Decision “in the hands of the community”

Education Commissioner Katy Anthes said the reorganization of Adams 14 is not a foregone conclusion, and the outcome really depends on the community.

“I hope they make a good faith effort, and I have no doubt they will do that,” Anthes said. “If they make this decision that they don’t want to reorganize or a plan doesn’t make sense or they can’t come up with a plan, we’ll have to reevaluate the plan at that stage. The decision is in the hands of the community.”

District 27J Superintendent Chris Fiedler said that he supports Adams 14. His Brighton-based district covers parts of Commerce City and will be included in the reorganization committee.

“I believe we’re compelled to participate under the law. I can’t opt out, but I’d like to,” Fiedler said. “I still believe the answers to providing success to the students in Adams 14, they exist in Adams 14. I believe Karla to be an exceptional superintendent, certainly one of the best ones I’ve seen in my tenure.”

Besides believing in the district’s current leadership, Fiedler said for him, this is about local control and trusting that district leaders know their needs better than the state does.

Mapleton’s Superintendent Charlotte Ciancio also said she supports Adams 14 and criticized the state accountability system that has given Adams 14 low ratings.

“What’s happening to Adams 14 is a direct result of a system that fails to assure fairness and equity across all communities,” Ciancio said in a statement. “The accountability and accreditation system in Colorado is significantly flawed. Using the results of a test administered only in English in a community that is primarily Spanish speaking to rank their schools is but one example of the injustice. As we move forward to identify the next best path for Adams 14, we will continue to call for a new accreditation system for Colorado’s schools!”

Lawmakers have ordered an audit of the state’s accountability system to determine whether it’s working as intended, including whether it hurts the low-income students of color the system is supposed to protect. The results are due in November.

Adams 12 representatives did not respond to a request for comment. Denver, which also borders Adams 14, is not part of the process because a 1970s state constitutional amendment prevents Denver’s school district boundaries from growing unless the city’s boundaries also change.

State board decision “destabilizing”

Jason Malmberg, president of the Adams 14 teachers union, said the feeling in schools last week was one of heartbreak. Many people are confused as to what comes next, while others feel upset that the state would step in so far, he said.

Malmberg said the State Board decision was destabilizing in ways board members can’t understand. “The solutions being suggested are not helping,” he said. “They’re making it worse, not better.”

Malmberg said he’s also worried about what the orders mean for local control.

“Does the State Board of Education have the right, in the 21st century, in a democratic country, to dissolve a democratically elected body?” he asked.

If the reorganization committee were to draft a plan that dissolves the district entirely, giving up areas to other districts, the local school board of Adams 14 would be dissolved.

Salazar said that is an area of concern he has about the law.

He also worries that reorganizing the district will be a way to bring in more charter schools, though Anthes said she doesn’t believe that would be under the scope of the reorganization committee.

Other possible scenarios include dissolving Adams 14 and creating a new district with a new name and the exact same boundaries, as a way to rebrand and get a fresh start, or letting neighboring districts take on just parts of Adams 14, so the district could focus on improving fewer schools.

In the meantime, Adams 14 leaders say they’re still working on educating students. Leaders there are continuing negotiations to partner with nonprofit consultant TNTP. According to the plan the district presented to the state, TNTP would work “side by side” with the superintendent to make recommendations.

The district will also have to go back to the state next month to present its plan for Central Elementary. The district is seeking more autonomy to turn Central into a community school offering various support services.

The state had allowed the district to proceed with the plan last month to flesh it out, but State Board members must give final approval in June or order another action, which could still include closure.

Anthes raised the possibility that if district improvement efforts are successful before a reorganization plan is created, perhaps the State Board may change course.

“We could see the district implement these plans, and we could see outcomes starting to change and my board could revisit the decision,” she said. “Maybe the reorganization order would go away. In the meantime schools are open, kids are going to school and we want those schools to improve.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s what reorganization could mean for Adams 14

2022-05-16T15:45:12+00:00

Leer en español.

The Adams 14 school district is set to be the first district in Colorado forced to start a reorganization process after years of low academic performance on the state’s accountability system.

Since this would be the first time for the law to be used this way, there are many questions about how it works and what it means. Here, we try to answer some important questions for families.

Will student diplomas be affected, or worth any less, because the district lost its accreditation?

No. The state accredits districts as part of the state accountability system, but losing accreditation doesn’t impact a district’s funding, student diplomas, or student eligibility to go to college or to get scholarships. Katy Anthes, the commissioner for the education department, said loss of accreditation shouldn’t hurt students at all. It also doesn’t impact any daily school operations.

Instead, it is meant to signal to the community that this school district has been low-performing based on the state’s ratings “for far too long,” she said.

What is reorganization and when will it start?

There are two state laws outlining how to start reorganization, a process for consolidating, annexing, or creating school districts. The one the state board has selected ultimately will require voter approval.

The process starts with creating a committee made up of board members and parents from affected districts to reimagine district boundaries. That plan could take many forms, including creating a new district with the same boundaries as Adams 14, (essentially restarting the same district), or allowing neighboring districts to take over parts of the existing Adams 14.

That committee would be formed after the state board’s orders are written out and finalized, which may take a couple of weeks.

Are schools closing?

For now, schools are not closing as a result of the state board’s decision. When the reorganization committee meets to create a plan, it can close schools as part of the changes, but doesn’t have to. That process is expected to take a long time and will not be completed before next school year.

Adams 14 itself, however, is considering closing schools in its own plans. On Monday, after parent outcry, the superintendent pulled a plan to close Hanson Elementary and transfer existing students to Monaco in the fall. Leaders said the proposed closure was needed because of declining enrollment, and to move students from the alternative high school into Hanson’s building, which has a cafeteria and space for more programming, something the current building doesn’t have. Ramona Lewis, the board president, told parents they would take more time to consider options.

The shuttering of Hanson is just one of many closures or school mergers suggested in a facilities assessment for Adams 14 from January 2020.

What about parents who want to send their children to other schools?

Colorado allows open enrollment, and parents always have the right to send their child to any school that has room. More than 3,000 students who live within Adams 14 boundaries already attend school in neighboring districts.

Starting next school year, some families might get state assistance with transportation. The details are still being worked out, but the State Board of Education signed off on plans to develop a grant program to cover transportation costs for families in the lowest-performing schools.

How does the community get to participate in reorganization plans?

First, at least one parent from each of the affected districts — Adams 14, Mapleton, Adams 12, and 27J — will need to be part of the committee. The parents will be chosen by the district’s accountability committees. Then, meetings of the reorganization committee have to be open to the public. Once the committee has a draft of a plan, it is required to hold community meetings to share the proposal and gather feedback. The committee is then supposed to take that feedback into account to finalize the plan before submitting it to the state for approval.

After the plan is approved by the commissioner, it will go to the voters. Ultimately, voters in the participating affected districts will have the final say to approve or deny the plan.

Can the district appeal the state’s decision to start reorganization?

While there is no formal appeal process, the district is expected to file court challenges to the state orders. Joe Salazar, an Adams 14 attorney, said he believes the state was required to have an appeals process outside of the courts for these state board orders. State education officials said they don’t believe that to be a requirement.

Will the district have a new management company?

Since the process to reorganize the district will take a long time, the state board also passed an order that requires Adams 14 to again contract with an external manager. The state board wants the district to be under full management, just as when it was under MGT Consulting, but this time is allowing the district to retain control of its own finances.

However, Adams 14 leaders are proceeding with negotiations to hire the nonprofit TNTP, not as full managers, but under the existing plan to make them partial managers. The district’s attorney and other district leaders now believe the state’s order from 2018 forcing the superintendent to give up authority is illegal. In the partial management plan, they would give TNTP full authority over the human resources department, but not the authority to hire or fire employees.

This was a concern for state board members at this week’s hearing. Adams 14 leaders still claim the plan will be enough to comply with the state’s order. This is expected to be another area where the state and district could disagree.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that under the process ordered by the State Board, only voters will have to approve the reorganization plan recommended by the committee and the commissioner. School boards will not vote on the plan.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

How Denver is spending $9 million freed up by central office cuts

2022-05-06T16:27:16+00:00

Leer en español.

The millions of dollars that Denver Public Schools will save by cutting central office employees will be spent on four initiatives, including creating “community hubs” to provide services for families such as GED classes, mental health support, and help with job placement.

That’s according to a plan laid out by Superintendent Alex Marrero at a school board meeting Thursday. Two days prior, on Tuesday, the district told 131 central office employees their jobs were being cut. Because some positions are being reposted, in some cases with new job titles, the net reduction of central office positions is 76, a district spokesperson said.

Eliminating those 76 positions will save the district $9 million next year, officials said. The district’s total budget is about $1.2 billion.

Marrero told the school board that he plans to invest that $9 million in:

Opening six community hubs this fall in partnership with the city of Denver and community organizations, including the Denver Housing Authority, the Montbello Organizing Committee, Westwood Unidos, and others. The community hubs would use a two-generation approach, providing services to young students and their families.

Those services could include assistance with basic needs such as food, clothing, and housing; workforce development help such as resume building and interview preparation; GED, citizenship, and English language classes; and mental health services for adults, among other things.

The locations of the community hubs haven’t been finalized, Marrero said, but he hopes there will be one in every region of the city. The locations would likely be temporary as the district pilots the hubs next school year, he said.

Increasing wages for hourly workers, including paraprofessionals, food service workers, custodians, health technicians who help in school nurses’ offices, and others. Marrero said about 1,200 district employees currently earn the city’s minimum wage of $15.87, and this investment would boost that, though he didn’t say by how much. The goal, he said, is to raise wages over time to $20 an hour, a priority of board Vice President Tay Anderson.

Offsetting rising health care costs for all district employees. Premiums for the district’s largest health care plans rose by 10% this year, Marrero said. The district intends to use some of the central office savings to pay that down so employees won’t shoulder the entire cost.

Supporting schools with declining enrollment by supplementing their budgets. Denver schools are funded per student, and fewer students means less money to hire teachers and other staff. As the district debates how to close or consolidate small schools, Marrero said this money would help schools weather funding decreases.

Marrero’s presentation did not specify how the $9 million would be divided among the four initiatives. The school board is set to vote on next year’s budget in early June.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Denver schools superintendent cuts dozens of jobs from central office

2022-05-04T19:58:38+00:00

Denver’s superintendent is cutting dozens of positions from the central office in a reduction that will save Denver Public Schools $9 million, according to an email obtained by Chalkbeat.

Superintendent Alex Marrero described the cuts in an email sent to district staff Tuesday. They total at least 76 positions and include 15 executive-level jobs.

The cuts are part of a reorganization Marrero announced in February. With districtwide enrollment expected to decline by 6% in the next three years and the district considering closing some schools, Marrero has said the central office was targeted for proportional cuts.

Marrero’s email doesn’t list the specific positions that were cut. But it says they include two of four deputy superintendents, one of eight chiefs, one of five associate chiefs, six of eight deputies or division chiefs of staff, and five of 30 executive directors. That’s a 27% reduction in those positions. Marrero said he “intently focused” on executive-level leadership during the reorganization process.

The other positions being cut are what Marrero described as central support personnel who support schools but don’t work directly with students. No members of the teachers or principals unions were laid off in the reorganization, he said in his email, and he implied that the cuts also spared paraprofessionals, bus drivers, and food service and facilities workers.

As part of the reorganization, many senior district leaders have had to reapply for their jobs. Marrero drew up a new organizational structure that will go into effect July 1. He said he’ll share recommendations at a school board meeting Thursday for how to use the $9 million in savings.

Marrero started as superintendent last July. Five months into his tenure, in December, the school board extended his original two-year contract. He’s now contracted to lead the 90,000-student district until June 2026.

Critics have long complained that Denver’s central office is bloated. Marrero’s predecessor, Susana Cordova, cut more than 220 positions from the central office in 2019 and added new ones for a net reduction of 150 positions. Those cuts reportedly freed up $17 million.

In his email, Marrero said that the latest cuts are difficult but necessary.

“Navigating change can evoke a range of emotions,” he wrote. “Recognizing that we will continue to be in a state of transition in the weeks that follow, we also know that worry, guilt and anxiety may still be part of our workplace after this recent loss of coworkers. We will continue to support each other. We will still focus on being Students First. And we will close out the 2021-22 school year on a strong note. Our scholars are counting on it.”

In recognition of Teacher Appreciation Week this week, Marrero sent a separate email last week listing ways the district planned to recognize its central office employees, who were deployed to schools several times during the pandemic to act as substitute teachers.

On Monday, central office employees were allowed to work from home. On Thursday, the district will provide breakfast burritos. On Friday, employees will be allowed to leave at 2 p.m.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

For Adams 14, state won’t reorganize or close schools, but wants outside help

2022-04-15T01:15:06+00:00

Rejecting recommendations to reorganize the troubled Adams 14 school district or close schools, the Colorado Board of Education on Thursday instead indicated it will likely grant the district some autonomy but will require partial outside management.

Still, the State Board left open the options of school closures or district reorganization if the district fails to present a high-quality plan in about a month for retaining its authority to manage itself. But community support and the district’s new leadership, along with a lack of multiple options, persuaded some State Board members to reject an outside panel’s advice and instead give the district another chance to manage itself.

The State Board will consider partial outside management of Adams 14, as the district has requested, but wants clearly defined roles and responsibilities of each party, to try to avoid the power struggles that emerged between the district and its previous management company.

Adams 14 Superintendent Karla Loria said after the hearing that she was happy, excited, and emotional, and she agreed with the State Board’s requests for clearly outlined roles in a partial management plan.

“I think it’s very wise on behalf of the State Board to ask for those details — what they’re going to be over, in what authority,” Loria said. “What I can tell you is that they will not be over finances — that will remain at the board level.”

Initially, the State Board discussed requiring the district to continue under full external management. In 2018 the district became the first one the state ordered to hand over all authority to an external manager. But this time concerns about a lack of qualified or interested management groups pushed State Board members to consider a partial management plan.

Adams 14 now must submit that plan before the board’s May 11 meeting, in time for education department to review it and to evaluate the manager that the district selects.

Separately, the board requested the district come up with a complete plan for quasi-autonomy for Central Elementary, which is under separate scrutiny for low performance. The State Board requested a complete plan for what’s known as innovation status, including proof that a majority of the school’s staff have voted to approve the plan.

The district must submit Central’s plan for state staff review before the board’s June meeting.

“We are up to the challenge,” Loria said. “We will deliver. It is aggressive but it is doable. We will make it work.”

Adams 14 school board President Ramona Lewis said she didn’t expect Thursday’s outcome, and now feels like the state is willing to listen to the Adams 14 community.

She said the timeline is aggressive, but “our kids need aggressive. We’ve recognized that we really need to make a push and to make sure our kids get what they need.”

State Board member Lisa Escarcega cast the sole vote against the request for Central, citing concern that having a partial manager plus many consultants at the school as part of its other plans would become a disaster.

State Board member Karla Esser asked the district also to examine the condition of Central’s building and plan to address those facilities challenges too.

The State Board also considered scheduling a separate hearing for Adams City High School, which would require a new state review panel to go into the school, but given that school is over in about a month, said it would not be possible. A review panel for the district had recommended closing Adams City High School for persistent low performance. State Board member Steve Durham said that would be “impractical and damaging to children.”

The board instead asked the district to come up with a robust plan for improvement of the high school as part of the district’s plan.

Leaders of Adams 14, which serves about 6,000 students in working-class suburbs north of Denver, spent much of their time before the State Board Thursday describing the demographics of their district, which includes a majority of students living in poverty, and a high proportion of students who are classified as English learners.

Low achievement has placed the district on the state’s watchlist since 2010. Previous improvement plans have failed, and the latest state-ordered plan fell apart after Adams 14 parted ways with its external manager earlier this year.

District leaders called the state’s accountability process racist, and suggested the State Board’s measures were punitive. A lawyer for the district said he was aiming to create a record so that courts could review any negative action the State Board takes against the district. District lawyers also question the legality of the original order to relinquish its self-management.

State Board members disputed the district’s claims. Most also said they felt more confidence in current district leaders and in Superintendent Karla Loria than in previous administrations.

When asked why she hasn’t yet developed a complete plan for turning the district around, Loria said she would not introduce a plan from the top down without involving the community.

When one State Board member asked how the community could heal after years of turmoil, Loria said the answer was in listening to them.

“That’s why I continue saying the plan that I have, the vision that I bring to the district, is to listen to them,” Loria said speaking of the community. “They want to be part of the solution. They want to be part of the development of the plan. I can come top down with a plan, but I won’t.”

The State Board considered hundreds of pages of public comment submitted in letters and surveys. Among those that addressed external management, 45 supported some version of management, while 42 opposed it. Messages supporting or opposing local district leadership were similarly mixed, according to Education Department staff.

Messages addressing school closure were much more likely to say the schools should remain open, with just seven comments favoring closure. None in the case of Central Elementary.

Among those who submitted public comment, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis expressed support for “transformational change” in the district, and offered state dollars to support improvement plans.

“As governor I would seek to use a portion of federal custodial funds I have at my disposal to work in coordination with the Colorado Department of Education to facilitate successful transformational change in Adams 14,” Polis wrote.

He didn’t mention how much the state would provide, but did speak of a $2 million RISE grant from the state that is helping the high school to provide more career pathways, and hinted at a larger investment that “could have an even greater impact in promoting elementary, middle, and high school transformation.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Adams 14 prepares case for local control in advance of State Board hearing

2022-04-12T02:12:41+00:00

Facing a hearing this week that could determine the fate of Adams 14 schools, district leaders plan to ask the state to trust local leaders to oversee their own plan to improve schools.

The state has threatened to dissolve the 6,100-student school district, which serves mostly working-class suburbs north of Denver and has received the state’s lowest ratings since 2010. Adams 14 leaders will argue that they have both the will and the skills to pull up the district themselves.

State Board of Education members have expressed concern about local leadership after the school board fired an external management company, MGT Consulting. A state panel of outside experts has recommended closing the main high school and reorganizing the district.

Thursday’s hearing will consist of two parts. In the morning, the State Board of Education will consider how to improve the district as a whole. Those orders could include changes at the high school, despite district leaders telling the community the high school’s future is not on the agenda.

In the afternoon, the State Board will hear recommendations for Central Elementary.

In both hearings, State Board members will consider information from education department staff, an external review panel’s report, the district’s own plan, and public feedback.

While the review panel’s recommendations have been public for some weeks, the district has been less open about its own plans.

Documents given to the state and recent public meetings give some insight.

Adams 14 leaders propose hiring a new external manager overseen by the district, instead of one that would have full authority over the district.

They propose turning Central Elementary into a community school with partners that would provide resources to address non-academic issues that could affect children’s abilities to learn.

The district, which refused to grant an interview, has not presented a plan specifically for the high school. It has publicly insisted that the state would not decide the school’s fate this month.

But a spokesperson for the state confirmed that the State Board can order changes to the high school, or any school, on Thursday.

Adams 14 School District

The state-ordered improvement plans in Adams 14 have escalated over the years, and in the past have included partial management plans where a previous superintendent oversaw consultants’ work. Most recently in 2018, the State Board of Education required the district to hand over most daily operations to an outside entity, expressing a lack of trust in local leaders to improve low achievement.

The district now has new leadership, but a new state review panel, convened after Adams 14 released its previous external manager, reported that district administration still lacks the skills.

The panel suggested possibly reorganizing the district, including closing at least the main high school. That could mean entirely or partially dissolving the district, or redrawing boundaries to give neighboring districts control over parts of Adams 14. To do that, state law lays out a process that has never been used. This represents the most aggressive state intervention possible in a school district.

Adams 14 leaders argue they are qualified and their leadership really only began in February, after MGT left. The district submitted the resumes of board members and other district leaders to back their claim.

A new attorney hired by the district during its fight with MGT has said the district is prepared to fight the state to retain local control. A lawsuit seeking to change the terms of this week’s hearing was unsuccessful, but in one win, the district will get an extra 30 minutes to make its case.

Although the district plan calls for a management partner, it does not name one. The district put out a request for bids and received only one application, from nonprofit TNTP, formerly known as The New Teacher Project. The district has refused to release a copy of that application.

After removing a vote on the external manager from a recent board agenda, the district instead has hosted several community forums with the applicant in recent days.

“This is not by any means a process we want to rush or push through just to finalize it,” Superintendent Karla Loria said at one of the meetings. “I think this is an important aspect of our planning on how to improve.”

At the forums, district principals and board members asked questions about what kind of support the consultant would provide for English learners, who make up about half of all Adams 14 students, about what their first 90 days with the district would look like, and how they would incorporate community engagement.

Team leaders from TNTP gave many examples of their work in other districts similar to Adams 14, where they have trained teachers to tailor lessons for students with different needs such as English learners. They said community engagement was important, and that student voice was especially useful for letting teachers understand how their teaching was being received.

They said they wanted to be sure that the Adams 14 community wanted to work with them. Much of the first 90 days would be listening to the community and the district about its needs, TNTP leaders said.

TNTP worked with the Houston school district at the same time Loria led a team of schools there. A case study from TNTP’s website about work in the district talks about how teacher evaluations changed so that teachers had more feedback about how to improve.

Central Elementary

Meanwhile, the district plans for Central Elementary may win more favor from the State Board.

Before the pandemic, the school seemed to be making improvements, and external observers found reasons to be hopeful.

Adams 14’s plan for Central would consist of using innovation status — a status that gives schools, where staff and community agree, autonomy from certain state mandates or teacher union rules — to become a community school. The draft plan as submitted to the state would consist of expanding the time students spend on math and reading, using tutors, adding before- and after-school child care, and creating financial incentives for hard-to-staff positions.

The district also plans to put out more requests for bids to work with other organizations to bring additional resources to the school. So far, the plan notes, the district has secured commitments from groups that MGT had hired and that were already working with Adams 14 schools.

Vocal parent advocates with students at Central say they trust district leaders because they feel heard, and they want to see the community school model put in place.

Adams City High School

While the district hasn’t submitted a plan to the state about the high school, leaders at Adams City High School say they’ve been working on improvement plans anyway.

And much of what they started with MGT is continuing.

“When I speak to instruction and school structures and program monitoring of our performance — those three things have been consistent,” said Chris Garcia, principal of Adams City High School.

The plan includes the introduction of more career tracks, or pathways that let students earn certifications along with their diplomas.

This semester, the school is expecting about 80 seniors to graduate with certificates in business or construction from Front Range Community College. The high school resumed participation in the state’s ASCENT program which allows high school students to stay in high school for a fifth year while earning college credit for free.

Natalie Johnson, an assistant principal at Adams City, said she wishes the number of students taking and passing college courses at the high school were given more consideration in evaluating the school’s performance.

“These kids are working hard,” Johnson said.

The school has been using a RISE grant to build out the career pathways, but finding teachers is a challenge. Johnson said there are 69 students on a waitlist hoping to participate in a Certified Nursing Assistant program, but the high school has struggled to recruit a credentialed instructor.

Garcia said the school’s challenge is getting students motivated to be in school and to turn in their work. The school is considering moving some classes to the evening to accommodate students who are working to support their families.

“We have to find ways to encourage them to stay and grind it out, and parents have to help us with that expectation,” Garcia said, “but also understanding that some of our kids are having to deal with other things.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Judge dismisses Adams 14’s lawsuit against the state

2022-03-25T23:43:34+00:00

A Denver judge dismissed the Adams 14 school district’s lawsuit against the state on Friday afternoon.

In a six-page order, Denver District Judge Michael Martinez concludes that the district failed to prove it had standing to bring the complaint or that the state had caused “irreparable injury.”

“While plaintiffs in their response dedicate significant time to describing the harms associated with their complaint, they fail to explain how or point to an allegation showing that these harms are in fact irreparable,” the judge’s order states.

The district had argued in a lawsuit filed last month that the State Board of Education was violating the district’s rights in its accountability proceedings to determine the fate of the district.

The State Board will hold new hearings in mid-April to discuss new orders for improving the district, which has been low-performing for years. Among the options is the possibility of closing one or more schools, or dissolving the district.

Adams 14 brought on a new attorney, Joe Salazar, earlier this school year. He filed the lawsuit in Denver District Court arguing that the State Board must consider all evidence the district presents and must allow the district more time to present its case. The lawsuit also demanded State Board member Steve Durham be barred from participating in the hearing because district officials believe he is biased against them. Salazar argued the state’s proceedings violated the law.

Meanwhile, attorneys for the state had asked the judge to dismiss the case, stating their procedures follow the law.

Typically, the hearings for schools or districts facing state orders over low performance last a little more than two hours. The State Board hears 30 minutes of evidence and arguments from Colorado Department of Education staff, then 30 minutes from school or district officials.

State Board members consider only information presented in the hearing and recommendations from a panel of experts who are asked to visit the site. State Board members then discuss recommendations before voting on a plan and orders for the district.

Read the judge’s order here:

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Adams 14 is looking for a new external manager, but not sharing details

2022-03-25T22:02:09+00:00

The Adams 14 school district is searching for a new external manager, but has released few details or the names of the finalists, despite interviews being set for Monday.

The process contrasts with how the process worked when the district last hired an external manager in 2019.

The district, north of Denver, faces a mid-April hearing when the Colorado State Board of Education must decide on a new improvement plan to turnaround years of low academic achievement in the district. One outside panel has recommended closing at least the high school, and possibly reorganizing the rest of the district.

District officials, led by the superintendent hired last year, are working on an improvement plan of their own to present to the state as an alternative to school closings.

The internal plan would create at least one community school — a model that would analyze the needs of families, and bring in resources such as a food pantry, health clinic, or adult classes.

The proposal also will include working with an external manager, but with a new authority structure.

Proposals from those interested in the external management work were due to the district Wednesday afternoon. The district has refused to release those proposals to the public or answer Chalkbeat’s questions about the process including how many groups applied.

The district’s request for proposals, which was shared, lays out a tight timeline. Three finalists will be chosen Friday, two days after applications were due, and those finalists will have on-site interviews Monday.

No information about the search, which started in February, about the committee that will conduct interviews, or about Monday’s interviews, is on the district’s website as of Friday afternoon.

In 2019, when the last manager was selected, Adams 14 created a community engagement process in which, over the course of a month, dozens of parents and community members vetted the nine applicants for the position, and made recommendations.

Ultimately, the State Board rejected the community’s first pick, neighboring Mapleton Public Schools, prompting the local school board to vote on a second choice, MGT Consulting, despite the State Board voicing concerns about that finalist. In the first two years, state education officials had said MGT’s work was mostly on track, but this school year, the new superintendent immediately began raising concerns about the company’s work, locking them out of the district twice, and taking them to court, until the school board and MGT agreed to terminate the contract.

It’s unclear if the public will be allowed to participate or observe Monday’s interviews. A district employee said the interviews were to be conducted by a committee of staff, parents, and community members, but did not know how that group was selected. The school board was expected to attend to watch only.

The school board has a special meeting scheduled for Tuesday, and an agenda posted early Friday listed a resolution titled “External Management Partner for Adams 14.” That meeting notice, and agenda, were removed by Friday afternoon.

Superintendent Karla Loria has maintained she is willing to work with a manager, despite having been at odds with the previous external manager. But Loria wants to maintain authority over such a consultant.

In the previous arrangement, the State Board of Education ordered the district to give the external management company authority to review and recommend policy changes, make changes to instructional programming, and recommend personnel changes to the board, among other responsibilities.

The State Board drafted the order with those specifics because members felt that the district leadership at the time would not easily give up authority.

This time, the district’s request for proposals, states that the managing partner will be “supporting efforts” of the district in those areas, or “recommending to the superintendent,” about those changes — allowing Loria to maintain authority.

The request for proposals asks bidders to submit a sealed cost estimate that would only be opened if that manager is selected. The same process was used in selecting the last external manager.

This time, State Board members have already said they’re concerned that another external manager won’t be enough to make the drastic improvements still necessary in the district. The outside panel also noted concerns about the district’s leadership abilities.

District leaders say they are up to the challenge of improving the district, and note that the superintendent is new, as is the school board. One of the five board members joined in November. And even though the superintendent was hired in May, leaders say that she shouldn’t be judged as a district leader until MGT left the district last month.

The State Board has limited options to direct improvement in a low-performing district but can order closure, conversion of schools to charter schools, or start a district reorganization which may dissolve the district.

Read the district’s request for proposals here:

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Adams 14 parents to state: Give our schools another chance

2022-03-24T22:28:55+00:00

Lee en español.

The first night after learning that Adams 14 schools were at risk of closing, Cristina Ruiz, a mother of two whose older child is heading to high school in the fall, tossed and turned all night.

Where would her children go to school? How would they enroll in other districts without a local address? How crowded would those schools become? Could she make the drive?

Many of those same concerns are weighing on parents, students, and community members as the State Board of Education nears an April hearing to decide the fate of the district, which has struggled for years with instability and low test scores.

An outside panel of experts recommended closing at least the district’s main high school and reorganizing the district, possibly closing other schools. District leaders instead want to create community schools with extensive support services to engage families and address poverty.

The State Board will consider both recommendations, as well as ideas from the public and the education department staff, before making a decision at an April hearing.

Many parents and students feel left out of the state’s process and confused about the recommendation which they see as a drastic measure that will displace students.

“Closing the schools is not a solution,” Ruiz said. “They’re hurting us instead of helping.”

Students and parents who have had both good and bad experiences in the district want the state to give their schools another chance.

JoJo Lopez, 19, a senior at Adams City High School, fears most students have lost hope and think state leaders have made up their mind.

Lopez, who walks to school every morning — “only a good 30 minutes” she said — worries how students like her would get to a school outside their neighborhood. Many families don’t have cars or don’t drive, she said.

But she does think the high school needs to change. Diagnosed with anxiety and Tourette Syndrome, Lopez has been waiting for an evaluation to receive specialized services, but the school has been busy, she said. And when she asks teachers for extra help, they decline because she doesn’t have a special needs plan, she said.

“I feel like I need more time and help one-on-one with teachers. It’s really hard for me to learn the way everyone else learns,” Lopez said. “For me, like, if I take notes, my brain gets completely puzzled.”

When she starts to worry about passing a class and looks for academic counselors, they’re also always busy, she said. Still, she thinks she is on track now to graduate in May.

For other students, she believes problems revolve around safety. A few years ago, her older sister dropped out of school after getting in trouble when she had to defend herself in a fight. Other friends she knows have left the high school more recently because of similar concerns with fighting.

“I want the kids that are younger than me to be able to graduate and get a better education,” Lopez said. “They need to feel safe enough.”

Other factors affect student learning

Some parents and many teachers believe that too much of the blame is placed on the district while poverty, trauma, and varying levels of parent involvement also affect students’ ability to learn.

Among Colorado school districts, Adams 14 has the highest percentage of English learners, the second highest percentage of students of color, and the 15th highest percentage of students who qualify for subsidized meals, a measure of poverty.

The community and the district have criticized the state for relying heavily on state test scores in measuring the educational quality of the district. But other measures also paint a grim picture.

Last year, the district had a 6% dropout rate, the sixth highest in the state. The district also has a high number of parents who have enrolled their children out of the district, and many say they don’t plan on coming back to Adams 14 no matter what.

Studies have found that school closures have a mixed track record and many downsides. Displaced students who moved to another low-performing school didn’t improve their academics, and schools that accepted large numbers of displaced students struggled more themselves. Students reported their friendships and self-esteem suffered. Fewer students graduated, and more dropped out entirely.

Many in the Adams 14 community defend their schools.

At a recent city council meeting, several people spoke during public comment to highlight the stories of Adams 14 graduates who have gone to college and started successful careers.

The opportunities are there, one mother told the council, “if kids just take advantage of it.”

Elizabeth Rivas has a preschooler and a first grader in the district, and feels they are learning. She wonders about the cause of negative comments that don’t match what she experiences.

“I don’t see that,” Rivas said. “My daughter is brilliant. I know she’s learning because she can do her homework by herself. Another way I know is because she loves school.”

Rivas said that if the state wants to help the district, it should help schools to roll out more dual language programming.

“I want my daughter to learn both languages,” Rivas said. “The state shouldn’t deny the children of Commerce City the opportunity to take all of their classes in two languages. It’s something that is very beneficial for them and can open a lot of opportunities.”

Adams 14 is starting to roll out a new language plan that includes dual language programming at some schools and grade levels. The program Rivas is most interested in is only offered at one Adams 14 school so far. Students whose first language is English and those whose first language is Spanish both receive half of their academic classes in English and half in Spanish, so they all can benefit from becoming bilingual. It’s a model that parents have long asked for in Adams 14 and that doesn’t exist in most districts.

Adams 14 itself has struggled in the past to stick with developing a full K-12 bilingual program.

Rivas thinks that’s one area where the state could provide more resources — perhaps money or staffing, she said.

She and other parents also are excited about the district’s plans to create a community school that includes services such as a health clinic, food pantry, or adult education, depending on the needs of the families. Parents want the district to have time to try that out.

“We are united now,” Rivas said. “I think there’s so much support now that the district can be successful.”

Leadership turnover has been a challenge

Bill and Lorraine Maddock have lived in the community for almost 50 years and still are involved in organizing parents. The couple says that after witnessing many leaders make promises and then leave, the current leadership now inspires trust.

In the one year since she started, Superintendent Karla Loria has met with the Maddocks’ parent group more times than they were ever able to meet with MGT, the private company that ran the district for about two years.

“We had a lot of problems getting questions answered with MGT, but with our superintendent now she meets with us quite often and tells us what’s going on,” Lorraine Maddock said. “She just kind of helps us along with what we want to see in our community. Most of the time it’s us who tell her what we want to see. She listens.”

April Saucedo, 20, who graduated from Adams City in 2019, participated in a student walkout last time the school was threatened with closure. She remembers feeling put down by the administration, and she doesn’t want her younger brother, who is supposed to start high school in the fall, to feel the same.

She said she is hopeful that district and state officials will listen to the community.

“I want kids to know they are cared for,” Saucedo said. “I don’t want them to think that they’re not worth the time anymore.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Close Adams City High, reorganize school district, panel recommends

2022-03-16T15:52:23+00:00

Lee en español.

Bluntly stating that the Adams 14 school district cannot improve itself, a state review panel has recommended the state close the main high school and reorganize the district. Schools could be consolidated or other districts might step in to manage Adams 14.

“There is evidence of lack of leadership capacity and stability at the district’s highest levels to lead turnaround work effectively to increase student achievement gains,” the panel’s recommendations state. “Additionally, Adams City High School continues to perform at a low level and there is a lack of a prioritized plan for the school and its students, who likely have better options that are geographically close [to] their homes.”

The report obtained by Chalkbeat on Tuesday suggests closing Adams City High School, the district’s only comprehensive high school, and possibly other schools, to allow the district to focus on fewer grade levels while the state comes up with a reorganization plan.

The recommendation suggests that Adams City High School students might fare better if they attended higher-performing schools in neighboring districts.

The panel included six educators including a consultant, some current superintendents, and a former assistant superintendent. Colorado’s State Board of Education will consider the recommendations, as well as those from the education department staff, the district’s own proposal, and public comment at a hearing next month.

Colorado has never intervened to this extent in a struggling school district. There are many questions about how it would work.

The Adams 14 school district is likely to push back hard against relinquishing any autonomy.

The district is working on a proposal to improve itself by creating at least one community school, which would offer an array of social services for students and families. The State Board of Education has not indicated how receptive it would be to that idea.

District officials did not respond to a request for comment about the panel’s recommendations, but Joe Salazar, an attorney working with the district, said that the district sent a rebuttal to the state criticizing the recommendations, in particular for failing to distinguish between the leadership of the district’s former private manager, MGT Consulting, and the new superintendent’s leadership.

The district hired Karla Loria as Adams 14’s superintendent in May and she began work in June, but Salazar argues that Loria didn’t have any authority until MGT left the district in February, and therefore shouldn’t be held accountable for any shortcomings in leadership before that. Under Loria’s direction, Adams 14 locked MGT employees out of the district several times.

Jason Malmberg, president of the district’s teachers union, said that the panel should have considered emails the district tried to provide that show that Loria had no authority. Malmberg said he often called her on various issues and was told he had to talk to MGT.

Malmberg is also concerned that the panel was made up of people from outside the district who don’t understand all the local issues students face. And he said that when the panel finally hosted a meeting with parents, technical issues meant many parents didn’t stay to give their thoughts.

The Adams 14 district serves more than 6,000 students in the working-class areas north of Denver and has received failing ratings from the state for at least a decade.

The state had already made Adams 14 the first district required to hand over management to an outside group to improve student achievement. But the district and its manager, MGT Consulting, abruptly cut ties earlier this year. So the State Board of Education set a hearing to decide on a new improvement plan.

As required by law, a state review panel of outside experts visited the district twice, in February, interviewed staff and community members, and compiled recommendations.

The panel’s report notes the group was concerned about the district’s leadership, and about a division among the community.

Specifically, “the gravest concerns are the reported culture of fear and retaliation, the lack of sound financial and human resource practices, and the overall limited improvement in student achievement and growth over many years.”

The state has limited options for directing the district. The law allows the state to close a school, turn it into a charter school, grant waivers and autonomy to implement its own plan, and partially or totally hand over school or district management to an outside group. The state can also dissolve or consolidate a district, but it has never done so.

The review panel’s report notes some of the many open questions about taking unprecedented steps.

“In order for consolidation to be an option, the [state review panel] recognizes that there are neighboring districts that are performing at higher levels and may be viable options for students. However, this option would require the local board of education in neighboring districts to agree,” the report states.

State law outlines a general process for reorganization that requires a planning committee to craft a plan for how to change district boundaries. It could include creating new or dissolving existing districts, but must get agreement from a majority of committee members and approval from the state’s education commissioner.

As an alternative, the report suggests that neighboring districts instead become partners to support Adams 14 in its turnaround work. That idea came up when the panel held a focus group with leaders of the nearby districts who were described as having an “initial hesitancy” to absorbing Adams 14 students. But the report questions who would be held accountable in a partnership scenario.

“While partners indicated they are willing to provide support to the district, it is not clear if there are local partners who are willing to be held accountable for the work occurring in Adams 14.”

Before Adams 14 hired MGT Consulting, the district had proposed partnering with the neighboring Mapleton Public Schools. The State Board of Education at the time rejected the district’s plan, unless the districts agreed to add another group to help Mapleton do the work. But talks between the districts broke down.

The state review panel also noted that a reorganization or consolidation would require a plan for transition.

“Creating a lack of stability at the school level could be more detrimental to students and families if not done well and without the appropriate expertise,” the report stated. The report also suggested creating a new board.

“The creation of and/or appointment of a separate board composed of local peers/experts to lead and oversee the district leadership and its roles and responsibilities … may provide the accountability required to show improvements,” the report states. “This would also allow for any major leadership changes and reorganization to occur on a smaller scale and to begin more swiftly and thoughtfully than a large district reorganization or consolidation.”

Adams 14 is already suing the state to change the rules for the hearing next month. The district’s lawsuit, in part, takes issue with the State Review Panel and the data it might have considered.

Salazar has been vocal about questioning the state’s authority to take control away from the locally elected school board and the superintendent it hired.

The hearing next month will also consider separate recommendations for Central Elementary, one of the district’s lowest-performing schools which could face its own orders for improvement apart from the district. A separate state review panel is drafting recommendations for the school.

Read the State Review Panel’s recommendations here:

Read the district’s response here:

Correction: A previous version of this story included outdated information about the reorganization process. The law does not require an election to approve a plan for Adams 14.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

External manager MGT leaving Adams 14 school district

2022-02-07T21:00:00+00:00

MGT Consulting, the company that has overseen most day-to-day operations in the Adams 14 school district under a state order, is ending its work in the district effective Friday, Feb. 11.

The Adams 14 school board had already voted to terminate the relationship, but that termination wouldn’t have taken effect until April. In a special meeting late last month, the State Board of Education declined to take any action that would have forced the district to keep working with MGT.

District officials said MGT informed them on Friday that the company’s last day would be Feb. 11.

MGT’s announcement means the company is no longer fighting to maintain a relationship that has been intensely strained since Superintendent Karla Loria took over last summer.

In a press release, MGT officials said they made the decision with the goal of “protecting the safety, well-being, and reputation of our employees.”

“Given the current circumstances, it’s clear that we have accomplished as much as we can,” said Eric Parish, MGT’s executive vice president. “We leave with our heads held high, grateful for the support we received from the Adams 14 community and the partnerships we created to increase opportunities for students and families.”

In their own press release, Adams 14 officials said MGT’s decision “temporarily restore[s] all day-to-day decision-making authority to run the district to the duly elected Adams 14 Board of Education and its superintendent.”

“It is the shared commitment of the Adams 14 Board of Education, Superintendent Dr. Karla Loria, and the district’s senior leadership to minimize any disruption throughout this transition,” the district said. “Teaching and learning will continue as normal in every Adams 14 school, and faculty and staff can count on continued support.”

In 2018, Adams 14 became the first school district to be placed under external management under Colorado’s school accountability system, which rates schools and districts based on student performance on standardized tests and authorizes intervention in schools with persistent low test scores. MGT Consulting received generally favorable reports the first two years it was working in the district, and company officials list rising graduation rates and increased services for English language learners among their accomplishments.

When Loria was hired as the district’s first superintendent since MGT took over, she quickly raised concerns about MGT, including whether the company essentially had charged the district twice for services being performed by subcontractors. MGT has denied any wrongdoing. The district has not publicly released the results of a forensic audit it conducted last year.

The dispute has tested the accountability system, and it’s not clear what will happen next. The State Board of Education may issue new orders for the district, and some members have even raised the possibility of dissolving and reorganizing the district, the most drastic option available under state law.

The State Board could also order the district to work with a new external manager. Adams 14 officials say they want any new outside consultants to answer to the superintendent.

District officials said they will hold community meetings in the coming weeks to describe next steps and hear feedback from parents and teachers.

The State Board of Education is scheduled to get an update on Adams 14 at its regular meeting Thursday but is not expected to consider new orders until April.

A spokesman for the Colorado Department of Education confirmed Monday that the superintendent has authority to manage the district until the State Board approves new orders.

Officials with the education department will continue to monitor progress in the district, he said. An independent panel of experts is scheduled to present a report to the State Board in March, and the State Board will hold a hearing on next steps in April.

Who’s in charge? Adams 14 crisis challenges state accountability system

2022-02-07T03:32:55+00:00

Lee en español.

When Colorado education officials stepped in and ordered new management in the Adams 14 school district, it was the first time the state asserted its authority under decade-old accountability laws.

The hope — although there were skeptics from the start — was that state oversight and an outside management company would provide stability after constant turnover, and coupled with added resources, would raise student achievement in a district with some of the lowest test scores in the state.

Less than four years after the mandate, the experiment in state intervention is crumbling as the district’s new superintendent has wielded her own powers while the local board is pushing out the management company — and fears remain that students still don’t have access to an adequate education.

State officials failed to mediate the leadership conflict and, with limited options, the State Board now has floated the possibility of dissolving the district. State law is unclear on how that would happen or what would come next.

The crisis in Adams 14 raises questions about the state’s ability to rescue the most troubled of school districts, about what kind of oversight system would work, and about what success would look like.

Some State Board members say the law needs to give them more authority, while some community members prefer the state to stay out except to provide more resources to address problems like poverty and hunger that impede learning.

Education Commissioner Katy Anthes defends the state accountability system, despite her disappointment in how things have played out in Adams 14.

“This can work,” Anthes said. “Providing extra support, focus and expertise can and does work to improve schools and improve student outcomes. We do see this instance where it’s more challenging, but we do see a lot of great things happening.”

Colorado is not alone in struggling. Around the country, state takeovers have a poor track record, especially in the long run, making it hard to find models for success. One thing they have in common, though, is turnaround efforts occur in districts that serve mostly students of color and those districts often end up stigmatized and labeled as failures.

“If you look at the data on these kinds of turnaround takeover efforts, it’s a complete mixed bag so we really still don’t know if these kinds of reforms are good or bad,” said Jonathan Collins, an assistant professor of education and international and public affairs at Brown University. “What we do know is they tend to be racialized.”

Being on the clock

Colorado’s school accountability system rates schools and districts based on standardized test scores and calls for intervention in schools that don’t improve over time. Schools or districts are referred to as being on the clock because they have to improve before time runs out. A low performance rating qualifies schools and districts for state grants and resources from the Department of Education to improve.

The State Board of Education taps experts who visit the schools or districts and issue recommendations. District leaders also can present their own improvement plans which the board often approves — or it can order something else.

But the state has limited ways to intervene. Among its options, it can shut down schools, dissolve districts, turn schools into charters, or order an outside management partner to take over some or all of the operations of a school or district.

In Colorado, unlike in many other states, the state cannot just take over a struggling district.

In 2010, 24 districts were on the state’s watchlist for low performance, but most have improved. In 2019, the most recent year for ratings, there were just three districts on state watch. Some of the districts that have improved enough to be off the list still have considerably low test scores.

Anthes, the education commissioner, said that every situation is unique but that department staff have learned that relationships are important, and that being really clear in guidance is, too.

“What we’ve seen from other districts is that the partnership between the district, CDE, and whatever the management partner is, is really important,” Anthes said. “We’re all human beings in this hard work of turnaround, so having good trusting relationships between those entities is important.”

Adams 14 has been on the state’s radar for more than a decade. Three years ago when it handed over daily management authority to a private, for-profit company, some say the state and the district failed to clearly spell out the division of authority.

“We really struggled with entering into an agreement. What is MGT responsible for providing to the district, versus what is the district still responsible for? That is the main area of conflict,” said state Sen. Dominick Moreno, a former Adams 14 school board member. “I don’t think it was all that clear what the responsibility of each respective entity was.”

The latest school board vote would have terminated the contract with MGT Consulting in April, when the State Board is expected to consider new orders for Adams 14. On Friday, MGT Consulting told district officials the company would end its work in the district effective Feb. 11.

The Adams 14 school district serves about 6,100 students, the majority of them Hispanic students. The district also has one of the highest proportions of English language learners in the state. Until recently, the district struggled with complying with a federal order issued after an investigation found leaders had been discriminating against Hispanic students and staff, and not providing the right education to help students learn English.

Enrollment has declined for years, worsening at times as staff changed and the district embraced one turnaround strategy after another.

First district to lose control to a private company

As the state stepped in to stabilize and strengthen leadership, state law hobbled its efforts. The outside manager, MGT Consulting, still had to report to the Adams 14 school board.

But State Board members tried to make clear that they wanted the local school board to follow MGT’s recommendations and to justify rejecting any of them.

The first couple years saw positive reports about MGT’s work in the district, which included coaching principals, updating curriculum, and securing federal approval for a new plan to serve English learners.

MGT’s proposal always had called for the local board to hire its own superintendent halfway through the 4-year plan. But neither the state nor MGT outlined how they would start to hand over authority. After the Adams 14 board hired Karla Loria as superintendent last spring and she tried to assert her authority, the relationship quickly fell apart.

Loria said in a recent press conference that she thought it was clear that she would work side by side with the management company. She now wants the state to allow her to oversee the work of any management partner, not the other way around.

But having a superintendent come in after a management company might not be the right sequence for success, said Mary Wells, co-founder and managing partner for the nonprofit Bellwether Education Partners.

“It does sound like a really challenging structure,” Wells said.

Allowing district leadership to select the external manager might make leaders more invested in the work, she said. “Then that superintendent would be much better positioned to hold that organization accountable.”

The Adams 14 local board did select MGT, but only after the state rejected the community’s first choice. The State Board, aware that the community’s second choice was MGT, had raised concerns about the for-profit company too, but approved the choice after the local board selected MGT in a meeting with no discussion.

None of those voting members remain on the Adams 14 board today.

State Board member Steve Durham believes that the problem is whether the local board has an interest in working with a management partner.

“We all had high hopes that this would work,” Durham said. “I think the problem is the external manager model won’t work unless you have a board of education that is committed to working with the external manager that they selected.”

At a meeting last month, Durham wondered about changing the law to allow the State Board to take more of the local board’s authority away.

Current Adams 14 board members have publicly stated that they became disheartened by what they describe as MGT’s failure to deliver on promises.

But the board has refused to make public much of the evidence they claim to have collected against the company, and MGT officials deny any wrongdoing.

“We’ve found the Colorado Department of Education to be consistent and committed partners in supporting Adams 14,” Eric Parish, MGT executive vice president, said in an emailed statement, adding that CDE had monitored the company’s work closely and he believes the company’s record speaks for itself.

Holding companies accountable

With the relationship at the top unraveling last fall, the State Board briefly yanked the district’s accreditation, an action that had little practical effect, but was meant as a consequence for failing to negotiate an agreement to restart work with MGT. But the State Board had no power to punish MGT for failing to reach a deal. Community members and at least one State Board member pointed out the dilemma of the state not being able to hold a private company accountable.

As the district and the company negotiated, State Board member Rebecca McClellan questioned if Adams 14 was at a disadvantage.

“We are placing them right back in the position they already were in where a private party may make demands that put them at odds with their fiduciary obligation to the taxpayers of their district,” McClellan said at a meeting in October.

Experts say that’s true in other states as well. Often districts or states can outline ways to hold a company accountable only by inserting specific language in contracts.

Jason Malmberg, the district’s teachers union president, has questioned the $7 million so far spent on the MGT contract, which essentially puts more money in consultants and advisers that he said don’t help teachers and students, despite tremendous student need.

“I’m not saying the district doesn’t need management and a functioning hierarchy, but we have buildings that aren’t meeting basic needs,” Malmberg said.

Commissioner Anthes pointed out that in the past three years, Adams 14 has received an additional $5 million in grants. State officials have spent many hours mediating problems and guiding the district.

Former State Board member Jane Goff, who represented the area and voted to approve the original state orders, said she believes in local control, but thinks the state role is to provide a lot of help.

“It’s not a good idea to just sort of take a district and say here’s what’s going to happen and then leave them on their own,” Goff said. “This is something the whole state needs to be involved in.”

Reducing poverty before focusing on test scores

Many teachers and some community members have floated the idea of creating a community school model that would flood schools with resources to address various issues that affect children’s ability to learn, such as their health, and social and emotional well being.

Several lawmakers have proposed a bill to add community school models more explicitly as one of the options that the State Board can use to intervene in a low-performing school or district.

Some experts say that as more people acknowledge that outside issues such as poverty and housing affect learning, there may eventually be support from other government departments for school communities.

“We need them to work better with school districts,” said Christine Pitts, a resident policy fellow for the Center on Reinventing Public Education. “We also need better private-public partnerships.”

The schools and districts currently on the state’s watchlist serve predominantly low-income communities, with at least 65% of their student body qualifying for subsidized lunches. Most also have much higher concentrations than the state of students with disabilities or students who are learning English as a second language, or both.

Colorado has commissioned an audit of the entire accountability system to look at whether the system is harming at-risk students more than it helps them. The audit will also look at the state’s ability to intervene and whether interventions are successful. The results of that audit are due Nov. 15.

Malmberg believes that state officials are ignoring social and outside problems that inhibit student learning. Students in Adams 14, for example, have to take standardized tests in English, even if they’re not fluent in English yet, he said, creating a language justice issue.

“From its inception the testing regime that they put in place destined us to failure,” Malmberg said. “They’re assuming the ground rules that have been laid are equitable. There was no other outcome than supposed failure.”

Commissioner Anthes said that while she understands that view, she believes that the state’s accountability system is not targeting, but identifying communities that just need more help.

“It can shine a light on folks who may need additional support, additional professional development, additional resources or programming for students,” Anthes said. “We want to make sure they get whatever they need.”

Searching for consistency

Parents in Adams 14 have voiced distrust in the district for years, in part because of the instability of leadership, and recently over day-to-day decisions such as whether school will be remote or in person the following day. Some parents who have become more engaged with the current superintendent and have renewed hope for improvement say the state is not listening to them.

Malmberg says that teachers stand behind the district’s new leaders. He’s not sure he would have been as confident in previous boards, but now believes the leaders are listening to the community.

“We have the right people but they’re not able to make decisions,” Malmberg said.

That brings a main issue back to the state — of how much it should remain involved and what entity should wield power.

Collins of Brown University said while often the need to remove ineffective leaders is clear, how to bring in more effective leaders — and to ensure they stay for a long time — is not. Constant change remains one of the biggest challenges for sustained improvement.

“There needs to be clear guidelines and a clear outline of how this is going to generate consistency and continuity,” he said. “We don’t typically see that.”

Denver district will cut jobs in its central office, superintendent says

2022-02-02T23:29:25+00:00

As enrollment declines in Denver Public Schools, the superintendent said he will shrink the size of the central office, freezing some vacant positions and reducing the number of executive-level positions. Many senior leaders will have to reapply for their jobs, “with an eye toward being more effective, being more efficient, and reducing positions,” Superintendent Alex Marrero said.

The goal, he said in an email to staff Tuesday, is to drive more district dollars directly to schools, something school board members also said they wanted to do in last fall’s election. However, in an interview, Marrero said the decision was solely his.

Colorado districts are funded per-pupil, which is how Denver funds its schools as well. If a school loses students, its budget shrinks. With districtwide enrollment expected to decline 6% by 2025, Marrero said the impending central office cuts are meant to mirror that.

“Because DPS enrollment is declining, the responsible course of action is to find ways to reduce the central budget to adjust and maintain efficiency, as a school budget does,” he said in his email to staff.

Vacant positions at the manager level or above will be frozen immediately, Marrero said. More information about the reorganization and reduction of executive-level central office jobs will be announced “in the next few weeks,” he added. The central office employs a wide range of employees, from secretaries to administrators.

Critics have long complained that Denver’s central office is bloated. A Chalkbeat analysis of data from the 2016-17 school year found that the district was top-heavy compared to the statewide average. The teachers union lodged the same complaint during a 2019 strike, arguing the district should cut central office positions in order to increase pay for teachers.

After the strike, then-Superintendent Susana Cordova cut more than 220 positions from the central office and added some new ones for a net reduction of about 150 positions. The cuts, which freed up $17 million, were meant to funnel more money to teacher salaries and eliminate redundancies in the central office, Cordova said at the time.

In his email to staff, Marrero said that when compared to similar-sized urban school districts, Denver still “expends a disproportionate share of resources on middle management to executive-level positions.”

That conclusion is based on his own lived experience as an administrator in New York, where he worked before coming to Denver last year, comparisons he conducted, and conversations with colleagues around the country, Marrero said in an interview.

Concerns that the central office is too big also surfaced during the 100-day listening tour he did last year, Marrero said. At the same time, he said he heard from central office employees who say that’s not true and they’re stretched thin.

Some divisions within Denver’s central office are “right in sync” with similar-sized districts, Marrero said, but there are “inefficiencies and redundancies” in others. Cuts to the central office would “achieve a laserlike focus on what matters most,” he said in his email to staff.

Central office employees have twice been deployed to schools during the pandemic to act as substitute teachers or supervise lunch or recess. The most recent time was last month, when school staffing was near a breaking point due to skyrocketing omicron cases.

Central office employees did the same during the strike in 2019. Some have said they feel disrespected by teachers and others who criticize their positions as non-essential while at the same time requesting they fill in at schools even if they don’t have a teaching background.

Marrero acknowledged that sentiment. He attributed some of the tension between school-based and central office employees to a misconception that everyone who works at district headquarters is an executive, when in fact some are paid less than school employees.

“Central does get unfairly treated in the court of public opinion,” Marrero said. “That comes with folks not understanding how a district runs.”

Marrero is in the midst of writing a “next generation, multi-year,” strategic plan for the district, which he said in his email will “identify and address other inefficiencies.” But it’s not expected to be completed until May 2022, and Marrero said the central office cuts would come sooner.

He said the district has commissioned a study from a non-profit group called Education Resource Strategies to “help us imagine how our resources can be marshaled to maximize the benefit to student and team member success and well-being.” The study should be complete by the end of the month, Marrero said.

What do you think about plans to reduce central office positions? What questions do you have? Let us know at co.tips@chalkbeat.org.

This story has been updated to include comments from the superintendent.

Adams 14 board tries again to cut ties with management company

2022-01-12T22:15:02+00:00

The Adams 14 school board voted Tuesday night to end its contract with its management company, prompting the State Board of Education on Wednesday to reconsider more drastic actions to improve the district.

It’s the second time the local board has attempted this school year to cut ties with the company that has control over the district under a state order. The State Board of Education forced the district to take the company back after the first attempt, pulling Adams 14’s accreditation for a few days. But the State Board left the door open to end the relationship if the district went through a process to show the state it had good cause.

Even though both MGT leaders and the district’s superintendent have made public statements about their willingness to work together, tensions only have continued to escalate. The district paid a consultant to do a fiscal audit of MGT’s spending, and MGT directed an investigation into employees allegedly being told to lie to those fiscal auditors. And last week the district filed a lawsuit against MGT claiming the company is violating open records laws by not sharing documents about the investigation it directed.

Meanwhile, the district has withheld releasing results of the fiscal audit.

On Wednesday morning, a spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Education said neither the department nor the State Board were informed before the Tuesday vote of the district’s attempt to cut ties.

The resolution the Adams 14 board approved would end the MGT contract in 90 days, by April 11. The district is planning to go through a process to notify the state and request a change to its order.

The State Board Wednesday requested recommendations from an external review panel by March about what is the most viable option to order changes to Adams 14. Under state accountability laws the state has limited options to deal with a low-performing district, but it could close down schools, turn them into charter schools, or order reorganization such as merging schools into other districts.

The State Board in 2018 followed a recommendation from a similar panel to order an external management company take over daily operations after many years of low student performance. State Board members Wednesday said that they doubt the district is likely to work well under that model anymore.

“This partnership that we were assured was back on track in October is anything but back on track,” said Angelika Schroeder, chair of the State Board. “We’ve wasted our students’ time. They deserve so much more than this. I don’t know that this situation warrants a management partner at all anymore.”

MGT officials said they believe the district is again in violation of the state’s orders.

“The surprising action by the local school board to terminate our contract violates the State’s order — again,” said Andre Wright, MGT’s manager for Adams 14 in a released statement. “We welcome an independent review of what has played out in Adams 14 since the new superintendent arrived. We are confident the independent review will show our steadfast focus on students and families while the local board and new superintendent continue to exacerbate a power struggle of their own making.”

The Adams 14 board vote came as a surprise, as it was not listed on the meeting’s agenda. Who sets the board’s agendas has been a point of contention between the superintendent and MGT leaders. Recently, MGT has approved meeting agendas.

“This may be a surprise or a shock to our community but if they’ve been keeping along with the documents that we have available, and things that have been communicated out there, they will understand the reasoning for this,” board President Ramona Lewis said just before the unanimous vote.

There was no public comment about the vote Tuesday. But in recent months, the board has heard a mix of comments both in support and against the MGT contract.

Ariel Smith, co-founder of Transform Education Now, a nonprofit that has worked with Adams 14 parents, said Wednesday morning that many parents and observers were concerned about what the vote meant, either way.

“This feels like yet again another moment of instability,” Smith said. “It just doesn’t feel like adults working together.”

Adams 14 students all have been learning remotely this week. Colorado’s Education Commissioner Katy Anthes told the State Board Wednesday that Adams 14 is the only district the state is aware of that has gone completely to virtual learning due to COVID and staffing issues.

Karla Loria, the Adams 14 superintendent, told the Adams 14 board Tuesday that so far, virtual instruction was netting higher attendance than in-person instruction had been. She said the district expects to return to in-person learning Monday, but will make a determination later this week.

On Tuesday the Adams 14 board also passed a resolution that temporarily requires any district spending over $1,000 that isn’t already in the budget, to go through a board vote. Board members said that although the motion would pose a burden to the district, they felt they needed to be good fiscal stewards of taxpayer dollars.

One issue that may have contributed to the resolution is the issue of who approved hiring the lawyer to investigate potential lying to fiscal auditors. MGT officials initially said Adams 14 hired the investigating attorney, but the superintendent and the board claimed to not be aware of the investigation.

The board also has spent months attempting to review and edit policies that MGT had them approve in 2020 that redefined which contracts needed board approval, excluding many categories of contracts.

The superintendent had flagged those changes to the board and is still reviewing the policies to present alternatives. In the meantime, the board passed Tuesday’s resolution asking for authority to approve any spending over $1,000.

The board also cited the need to be good stewards of money in cutting ties with MGT. The district has spent more than $7 million on the MGT contract. Loria has questioned whether MGT was taking the money and also billing the district for subcontractors doing the same work. That’s why the board commissioned the fiscal audit, but instead of releasing the results under open records laws, the district forwarded the report to the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office for review.

The district says that because the audit “is a record compiled for law enforcement purposes” it is exempt from open records laws and thus is withholding the audit from the public.

The district attorney’s office has not provided any update as to when it might complete the review or make a determination about whether any charges are warranted.

In the first attempt to cut ties with MGT, Loria relied on a consultant’s report, and an attorney immediately locked out MGT employees. This time, the board’s resolution would end the contract in 90 days.

The district’s new attorney Joseph Salazar said Wednesday that the district is now following the appropriate process to cut ties with MGT, and said that he confirmed with the attorney general on Tuesday that the state did not need prior notification.

Board President Lewis also noted at the board meeting that the district already has been searching for a replacement management partner.

“We do not think that we can do this alone,” Lewis said.

Salazar also said that the district has more evidence against MGT than it did in its first attempt to fire the consultant and pointed to details in its lawsuit as evidence. For example, a letter MGT sent to Adams 14 asking for a discussion and noting that the results of the MGT-led investigation may reflect poorly on the district is being cited as an attempt to “illegally influence public servants.”

Read the full lawsuit here.

Meet the new MGT leader to head Adams 14’s improvement work

2021-12-07T00:38:02+00:00

In his first months on the job, Andre Wright has often heard the relationship between the Adams 14 school district and MGT Consulting described as a “forced marriage.”

It’s true that the relationship between the private management company and Adams 14 is struggling, Wright said, but MGT’s new top manager for Adams 14 said he’s committed to making the relationship work, for the sake of the children.

“If we put students first in everything that we do, we will make the right decisions,” Wright said in an interview with Chalkbeat that touched on his top priorities for the school year.

Wright previously served as the chief academic officer for Aurora Public Schools, a diverse 38,000-student district. His appointment in Adams 14 marks yet more turnover in the struggling district. This school year, the district also started with a new superintendent.

Andre Wright

The two have struggled with sharing responsibilities, but have told the State Board they are trying to comply with state orders to work together.

Colorado’s state orders stripped Adams 14 of its daily management — mainly taking away the superintendent’s role, and handing it to a private company. But because of Colorado’s philosophy of having strong local control, the state also allowed the local elected school board to retain ultimate control. Just last month, the board received a financial audit on MGT’s payments and contracts, something its new superintendent suggested they commission and pay for. But the board has not shared it with MGT or with the public.

Superintendent Karla Loria said this week that she welcomes working with MGT.

“I remain firmly committed to that goal of thoughtful and accountable collaboration as a means to transform academic opportunities and outcomes for the children of Adams 14,” Loria said.

Below, read Wright’s own words about his views on his role, his priorities, and his challenges.

About him and his top priorities:

I’m a teacher by heart. That’s what I am. I’m a product of two educators.

Adults have to start putting children first. If we put students first in everything that we do, we will make the right decisions. It does not mean I won’t make decisions that may not be as popular with adults, but I’m doing it from a student perspective of what’s best for our children, what’s best for our families. That’s priority one for me.

We have a great opportunity in Adams 14 to change the narrative if we can get ourselves to behave, but we have to start focusing on children and what the data says. Anyone you can talk to about me will tell you, “he has a student-first approach, he’s going to ask for solutions and not just problems.”

Culture and climate was the No. 1 focus point for the work — changing the culture and climate in the central office and at Adams City [High School]. There was a big effort put forth to change some of those outcomes and I recognize that. I also think that everyone would say, now that you have some of those things in place, how do you double down on student achievement outcomes? Maybe that was the catalyst for them engaging me in this transition.

On his “forced marriage” and whether MGT or Adams 14 Superintendent Karla Loria gets to make decisions:

We don’t have the type of relationship that I think can move things right now. When you hear [that] this is a forced marriage, there’s no trust, all the negatives, and I’ve been there 51 days, how do you build from that? What I’m offering is the opportunity to behave in the opposite. So that makes it difficult for anybody in my position. It doesn’t mean the work can’t be done. It still has to happen.

If [the board] believes they have someone that makes all the decisions and someone else says, “Wait a minute. there’s an organization that makes the decisions,” those are two different perspectives. From our perspective, two-thirds [of the parties, meaning MGT and the Colorado Department of Education] are on the same page about this.

On how the pandemic has impacted the focus of the work for this year:

The key is how you respond as an organization, as a system, as a district and as leadership. You have to have people who know how to do that first, so that you don’t artificially create gaps on the back end as you’re trying to fill a gap, as teachers are trying to accelerate children. You have to have skilled individuals that can do that. That’s not a job that you just hand out. You have to be able to do that level of work so that you don’t create an even bigger issue a year from now. That’s where in my mind a huge focus of ours needs to be. We have to accelerate.

On what he believes is a reachable goal before the end of the school year:

This plan for professional learning will be aligned — through principals, through coaches, through teachers, all the way through what happens with students. Because we’ve been very, very intentional about making sure principals aren’t learning something that coaches aren’t teaching to teachers. That teachers aren’t learning something that principals are not aware of. So when they show up in a classroom in either capacity they’re on the same page. By doing that, we can build on outcomes for every school in the district.

Adams 14 is withholding results from financial audit of company contracts

2021-12-03T21:44:33+00:00

After raising concerns about mishandling of finances, the Adams 14 school board has completed a forensic audit of its spending on an external management company — but it isn’t releasing the results and the board has discussed it only behind closed doors.

Meanwhile, officials with MGT Consulting, the external manager, have their own concerns about how the audit was conducted, though they haven’t seen the results. In a written statement, Andre Wright, MGT’s manager for Adams 14, said a lawyer is investigating complaints that “central office administrators coerced a subordinate to lie if interviewed for the forensic audit.”

The audit findings — and the dispute over whether they are even valid — raise questions about whether the district and MGT can repair their relationship, as the State Board of Education has ordered, and whether district officials even want to do so. Depending on the results, the audit may also give Adams 14 leverage to end its contract with MGT, as Superintendent Karla Loria sought to do earlier this summer.

Colorado’s State Board of Education first ordered Adams 14 to hand over management of its district for at least four years in 2018. It took almost a year more to identify the manager and sign a contract.

The purpose of handing over management was to improve student achievement. The state did not raise concerns about how Adams 14 managed its finances, as has happened in outside takeovers of low-performing schools and districts in other states.

When Loria took over this summer as the first superintendent since MGT’s work began, she raised concerns that MGT was getting the district to pay subcontractors to do work that MGT already is getting paid to do. MGT officials have denied wrongdoing, saying they’ve been good stewards of the district’s money.

Adams 14 has paid MGT more than $7 million over two years — a sizable chunk, given that the district’s general fund budget is less than $100 million this fiscal year.

The contract signed in 2019, showed MGT’s costs were projected to go down each year, as the level of support they provided would decrease so the district slowly had more control. In the second year, the board approved an increase to MGT’s budget by $770,000, using federal COVID relief money to increase services to help students after the pandemic. That meant the second year’s costs were about the same as the first year’s costs.

Loria asked the board to hire an auditor, Eide Bailly, to do an audit for a cost of more than $10,000.

MGT officials say they were not interviewed for the forensic audit and have concerns that other key district employees weren’t either. They claim this fits a pattern of “reports being manipulated to fit a preconceived narrative,” an allegation they also made about a previous consultant’s report.

In a Nov. 19 email, Adams 14 said that the report was delivered to school board members during the previous week, but that the board had “deemed it prudent” to not publicly release the report until board members could read and analyze the contents.

The auditor’s contract says the report is to be used only for purposes of litigation or for internal use. “Such reports or other documents may not be published or used for any other purposes without our written consent,” the Eide Bailly contract states.

The district denied Chalkbeat’s request for the audit by saying it was “in transition with legal counsel” and a lawyer had not been able to review the audit. Nonetheless, the board met with a lawyer in closed session Tuesday.

Under Colorado law, there are a limited number of reasons for a public school district to withhold such information. Reports are usually public when they are produced and distributed to members of a public body for their use in a public meeting.

The school district’s announcement had said the board would consider “next steps” at Tuesday’s special meeting, but the board did not return to the public meeting to make any decisions. The stated purpose of the closed session was to receive legal advice related to accreditation.

The cost of the MGT contract has always been a concern for community members. But when community and district leaders were choosing an external manager, they purposefully did not consider costs. Each proposal was to have a cost estimate included, but in a sealed envelope that would only be opened if that manager were chosen.

The goal was to focus instead on who would provide the best services.

The district has used its rainy day fund, along with some state grants, to pay MGT Consulting.

Loria has also raised concerns about a policy that MGT had the school board approve in 2020. It changed the standard for when a contract needed to be brought for board approval by excluding certain “professional services, instructional services or materials and private instructional placements required by law.” That could have allowed some contracts with consultants suggested by MGT to go through without board approval.

In recent public meetings, the school board has expressed disappointment and sadness with the allegations about MGT and has begun the process to reverse those contract policies.

It’s not clear where this leaves MGT Consulting’s work in the district. Consultants with the company have been back in district classrooms after the State Board rejected the district’s attempts to block their work. However, State Board members said the district could ask for amendments and changes to their contract with MGT, if officials can show it’s necessary.

A spokesperson for the state Department of Education said Friday there has been no request to date from the district for such a meeting.

Teaching reading an Adams 14 priority after a year of turmoil

2021-11-19T01:06:26+00:00

As the effort to turn around student performance in the Adams 14 district enters its third year, improving how children are taught to read remains a major challenge.

Low student reading scores plummeted even lower during the pandemic. The district failed to spend a state literacy grant and even after getting a second chance, could not agree with its external managers on how to use the money. A consultant hired to improve reading instruction left abruptly in the spring, later accusing MGT of interfering and not following proven teaching methods.

Getting more students to read on grade level is key to improving achievement in the struggling Adams 14 district, the only Colorado district ordered to turn its day-to-day operations over to an external manager.

After a turbulent year, district and state officials said in interviews that Adams 14 is turning the page and has agreed on how to approach reading instruction. The district is now training teachers to use their new curriculum and has a second shot at the state grant. Plus, state officials are visiting Adams 14 schools every week to make sure things stay on track.

“They’ve done a really good reset this year,” said Rhonda Haniford, the state’s associate commissioner of school quality and support. “They’re all rowing in the same direction.”

Haniford said she is no longer concerned that Adams 14 schools might be getting mixed messages from the many outside people assisting, or that anyone is going against the science of reading, a term used to refer to a large body of research on how children learn to read.

Responding to state orders, Adams 14 contracted with MGT Consulting to manage its affairs, just as education officials began pushing to improve reading instruction across the state. However, interviews and emails obtained by Chalkbeat show that MGT staff and its hired consultants in Adams 14 didn’t always agree on best practices.

Consultant Schools Cubed left in the spring, accusing MGT of contradicting advice to schools and making it hard to work. A letter sent by Schools Cubed lawyers to district and state officials details some of the problems.

“Even though Schools Cubed was appointed by the district as the literacy partner, MGT brought in its own literacy consultants who had conflicting views with the science of reading principles followed by Schools Cubed,” the letter states. “Consequently, teachers and principals did not know what to do.”

Data shows that reading instruction has suffered. During the turmoil of the pandemic, Hispanic third-grade test scores in Adams 14 fell by half. In 2019, a little more than 20% met or exceeded reading expectations. Last spring, that percent fell to less than 10%. It was a bigger drop than the statewide average. And the number of students identified as struggling readers has gone up.

More than half of Adams 14 students are learning English as a second language. Students who become fully bilingual do better than monolingual English speakers on standardized tests, but they often score lower while they are still learning the language. And they need tailored instruction to reach their potential.

In recent years, Adams 14 has frequently changed its approach to both bilingual education and reading instruction, leading to more inconsistency for students. Even now, in its third year of external management, a churn in staffing has contributed to delays in rolling out a comprehensive plan for how to teach reading.

Adams 14’s new superintendent, Karla Loria, has praised both structured literacy, the state-approved approach, and balanced literacy, which reading experts have criticized.

“The key here is to provide a faithful implementation,” Loria said. “I’ve worked with both and both have good things,” Loria said. “There’s not one perfect program.”

MGT also has a new leader, Andre Wright, the former chief academic officer of Aurora Public Schools, a district that has also used reading instruction practices not backed by science.

Wright was not available for an interview, but MGT officials have said they don’t take sides on what they called the reading wars, the dueling approaches to teaching, and are following the science of reading.

Shelagh Burke, the Adams 14 chief academic officer, said the “state made it very clear” that Adams 14 must follow the science of reading, as all districts in the state must. And she said they are.

The curriculum that MGT helped bring in last year, Superkids Reading Program for kindergarten through second grade and Wonders in third through fifth grade, is on the state’s approved list. It was one of the achievements that MGT touted in its first two years.

But the pandemic delayed the district in training teachers on the new resources. Now at least one elementary school has requested and gotten a different curriculum and Loria said other schools have made similar requests.

Adams 14 this year has four bilingual elementary schools. Those schools are using two different resources in the early grades, one for their English classrooms and one for their bilingual classrooms. The older grades all used the same curriculum as the English classrooms.

The principal at Central Elementary wanted all classrooms in the school to use the same resource, so teachers could plan together.

But state officials are concerned that those teachers at Central who switched curriculum won’t have the same level of support from the district, since district training will be focused on resources that all the other schools use.

Loria said it’s possible the curriculum could change again.

“That will have to be looked at deeper and with more time,” Loria said. “The key here is to make sure teachers will be prepared to change the curriculum.”

Worried about the delay in progress, state officials have stepped up their guidance and monitoring, more than they have for any other struggling school or district in the state, and even embedded a state employee in Adams 14, specifically to help with literacy and English language development systems.

State officials are visiting the district at least twice a week now. In February, the state Department of Education decided to provide additional help to Adams 14 by dedicating almost half of one of their employees’ time. Alice Collins, a senior consultant for English language development in the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse office, is embedded in the district working in schools to coach district and MGT leaders in their rollout of English language development and literacy programs.

That, the state’s Haniford said, “was a very high need.”

The state also helped Adams 14 by giving it another chance at using the money from the Early Literacy Grant this year despite not having used it last year. Just recently, the district came to an agreement to have the same plan as before but with a new consultant. Amy Vanravenswaay from Growing Educational Practices is approved by the state as following the science of reading. She will visit each school once per month to observe and advise on reading, as well as offer seven days of training this year.

In addition to the consultant, MGT has at least two literacy coaches just for the elementary schools in Adams 14, as well as a literacy turnaround specialist, Angel Stobaugh, who oversees all literacy work for MGT and focuses on helping teachers.

“What I’m seeing is that they’re digging in,” Stobaugh said. “Teachers are learning about the components of the science of reading and I believe their skillfulness will increase.”

Adams 14 also now has two district leaders in charge of literacy.

The district is also getting all its K-3 teachers trained on the fundamentals of reading instruction, a state requirement. So far, 27% of district teachers have received the 45-hour training.

Still, Loria said teachers are committed and working hard. “Yes, there are challenges. I still feel very hopeful.”

Colorado to issue new orders for low-performing Adams 14 school

2021-11-12T00:55:53+00:00

Responding to leadership instability and apparent lack of progress, Colorado’s State Board of Education will direct an improvement plan for the lowest-performing elementary school in Adams 14, a district already managed by an outside company.

Central Elementary School, with just over 400 students, lacks leadership after its new principal quit just months after starting the job.

Uncertainty has returned to the school after four years of stability under a previous principal.

The new short-lived principal took the school off track this school year, according to state officials and leaders of MGT, the management company overseeing Adams 14 schools.

The principal removed Blueprint math tutoring and asked the district for a new literacy curriculum, even though the one the school had was less than a year old. The principal and MGT leaders disagreed about how school leaders should observe teachers and deliver feedback.

State and MGT leaders also told the State Board at a progress update meeting Thursday that Central started the year with schedules that didn’t allow for collaborative teacher planning — a new strategy that had begun the year prior and that state officials had considered key to the school’s improvement plan.

Because of low achievement, the state gave Central the second-to-lowest of four state ratings every year since 2012. The state has suspended giving those ratings during the pandemic.

But even without the usual amount of assessment data, state officials found that Central is off track.

“The transition in leadership, along with the transition in curriculum, and evidence of weakened structures from past years, indicates that the school is not moving forward,” the state wrote in its progress report.

In preparation for Central’s State Board hearing in February, the state will convene a State Review Panel — a group of educators and experts that will visit the school to observe work and problems, and to submit a recommendation to the State Board.

Under state law, the State Board has four options for how to direct action for a low-performing school: It can order it closed, turned into a charter school, handed over to an external group for management, or put on an innovation plan which grants it more autonomy.

Besides the review panel’s recommendation, the State Board also allows the district to submit its own proposal for which of those four actions to take.

In this case, state education officials say MGT is considered to be the district, and will be able to submit a recommendation, despite at least one State Board member raising concerns that MGT has a financial incentive to recommend its continued external management of the school.

Other board members pointed out that school districts also have various conflicting interests in choosing certain pathways to recommend, and also have to weigh different recommendations.

When MGT began running Adams 14 schools in 2019, MGT leaders started considering plans to improve Central Elementary — where about 84% of students qualify for subsidized lunches, a measure of poverty. MGT floated the idea of requesting innovation status for the school to allow flexibility from things like a teachers union contract that they said was getting in the way of how teacher planning time could be scheduled.

But months later the pandemic sent schools into remote learning and the focus of improvement work across the district shifted.

The state will convene two other State Review Panels, one to observe the progress of the district as a whole, and one to observe progress of Adams City High School, another school under state scrutiny for low performance. Those two panels won’t submit recommendations, but will just present observations to help the state continue to monitor the district.

The new scrutiny comes amid ongoing disagreements between Adams 14 Superintendent Karla Loria and MGT, which is in the third year of a four-year contract to improve student performance. State Board members wondered whether they might need to change their 2018 order to remove “sticking points” that might be causing disruption to improving the district.

An attorney for the state said that the order doesn’t automatically end in four years unless test scores and other measures improve significantly, an increasingly unlikely possibility.

The state will have a period to allow for public comment before the hearing.

State and external manager report ongoing problems with Adams 14 district

2021-11-11T01:48:04+00:00

Despite new leaders promising to work together, the Adams 14 district is still struggling with serious difficulties: high staff turnover, uncertainty about decision making, and poor communication with schools, a state progress report details.

The progress update, prepared for the State Board of Education’s Thursday meeting, comes a month after administrators of the embattled district and new leaders of its outside management company pledged to resume cooperating with each other and abiding by state orders.

The State Board will hold its first hearing on Adams 14’s performance since the state briefly stripped the district’s accreditation early last month. MGT leaders are also presenting an update to deliver at Thursday’s hearing, in which they lay out the problems caused by its dispute with the district and steps to resolve them.

But district leaders say MGT’s report is unfair and one-sided and are upset they won’t get to give their side at the hearing Thursday.

“I am disappointed that we weren’t involved in this presentation in any way other than receiving it, so we really didn’t have any say,” Ramona Lewis, the district’s board president, said at a school board meeting Tuesday night. “We have been invited to the table, but we don’t know what our role is when we’re sitting at the table.”

The district’s external manager, MGT Consulting, is back in Adams 14 after district Superintendent Karla Loria kicked the company out and issued a stop-work order early last month. Now under the leadership of Andre Wright, formerly the chief academic officer for Aurora Public Schools, MGT is holding meetings and trainings for staff.

In its presentation to the state, MGT lists how Loria’s stop-work order slowed MGT’s improvement plan. For example, MGT states that the district conducted no data analysis in recent months and that in response, it is now developing districtwide protocols to use data to improve instruction.

MGT’s presentation also notes that the work stoppage led to MGT being “unable to provide guidance and direction to school leaders without undermining by A14 staff.” While MGT is now leading cabinet and leadership meetings, the company’s administrators still worry about being able to provide direction to school leaders without being undermined by Adams 14 staff.

Adams 14 school board members on Tuesday night said MGT’s report insinuated work in the district stopped when MGT wasn’t there.

“We have a superintendent and it is her job to run our district,” board President Lewis said. “Just because MGT wasn’t here during that time, doesn’t mean that learning wasn’t going on. It certainly was. That paints a picture of we weren’t doing anything, but we were.”

MGT did not respond to requests for comment regarding the district’s concerns.

The report also cited ongoing loss of top staff. Adams 14 has long struggled with turnover in leadership. But last year, under MGT management, the turnover rate for principals and assistant principals was the lowest in at least six years. Teacher turnover also decreased in 2020.

Nationwide, turnover rates in schools decreased in 2020 as pandemic uncertainty led people to hold onto their jobs.

Since the start of this school year, two principals already have left Adams 14. The turnover has also affected district administration.

Of 20 people who were in the first group to undergo leadership training at the University of Virginia last year as part of MGT’s improvement plan, at least eight are no longer working in the district.

Adams 14 board member Janet Estrada said the way MGT talked about staff turnover suggested that people left the district because of the work stoppage order, “which might not be the case.”

In the state’s summary of progress, state officials also raise concerns about how well MGT and district leaders are working together, and especially how that is impacting the ability to improve the two schools with the lowest performance, Central Elementary and Adams City High School.

“Although CDE has observed that Adams 14 executive directors and MGT turnaround specialists are more coordinated, it is inconsistent between schools,” the state’s update states. “Not all schools are receiving aligned support of teaching and learning in all content areas, including bilingual education.”

At Central in particular, the state’s progress report suggests that the State Board may want to reopen hearings to consider issuing a new improvement order focusing on the school. Previously, the state had allowed the district order to encompass improvement of the two low-performing schools.

Loria, the superintendent, said she first saw the presentation when the board received it, after it had been submitted to the state.

She and other board members said the presentation seemed to be “pointing the finger” at district leaders.

“We will have a response to the things we consider are telling half truth and therefore not expressing the entire picture,” Loria said.

Asked why the State Board was going to hear from MGT and not from Adams 14’s superintendent, a spokesman for the Department of Education said, “Last month the State Board requested MGT and the Adams 14 superintendent give an update in November. MGT has full management authority for the district, and it has chosen how it wants to do the presentation this month.”

MGT has had to give quarterly updates to the State Board since it took over the district in 2019, but this is the first time the district has had a superintendent not employed by MGT.

Adams 14 regains accreditation, signing joint statement with manager

2021-10-08T00:19:12+00:00

The Adams 14 school district has won back its accreditation after becoming the first district in Colorado to lose it — if only for a few days.

The Colorado Department of Education confirmed the restoration Thursday after district officials submitted a copy of an agreement made with its private manager, MGT Consulting, and approved by the school board Wednesday night.

The agreement, signed by Adams 14 board President Ramona Lewis and MGT Chairman and CEO Trey Traviesa, agrees to three actions that the State Board requested to ensure that both sides are again working together.

They include ensuring that the MGT team has full control of district management, that the company again retains duties of the superintendent, and that MGT has access to the local school board without going through the superintendent.

The last item was to address MGT officials’ complaint to the state that the Adams 14 administration blocked them from board meetings in recent months.

“We are pleased to return to a focus on students, teachers and families in Adams 14, now that the district and MGT have put aside their disputes and come back into compliance with the board’s order,” stated Angelika Schroeder, State Board chair, in a news release. “Making substantial change in a district that has struggled for years will need everyone’s focus. Students, teachers and families in Adams 14 deserve nothing less.”

The district lost its accreditation after a series of disputes in recent months.

They started after new Superintendent Karla Loria joined the district. She was to work together with the district’s private external management leaders.

In 2018, the State Board of Education had forced Adams 14 to turn over management of daily operations to a third party, in an effort to improve chronically low student achievement that previous improvement plans failed to raise.

Loria hired a consultant to help create a transition plan, but instead the consultant evaluated the company’s work and ultimately agreed with the district’s attorney, who found fault with MGT’s work.

MGT leaders disputed the consultant’s findings.

Nevertheless, Adams 14 administrators then blocked MGT officials from district buildings.

The State Board of Education ruled that the lockout constituted a violation of its state order that the district remain under external management. The state asked Adams 14 to allow MGT to return to schools.

The state board also asked the two sides to work together and submit a statement demonstrating that they were doing so.

But negotiations didn’t go well, and Adams 14 missed a deadline last week to submit a joint report. That triggered an automatic suspension of the district’s accreditation.

The suspension didn’t immediately affect students or district operations, even though state law says losing accreditation can open the door to dissolving a district.

Instead, the State Board asked Adams 14 and MGT to try again and set another deadline.

This time, the sides signed and submitted the joint statement on time.

“Adams 14 truly appreciates the steadfast efforts of its Board of Education leading to this critically beneficial resolution for the district and its students,” a news release from the district states. “The district further thanks its dedicated team of educators, administrators, support staff, and volunteers for maintaining their continuous focus on high-quality teaching and learning in the midst of these external events.”

Contentious issues that MGT had pressed for in the first round of negotiations, such as renegotiating a possible $500,000 bonus, back payments, and a requested pledge not to sue, did not end up in the signed agreement.

Robert Lundin, a spokesman for the Adams 14 school district, said that he was not aware of continued discussions about the bonus or other payments, but said that “there is ongoing dialogue related to how each party consults with each other.”

The district also said in the released statement that the Adams 14 board “has indicated its intent to communicate directly with its constituents regarding this action and the events that preceded it.” Meetings will be scheduled soon.

“The local board’s decision this week is a step forward for Adams 14. It’s unfortunate that there’s been a dispute at all, but our focus now is on removing this distraction from the critical work we need to do on behalf of students and families,” said Eric Parish, executive vice president of MGT Consulting in a written statement.

Another issue is that even though the State Board required Adams 14 to resume working with MGT for now, the board said the district may seek to amend the state’s orders, if the district has serious concerns about MGT. The district would have to route requested changes through the State Board.

Other districts under state improvement orders that involve working with external partners have sought and received amendments in the past, including ones to change partners.

Last month Superintendent Loria proposed to the state replacing MGT with the School Superintendents Association. But last week she said she had suspended those plans while she was focused on complying with the latest state request.

However, the district is still awaiting results of a fiscal audit of payments to MGT and its subcontractors. The findings might instigate further friction between the two partners.

Parents and staff frustrated as Adams 14 leaders try to resolve accreditation crisis

2021-10-07T01:57:57+00:00

News this week that Adams 14 had lost its accreditation, even if just temporarily, hit hard for many parents, staff, and community members.

“I looked at my kids and cried. I cried that I wasn’t able to do more,” said Luz E. Molina, a parent of two high school students in the district. “They voted without us. They’re making decisions without us,” she said about the State Board of Education, which announced Monday the district’s accreditation was suspended.

With a Thursday deadline looming, Adams 14’s local school board voted Wednesday night to approve a joint agreement with the district’s external manager that is expected to restore its accreditation status. But many issues still remain to be worked out and it’s not clear if the disruptions and chaos will continue.

So far this school year, teachers and administrators describe disorganization in various spheres as Adams 14 and MGT leaders have been at odds in recent months.

Principals and assistant principals still have not signed their annual contracts for the current school year.

Teachers who are placed on quarantine are using their personal leave time while they await clarification from the district about whether they would be paid while on forced leave.

When safety incidents occur — starting with the first day of school at Adams City High School when a bomb threat kept students standing outside for four hours before they were allowed to go home — parents say they get little communication and district staff say there’s been confusion about who is responsible for writing those letters to parents.

“It’s just mass chaos,” one employee with more than 10 years in the district said. “Every day is a scramble lately.”

State officials in 2018 voted to hand over daily management of Adams 14 to an outside company, MGT, in an attempt to raise student achievement that had been lagging for years. This summer, as the district hired a new superintendent, and as she and MGT leaders had to work out how they would share authority, the new leader pointed to problems with MGT’s work and pushed them out of the schools.

Now they’re back — with the district under orders from the State Board of Education — but issues remain.

Angela Alba, a 15-year-old student at Adams City High School, said she has noticed that she couldn’t get help when she needed it.

Two weeks ago, another student threatened to fight her at school, so Angela decided to stay home.

When she and her mom went to the school, the next day, Angela says administrators told them they were busy with lunch duties and asked them instead to call later. It took two days to reach an administrator who agreed to talk to Angela’s mom in person the following day.

So, on her daughter’s fourth day of missed school, Angela’s mom went back to campus to ask for help. But Angela said that the administrator brushed off her mom’s concerns, demanding proof, calling her mom a “bandit,” and using her past criminal record against her.

“How is that making anything better?” Angela asked. “At that point I was very disappointed. My hopes were gone.”

While trying to provide screenshots of her conversation with the girl who threatened her, Angela said she was passed around to three different administrators before one suggested the two girls sign a contract agreeing not to fight. Still feeling unsafe, Angela asked if her schedule could be changed to avoid the other girl. When that request was denied, she ended up walking out of school in tears, again. In total, she’s missed eight days, and she said no one from the school reached out to her to ask why.

Angela can’t help but to remember when she went to a school in the Cherry Creek district while she was being cared for by foster parents. There, she said teachers or counselors would reach out to her as soon as she missed just one class period.

Now she and her mom are seeking to change schools. Angela will be going to Lester Arnold, Adams 14’s alternative high school, but she won’t start until Oct. 18.

“I just feel hurt,” Angela said. “I know it could be better.”

Jason Malmberg, a teacher at the district’s high school and president of the teachers union, said that he believes problems in Adams 14 are more complicated than people — even education experts from other parts of the state — realize.

He points out the facility issues, air quality problems, immigration policies that keep parents away, overworked staff, and understaffed schools.

“We’ve polluted this corner of the metro area for generations. People come in and they just assume everybody has clean air to breathe and clean water to drink so, hey, it must be the teachers’ fault,” Malmberg said. “We didn’t as a state or a county surround this community in need with resources.”

Some district staff say they miss the support they were getting from MGT and its subcontractors. But it seems that it varies by school, department, and for teachers, by what they teach. Some teachers said they haven’t felt the absence of MGT and its partners.

Some administrators who anonymously sent a letter to the State Board of Education this week say they are concerned about the upheaval.

“Teaching is already a hard job, teaching in a turnaround district is even more challenging, and teaching in a turnaround district without consistent leadership is almost impossible,” the letter states. “The stress of this turmoil is most definitely impacting staff, which in turn, impacts students.”

Malmberg says that coaching may have been helpful for some but wonders if the millions spent on MGT’s contract could have made more of an impact instead by reducing class sizes, increasing pay for paras, or addressing mold and facility issues in schools — problems which have at times forced school buildings to close.

“I don’t think we’re going to coach our way out of this,” he added.

Molina also thinks a lot about the environmental challenges for students in Commerce City. Many children, including her own she said, are sick often and miss school either because of their own health problems or because they are helping take care of their sick family members.

“I feel like we’re being punished,” she said.

Margarita Cardoza, a mom of two students, only one that is in Adams 14, said she believes the State Board has failed to act, and expects that this loss of accreditation won’t mean much either.

“It’s like they don’t care about us, I don’t know what they think,” Cardoza said. “A lot of students have lost out on a quality education. The state has had multiple chances and they haven’t done anything.”

Some parents have also said they worry the work that has been happening for the past two years under MGT didn’t take into account the more than half of district students who are learning English as a second language.

“We have kids that speak two languages. They’re smart,” Molina said. “I see that as a wealth. But they take away our biliteracy programs, they bring different programs every year. They’re just taking our resources.

“These laws are not working for us,” Molina said, referring to the accountability laws that put Adams 14 on the state’s radar in the first place for low achievement. “These laws are not designed for people like us. They were not made with my children in mind.”

Adams 14 loses accreditation, State Board orders new negotiations

2021-10-05T00:28:46+00:00

Adams 14 has become the first district in Colorado to lose its accreditation, after failing to reconcile with the private company managing its affairs.

On Monday, the State Board of Education gave the district three days to regain its status, while scolding both district and company leaders for fighting over “adult issues.”

The district lost its accreditation after missing the State Board’s Friday deadline to submit a joint statement with MGT Consulting, the management company, to report that they were working together. Instead, Adams 14 submitted a solo statement claiming it had tried to resolve issues and blaming the company for making demands the district could not agree to.

Colorado has no precedent for an unaccredited public K-12 district. For now, Education Commissioner Katy Anthes said, Adams 14 schools will continue as normal.

“We never want to get to this step of accreditation being removed, but given how students continue to be impacted, that is where we are today,” Anthes said. “The reality is things must change. Things must stabilize.

“Losing accreditation does not immediately impact the day-to-day operations of the school,” Anthes said. “The doors will still be open, funding continues, and students, teachers and families should continue to go to school, continue to focus on their studies. This is effectively asking adults to work together and do it expediently.”

Legally, the state may dissolve the district, but that doesn’t happen automatically. It’s a long process that requires another decision by the State Board.

Monday the State Board of Education voted 6-1 to order once again that district officials negotiate with leaders of MGT and sign a memorandum of understanding by Thursday.

Board members expressed concern about some of MGT’s actions, including asking the district for more money, but also emphasized that Adams 14 has not adequately served its students for at least a decade.

An agreement could allow the State Board to restore accreditation without any consequences.

Board member Karla Esser lamented that the district is not working well with MGT managers.

“It’s really just adults behaving badly,” Esser said. “I don’t believe in punishment or reward,” but, she said, the district must understand that it needs to follow State Board orders and that it can’t just “throw everything overboard and start over again.”

In the meeting, State Board member Rebecca McClellan, the sole vote against Monday’s action, initially proposed immediately restoring Adams 14’s accreditation, to recognize that the district already made a good-faith effort to try to comply with state orders.

McClellan said she feared that the state orders for the two sides to cooperate, imposing a consequence only on the district, put Adams 14 at a disadvantage.

“If we do not recognize the local district’s already demonstrated willingness to act in good faith, we are placing them right back in the position they already were in,” McClellan said.

Her motion failed 4 to 3, with Board Chair Angelika Schroeder joining Republicans to reject the more lenient approach. Board member Steve Durham said that the district should not be rewarded for a crisis it created.

MGT has been running Adams 14 since 2019, after the State Board ordered the district to hire outside help to improve student learning. Problems between the district and MGT started earlier this year after Adams 14 hired a superintendent, Karla Loria.

Before her first day, Loria hired a consultant to design a transition plan for MGT and the district to share responsibilities. Instead, the consultant wrote a report evaluating MGT and eventually recommending ending the partnership.

Adams 14 used that report to issue a stop-work order blocking MGT staff from schools. The State Board ruled that order a violation of its 2018 mandate that required external management for at least four years.

MGT was beginning the third year of its contract this fall. So far, the district has paid more than $7 million on a four-year, $8.4 million contract.

During the failed negotiations for Friday’s joint report, MGT asked Adams 14 to waive all claims that could possibly lead to district lawsuits against the company, and in exchange MGT would promise to not sue the district. Adams 14 is awaiting results of a financial audit of MGT’s contracts and subcontracts.

MGT also had asked Adams 14 to renegotiate a potential $500,000 bonus — currently unavailable because of the pandemic disruption.

Schroeder said Monday that McClellan’s failed motion would have removed any incentive for Adams 14 to collaborate with MGT and restore the work the company had been doing.

“I agree that the vendor tried to pull a fast one on the district. That made us all angry,” Schroeder said. But by restoring accreditation right away, “there would be absolutely no reason for Adams 14 to do anything further, and that was much too troubling for me.”

District officials did not respond to requests for comment after the vote.

MGT expressed appreciation for the State Board order, Executive Vice President Eric Parish said in an emailed statement.

“We are hopeful that the additional time can lead to an agreement this week with the school district,” Parish said. “We strongly agree with the State Board members that the focus needs to be on students’ needs.”

Most serious sexual allegations against Tay Anderson unsubstantiated, report finds

2021-09-16T02:29:51+00:00

In a long-awaited report, a third-party investigator found that the most serious sexual misconduct allegations against Denver school board member Tay Anderson were not substantiated, but found enough for the board to consider censuring him.

Denver-based Investigations Law Group concluded as unsubstantiated a claim that Anderson had sexually assaulted an unnamed woman, according to the firm’s 96-page report. The woman’s allegation was made public by the civil rights organization Black Lives Matter 5280 in March.

However, the firm substantiated most allegations that Anderson, 23, had made “unwelcome sexual comments and advances” and “engaged in unwelcome sexual contact” toward members of a youth anti-gun violence group called Never Again Colorado, of which he was president in 2018.

The behavior was not connected to Denver Public Schools; the report notes that it took place off district property with non-Denver students. Anderson was not a district employee nor a school board member at the time. He was elected more than a year later, in November 2019.

But the firm substantiated that Anderson had “flirtatious social media contact” with a 16-year-old Denver Public Schools student while he was a board member. It also substantiated that he made two social media posts that were coercive and intimidating toward witnesses during the investigation, which the board commissioned in April.

Not substantiated were claims by a Denver woman in May that Anderson committed sexual assault or misconduct against 62 Denver Public Schools students. The firm also did not find that Anderson committed misconduct while he was employed in a support role at Denver’s North High School or Manual High School, his alma mater, before he was elected.

Investigations Law Group used a “preponderance of evidence” standard, which it explained in the report means that an allegation is substantiated if it is more likely than not to be true. Two invoices show the firm has billed Denver Public Schools at least $105,449 for its work.

A possible censure

The school board said in a statement Wednesday that it would consider a censure against Anderson on Friday and that it would have no further comment until then. Board members cannot remove a fellow member, given that the board is elected by voters. But the board can censure or reprimand a fellow member or remove that member from board committees.

“The most grievous accusations were not substantiated and the board is grateful for that,” the board’s statement says. “However, the report reveals behavior unbecoming of a board member.

“As elected officials, we must hold ourselves and each other to the highest standards in carrying out the best interests of the district. Director Anderson’s behavior does not meet those standards.”

Anderson is serving a four-year term on the school board. He is a Denver Public Schools graduate and has long been an activist, leading protests against racism and police brutality, which has made him a target of conservatives.

Statement from Anderson

In a tweet that featured the words “let’s get back to work!” Anderson issued a statement emphasizing his cooperation with the investigation and expressing hope for community healing.

“I believe the most important message that can be conveyed at this time is that the finding of unsubstantiated claims against me is in no way a victory over survivors, but rather an opportunity to reconsider how we view and create not only restorative, but also transformative justice, for survivors, falsely accused, and correctly convicted,” the statement said.

Anderson said he planned to “address the report in its entirety” at a press conference after he’d had a chance to review the document with his attorney.

The other six board members received the results of the investigation Monday. Anderson got them Tuesday, a day before they were publicly released. Parts of the report are heavily redacted, including a section about student-related allegations.

Portions of a section about Never Again Colorado were redacted “because Director Anderson asserts that they violate his privacy interests,” according to the board’s statement. The board said it believes the report should be “as transparent as possible” and plans to ask a judge to determine whether it’s appropriate to release the redacted information.

Details of the findings

The report begins with an acknowledgement of the complicated context of the investigation, given “the history of racism in relation to allegations of sexual assault, the historical mistreatment of sexual assault survivors, and the volatile landscape of social media.”

“These three constructs combined to create a difficult environment for witnesses to feel safe in coming forward, and for Director Anderson to feel that he has obtained a fair process,” it says.

“Our team is trained in working in this challenging environment, and our process provided for checks and balances to ensure fair treatment of all parties and fair analysis of all evidence.”

Investigations Law Group interviewed 63 people for the investigation, the report says. It did not interview the alleged victim of the sexual assault allegation, despite repeated attempts. The report says the alleged victim declined to participate in the investigation.

Instead, the alleged incident was described to investigators by an intermediary — the same woman who made the claim about the 62 alleged victims. The woman told investigators that the sexual assault happened in May 2017 when Anderson and the alleged victim worked at a now-closed Krispy Kreme donut shop on Denver’s 16th Street Mall.

But investigators said the credibility of the woman’s secondhand account was “not strong.” They cited inconsistencies in her story, among other issues. Investigators were also not able to confirm that Anderson worked at Krispy Kreme in May 2017. Records from the company that did payroll for the store show he stopped working there a month prior, the report says.

Investigators did interview 11 people associated with the now-defunct Never Again Colorado group. Evidence showed Anderson made unwanted sexual comments and advances toward women in the group, most of which Anderson admitted, the report says.

“Nearly all of this behavior was not welcomed by the recipients,” the report says. “The dynamic was heavily influenced by the power disparity between Director Anderson, as a well-known and influential activist, and these high schoolers, many of whom looked up to him.”

Anderson was 19 when he got involved with the group, but then turned 20. The other participants in the situation were 17 and 18 years old, the report says.

The report describes a “party atmosphere” within the organization, and notes that Anderson participated in it. But it says he did not solely create the atmosphere and later stepped down as the group’s president and apologized.

More details

Investigators said they found two instances of Anderson communicating with high school girls while he was a candidate and board member that were “objectively flirtatious.” The most recent exchange happened last year between Anderson and a girl who was 16 at the time.

In messages between them, Anderson told the girl they should be friends, asked her if she lived with family or had her own place, asked her what she did for work and if she knew how to make pizza. When she said yes, he said, “You’ll have to teach me I know that’s basic but still.”

Anderson said he didn’t know the girl’s age when they started messaging. When he found out she was a teenager, he stopped, he said. He called the messages “a mistake,” the report says.

Anderson also made two social media posts during the investigation “that could reasonably have been interpreted as coercive or intimidating against witnesses,” the report says.

One post involved a meme of Bugs Bunny with a shotgun to his chest and the words “do it bitch.” Another post was a statement Anderson made on Facebook warning people who disparaged him not to speak to him again.

Witnesses could have seen the meme as threatening, and the second post as retaliatory, the report says. But investigators noted that it’s unlikely Anderson’s posts had a chilling effect on their work. “Most of the behaviors identified by witnesses as retaliatory fall into the realm of heated social media rhetoric,” the report says.

Adams 14 school board moves to sever ties with management company

2021-09-01T03:33:00+00:00

The Adams 14 school board voted unanimously Tuesday night to begin cutting ties with an outside management company that has overseen the district’s day-to-day operations for the last two years, a symbolic step that goes against state orders and could open the district to more outside intervention.

The move comes just two months after the district hired Superintendent Karla Loria, who touted herself as a turnaround expert with a positive track record, and follows a critical evaluation of the company by a third party who said the company had created unnecessary positions, left too much work up to district employees, and hadn’t done enough to create a culture of high expectations for students and staff.

Dissolving the contract, which would require approval from the state, sets up yet another year of changes for the Commerce City-based school district that has struggled with leadership changes and turnover for years.

Officials for MGT Consulting, the management company that has been running Adams 14 since 2019, say they have been out of the district since Aug. 4, when MGT was issued an order to pause their work. Company representatives were invited to but did not attend Tuesday’s meeting.

Officials from the Colorado Department of Education had already warned the Adams 14 school board last week that not having company presence in the district put Adams 14 out of compliance with the State Board’s order requiring that it hand over management to an external company. Last week, Loria said the district was back in compliance, but MGT officials said they have not been able to return to the district.

On Tuesday, school board members, many of whom got emotional as they spoke, said they were disappointed to learn about the information in the report from the outside evaluator.

“It’s just too much. To me, it’s just disappointing,” said board member Maria Zubia. “Because I expected more.”

The board’s vote Tuesday directs Loria to respond to the state by explaining the district’s attempts to resolve the dispute with MGT and presenting what the district considers to be the company’s performance deficiencies. The vote also directs Loria to “explore appropriate amendments” to the State Board order.

Board members also said they were committed to hiring a firm to conduct a financial audit to review the more than $7 million spent on the contract to date.

The outside evaluation was commissioned by the district after Loria recommended it ahead of her first day on the job. Burns/Van Fleet LLC was hired for $16,500.

Despite initially writing a draft report that said MGT’s work should continue, consultant Stuart Berger later changed his recommendation and told the board that he believed the district should cut ties with the company.

The reversal came after Berger heard from people who hadn’t been comfortable speaking initially and after he read a letter from the district’s attorney that outlined concerns that MGT was not delivering on the work it was supposed to do because it delegated too much to Adams 14 employees.

“I pretty much agreed with 90% of what he had written,” Berger said.

MGT responded to that letter disputing most everything. It has requested to engage in mediation with the district, but Adams 14 attorney Jonathan Fero told the board Tuesday that they were not required to engage in mediation.

“Regrettably, because of recent events, the Adams 14 Board of Education and MGT personnel are struggling to engage in a constructive, and productive, dialogue to address any issues and concerns,” Eric Parish, executive vice president for MGT, wrote in a letter to the school board president.

MGT officials said that they did not expect the evaluation.

According to the contract for the consultant, Berger was hired because of the district’s need for a “skilled external transition consultant” to “make recommendations to inform planning for the incorporation of the new superintendent,” and for planning the scope of what work MGT would do in years three and four of the contract. Berger’s proposal is titled “Proposal for a Transition Report.”

In the report, Berger states that after beginning the work, he realized a traditional transition report would be ineffective and instead needed to include an evaluation of the partnership.

Berger said he also completed and submitted the transition report to the district.

Reached by phone Tuesday, Berger said the state carries blame as well for not closely monitoring the failures of the external manager.

In 2018, the State Board required external management for Adams 14 out of several options under state law for when a school or district fails to improve student performance more than five years in a row. The other options, which may once again be on the table, include turning schools into charter schools, stripping the district of accreditation, or merging the district with another nearby district.

The state can also put schools or districts on an innovation plan that allows the district or school to opt out of laws or policies to be able to change practices more creatively. Adams 14 tried that before the state ordered external management and it didn’t work, in part because of leadership changes that caused the state board to lose trust in the district’s ability to turn itself around.

MGT Consulting wasn’t Adams 14’s first choice of managers, but it was the one that received reluctant approval from both the local district leaders and the State Board of Education.

MGT hired local superintendents to form a team to oversee the work in the district. Initially the district signed an $8.4 million contract to run for four years, per orders from the State Board.

But when the pandemic began, MGT leaders told the Adams 14 school board that they wanted to use some of the district’s relief funds to increase the MGT contract to add new positions and help district administrators navigate the emergency closure of schools and set up remote learning.

This school year, MGT’s third of the four-year contract, was to cost the district $1,390,000. Each year was set up to cost less than the previous year.

Loria has suggested that for the more than $7 million paid to the company to date, the outcomes may not be substantial enough.

The vote Tuesday put the district school board on the spot. Four of the five members were elected or appointed recently and had not been involved in selecting MGT or in the district failures that led to the state order.

Up until this week, board members, who had at times praised MGT employees, were seen by many in the community as trying to make the best of a bad situation. But Tuesday, Loria forced them into publicly voicing their support or opposition for the management company and gave them a choice to end the contract, even if the vote is symbolic for now.

The vote is only one step in a process. Because the district held a contract with MGT, and because that contract was ordered by the State Board, district officials must make their case to the state at a meeting next week.

In a presentation to the city council for Commerce City Monday night, Loria said that the district is not trying to avoid following the state order, but that the district must have high expectations.

“We are OK having managers, and we are OK following orders. We are just not OK with having managers not giving what they promised they would give,” Loria said. “We believe our students deserve the best.”

School board President Ramona Lewis added at the end of the meeting that the board supports Loria.

“We know we have the right leader on board,” Lewis said. “If we can make it work with an external management partner, we’ll do our best. We still have a lot of things to think about.”

Adams 14 is off track and out of compliance, state’s progress report says

2021-08-25T01:29:50+00:00

Adams 14 is not on track to meet performance goals set by the state and has been out of compliance with state orders, a state official told the school board at a meeting Tuesday.

The district hasn’t done enough to support struggling readers and hasn’t maintained a consistent presence by MGT, the outside company managing day-to-day operations, according to Colorado education officials. The poor report comes just a few months after the district hired its own superintendent for the first time in two years.

Lisa Medler, executive director of accountability and continuous improvement for the Colorado Department of Education, told the school board that Adams 14 has seen some improvement, including its work to resolve disputes with the Office for Civil Rights in creating a plan for English language learners who make up about half of the students in the district.

But she also said the district had shown a lack of leadership in addressing literacy issues.

“Given the high number of READ Act plans in this district, we’re really concerned about the lack of attention that was going to the literacy programing,” Medler said. READ plans are developed for students who are identified as having serious reading struggles.

The district had a contract with Schools Cubed to help improve literacy instruction in the district, but that contract ended at the end of last school year.

In a draft report to the State Board of Education presented at Tuesday’s meeting, officials also noted contract problems with MGT, the for-profit district manager.

“At the beginning of the new school year, a contract dispute disrupted the flow of services from MGT within the district,” the draft report states. “Without an MGT presence in the district, the State Board Order is currently not being implemented.”

Adams 14, based in the working-class suburbs north of Denver, is the first and only district in Colorado ordered to give up management of daily operations to an external partner in an attempt to improve student outcomes after years of low performance.

MGT Consulting has been managing the district for two years and is under order to manage the district for another two years.

During the first two years of MGT’s management, the district had no superintendent of its own, and MGT hired a local veteran superintendent to take on the role. But this summer, the district hired its own superintendent. It was always part of MGT’s plan to slowly give more control back to Adams 14 officials so that they were in a position to be successful when the four years were up.

Karla Loria, the district’s new superintendent, started the job over the summer. She and MGT officials have been trying to work out what roles each will have in the next two years.

After the grim presentation from Medler, Loria told the board that her intention coming to the district has never been to disobey the state order, and she told the board that the district has now been in compliance in the most recent weeks.

“Although I agree with her report — with the fact that in some areas we’re off track — I would disagree that it’s due to recent events,” Loria said. “I came to the district with every desire to make it work. My whole desire is to continue to abide by the State Board order.”

Eric Parish, executive vice president of MGT Consulting, said the district and the company have had a good relationship until recently.

“The contract dispute mentioned at this evening’s board meeting is an unfortunate development in what otherwise has been an exemplary partnership over the last two years,” he said in an emailed statement. “No issues were raised about our partnership from the Adams 14 board of education or other engaged stakeholders for two years, and the path ahead was bright; there’s even a new elementary school being built.

“The bottom line is that students in Adams 14 are benefiting from this partnership, and we are committed to working with all relevant parties to make sure it continues.”

Loria said that in talks with state officials, both she and the state agreed to have an evaluator make recommendations about how to organize years three and four, “to ensure we continue having progress in every area.”

The progress report also notes that the district’s strategic plan still remains unfinished.

“We didn’t get the direction from our leadership at the time to try to move on that. I think now we have the direction from our new leadership and can get that done,” said Ramona Lewis, the district’s board president.

Medler also noted that “current local data” shows that students in Adams 14 have plateaued or decreased in academic performance, but noted that state and national trends show the same happening elsewhere.

Pati Montgomery, the founder and CEO of Schools Cubed, which ended its contract in Adams 14, said her organization was working in many schools across the country and had already been in Adams 14 for several years.

“We’ve gotten so busy, we just decided they could probably do it without us,” Montgomery said.

Still, the district has “very much, lots of work,” left to do to improve literacy for its students, she said.

Denver school board confirms Alex Marrero as next superintendent

2021-06-04T00:13:08+00:00

Alex Marrero is Denver’s next superintendent after the school board voted 6 to 1 to confirm the 38-year-old bilingual educator from New York.

“My vote for Dr. Marrero is a vote for all of the priorities we heard as we created a forum for our community to lift up their hopes and their fears for our schools,” board President Carrie Olson said. “Dr. Marrero, I believe in your ability to inspire people and reinvest in a public school system where every child is seen and able to achieve their full potential.”

Marrero will start July 6, taking the helm of Colorado’s largest school district as it emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and enters a new era of declining enrollment and new approaches to school oversight.

Under a contract approved Thursday, Marrero will be paid $260,000 a year to start. That’s the same salary earned by the previous superintendent, Susana Cordova, and more than the $242,125 Tom Boasberg made when he left Denver Public Schools in 2018.

Marrero said the job is a dream come true for the child of a Cuban refugee and an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who seemed destined to be another statistic.

“I am looking forward to collaborating and removing any barriers for students,” he said. “Unbeknownst to little Alexi, my own life experience has prepared me to lead this incredible district.”

At-large board member Barbara O’Brien voted no on the appointment and the contract. She said it gave her no pleasure, and she would do everything she could to help Marrero succeed.

But she believes Denver needs a more experienced leader.

“I don’t think our process produced the kind of stellar applicants for superintendent of Denver Public Schools that we expected to get,” she said. “I think we should have someone with much more experience. To add the culture change that he will navigate coupled with the relative inexperience in running a district, I worry that Denver students and families will experience a superintendent with a huge learning curve.”

Denver, Colorado’s largest school district with 90,000 students, is going through a transition. In addition to the grappling with fallout from the pandemic and demographic changes, the school board is changing how it approaches school improvement. The school board, which sets policy for the district, has moved away from past education reform strategies such as closing schools with low test scores, and has asked tough questions of the district’s independent charter schools.

Board members said they expect Marrero to take a collaborative rather than competitive approach to managing the district’s schools and tackle longstanding opportunity gaps between students of color and their white peers.

Marrero served as interim superintendent of the 10,400-student City School District of New Rochelle for the past eight months after the previous superintendent resigned. New Rochelle has similar demographics to Denver but is much smaller. Marrero was previously the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in New Rochelle and before that an assistant superintendent in East Ramapo, New York.

Marrero started his career as a guidance counselor and has said reducing the school-to-prison pipeline is a priority. He said he will hold all students to high standards and work to gain the confidence of the community. He has pledged to start his tenure with a listening tour and to include students and teachers in his decisions.

In explaining her yes vote, board member Angela Cobián talked about a time a guidance counselor helped her avoid getting into a fight after being called an ethnic slur. He helped her feel safe at school and avoid derailing her academic career.

“When I think about the fact that we’re going to have a guidance counselor turned superintendent lead our district, I think about the power you’re going to bring to our district, the power of compassion and the power of lived experiences,” she said.

A long list of Latino community groups repeatedly called on the school board to delay the vote. Even before Marrero was named as the preferred candidate among three finalists, the groups had raised concerns about the search process and the experience level of the candidates.

Other community leaders have come out in support of Marrero, with Ron Cabrera, a longtime Hispanic educator and former interim Denver superintendent, pointing to his experience working with Marrero in the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents.

“I know the importance, backed by research, of finding a champion for our underserved students, a leader who can be a role model for all our students, our parents, and our educational colleagues,” Cabrera said last week. “I believe Dr. Alex Marrero is that champion for us.”

Those with concerns said they grew more worried when Marrero was named in a lawsuit in his previous district in New Rochelle, New York, two days after Denver officials announced their intention to hire him. In the lawsuit filed in federal court, the former medical director accused a number of administrators and a school board member of sidelining her and retaliating against her related to the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The New Rochelle district has denied any wrongdoing.

Marrero also was a finalist for superintendent in New Rochelle, but that district chose a different candidate.

On Tuesday and again on Thursday, Latino community leaders sent letters to the Denver school board asking for a delay and for the process to be revisited. They said they were concerned nobody in Denver knew about the lawsuit before it was filed, that the allegations had not been fully vetted, and that Marrero may be distracted by dealing with the lawsuit.

In Thursday’s letter, the community leaders also raised concerns about an ongoing investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against board member Tay Anderson. Anderson is stepping back from many board functions during the investigation. He voted in favor of Marrero, a decision he said will be his last until the investigation is concluded.

The community leaders said the board’s handling of both issues had eroded community confidence.

“Now is not the time for the Denver school board to be making the most important decision of its tenure, the selection of the next superintendent,” they wrote. “This decision will impact our children for years to come and we urge the board to await further information about the allegations against Dr. Marrero and Mr. Anderson.”

The meeting to vote on hiring Marrero was a work session with no public comment. The superintendent vote was an action item added to the agenda.

School board members said they had gone through a rigorous process with multiple opportunities for public feedback, and they called on the community to embrace Marrero and work with him as the district addresses disrupted learning and many other challenges.

“I am grateful for Dr. Marrero for going through our process,” board member Jennifer Bacon said. “It is not for the faint of heart. It took a lot of time, courage and commitment to go through it, but that is what our community is owed. And now it is time to move forward.”

Denver Public Schools names Alex Marrero as next superintendent

2021-05-27T13:20:10+00:00

The Denver school board has chosen Alex Marrero, a school district administrator from suburban New York, as the next superintendent to lead Colorado’s largest district as it recovers from the pandemic.

Denver Public Schools board members flanked by community members announced their decision at a press conference Wednesday outside South High School. Board President Carrie Olson said Marrero emerged as the top candidate by demonstrating an ability to listen and interact with the community and bring together people.

”Dr. Marrero rose to the top as the best leader for the students, staff, and community of Denver Public Schools,” Olson said.

Marrero, 38, served as interim superintendent of the City School District of New Rochelle for the past eight months after the previous superintendent resigned. He was previously the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in New Rochelle and before that an assistant superintendent in East Ramapo, New York.

He joked that leading a district through a pandemic is worth 10 years of normal experience.

Marrero described growing up with hair that fell into his eyes because his family couldn’t afford trips to the barber shop and because his bangs served as a barrier between himself and a New York City school system where he felt like a burden to others.

“Little Alexi is now Dr. Marrero because of the hard work of those who were in front of me and also what I had to overcome,” he said. “Imagine a world in which a student doesn’t have to figure it out for themselves. That’s what I’m working towards. I feel like my life experiences and my practical professional experiences have prepared me to be here in Denver.”

Dr. Alex Marrero is the sole finalist for the superintendent of Denver Public Schools. Marrero is currently the acting superintendent of the City School District of New Rochelle, N.Y.

Marrero and the seven-member board are in contract negotiations but have reached agreement on key terms. The board is expected to vote on the hire June 3.

Marrero was chosen from among three finalists. The other two superintendent finalists were Andre Wright, the chief academic officer for nearby Aurora Public Schools in Colorado, and Stephanie Soliven, the assistant superintendent for secondary leading and learning in Brevard Public Schools in Florida. A total of 37 candidates applied for the job, according to Alma Advisory Group, the search firm hired by the board.

Before Marrero was announced as the sole finalist, a coalition of Latino leaders in Denver asked the school board to reopen the superintendent search because they questioned whether any of the three finalists had the right experience to lead Denver Public Schools.

Remarks from board members and community leaders at the press conference seemed aimed at reassuring the skeptics.

Board Vice President Jennifer Bacon said Marrero shares much in common with many of the district’s students, educators, and leaders. She said he has the ability to unify and strengthen the school system.

“Dr. Marrero has shown himself as a leader who is responsive and respects all voices,” Bacon said. “He is prepared to listen and prioritize interactions with families and students, teachers and administrators, community members and partners.”

Leaders also said repeatedly that the success of Denver students depends on Marrero’s success and urged the community to support him.

“We need to give him a fair shake,” Olson said. “We need to lift up our hopes and dreams and bring out the possibilities for our students as we emerge from the pandemic.”

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association, the union that helped elect the current board majority, issued a statement in support of Marrero’s selection.

Dr. Alex Marrero, right, dons a Denver Public Schools cap, given to him by Denver Public Schools Foundation President Veronica Figoli at a press conference Wednesday morning announcing his selection as sole finalist for superintendent.

The announcement came as a surprise because school board members for weeks have said they planned to make a decision in June. Marrero also was a finalist for the superintendent position in New Rochelle. That district on Wednesday announced it had selected the other finalist, Jonathan Raymond, to be its next superintendent.

In making the announcement now, Olson said Denver board members wanted to be transparent and fair to the other candidates.

The next superintendent in Denver will take the helm of a district recovering from pandemic learning disruptions. The district also is experiencing declining enrollment and a shift in the way it approaches school improvement. The school board, which sets policy for the district, has moved away from past education reform strategies such as closing schools with low test scores, and has asked tough questions of the district’s independent charter schools.

Denver Public Schools is Colorado’s largest school district, with about 90,000 students this year. More than half of all students — 52% — are Hispanic, 14% are Black, and 26% are white, according to district data. A little less than two-thirds of students qualify for subsidized school meals, and about 30% are learning English as a new language.

The previous superintendent, Susana Cordova, resigned in November to take a job in the Dallas school district. In surveys and meetings, parents, teachers, students, and community members said they wanted the board to hire a superintendent of color who has experience as an educator, knowledge of Denver education issues, and a demonstrated commitment to equity.

Marrero was the first Latino administrator to lead the New Rochelle district in New York, which is about one-ninth the size of Denver, with 10,400 students. The demographics are similar to Denver: 49% of New Rochelle students are Hispanic, 20% are Black, and 25% are white, and more than half come from families who qualify for economic assistance, according to the New York State Education Department. The percentage of students who are English language learners in New Rochelle is smaller than in Denver at 12%.

Marrero speaks English and Spanish, which many Denver community members said was important for the next district leader. His biography on the Denver Public Schools website says he is the child of a Cuban refugee and an immigrant from the Dominican Republic.

Marrero has a daughter who will be entering kindergarten in Denver in the fall and a younger son.

The Latino Education Coalition, the group that wanted to reopen the search, was particularly concerned with whether the finalists had track records of successfully educating English language learners or if they understood the Mexican American and Chicano culture of many Denver students. The district has for years been under a court-ordered consent decree that requires it to better serve English language learners.

In a pair of public interviews conducted by Denver students and community members earlier this month, Marrero said he was an English language learner as a child. He said that while he may not share the same cultural background as many of the students in Denver, he has an appreciation for it. Two of his mentors are Mexican American and Chicano, he said.

“Being Latino, I acknowledge that we are all different in terms of Latinos, Latinas, and Latinx. We are not monoliths,” Marrero said. “So embracing and celebrating culture — that means custom, cuisine, dialects — is critical, and we have to come with an awareness.”

Marrero said that the Denver district needs to “build on the consent decree” in terms of how it educates its English language learners.

At the press conference, Marrero said he welcomes questions and criticisms and that they sharpen his thinking. He said listening and learning — in the form of listening tours and deep data analysis — will be his priority in his first 100 days.

At the same time, he asked critics to consider his own experiences as a child who arrived at school not knowing English and as the principal of a Bronx high school that saw students enter not speaking English and go on to graduate with honors.

Ron Cabrera, a longtime Colorado educator who served as Denver’s interim superintendent in 2018, said he knows Marrero from his work with the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents and has complete confidence in him.

“I know the importance, backed by research, of finding a champion for our underserved students, a leader who can be a role model for all our students, our parents, and our educational colleagues,” Cabrera said. “I believe Dr. Alex Marrero is that champion for us.”

Reviewing Denver schools’ Black excellence plans and preparing for “re-entry” after a disrupted school year will also be top priorities, he said.

Marrero said his core belief is that every student deserves intellectual, social, and emotional respect, and he committed to working to close academic gaps in Denver schools.

A former guidance counselor, Marrero said he wants to disrupt the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Instead of sending students into the criminal justice system, he said he favors having students perform “civil duty” to make up for any harm they’ve caused.

As the press conference wrapped up, Marrero took a few minutes to talk with students at South High School. One asked the most critical question: What’s your philosophy on snow days?

Many districts, including Denver, have asked students to log into classes this year instead of taking the day off when it snows.

Marrero avoided a direct answer but promised to talk to students — and not let his daughter sway him too much.

“Are we going to have snow days where you stay home and enjoy hot chocolate and snow angels and snow ball fights?” Marrero said. “Or are we going to have synchronous and asynchronous instruction and not lose that day? That’s a strong argument on both. We’re exploring that.”

Parents urge Adams 14 and its external manager to engage the community more

2021-03-18T00:05:06+00:00

Parents and community leaders in the Adams 14 district want a greater voice in their children’s education.

The working-class suburban district has a history of discrimination against Spanish-speaking parents and past efforts at community engagement have fallen short or been abandoned amid frequent turnover.

“We just want to feel like we’re not working against the current,” said Rafael Bautista, a parent of three Adams 14 students. “Like they’re taking us into account.”

Parents say they’re tired of being asked for their advice and then ignored — and they’re cautiously optimistic that this time district leaders are listening.

At a meeting Tuesday, parents laid out three demands for greater engagement. On the spot, district leaders agreed to two of them and said they would work on the third.

Specifically, parents asked the district to commit to providing professional development on family engagement for all teachers and school leaders, to establish a permanent parent leadership program, and to collaborate with them on choosing the programs or curriculums that would be used in each.

Bautista said overall he was satisfied with the responses.

“We’ve worked hard,” Bautista said. “It was a good talk.”

The Adams 14 school district based in Commerce City serves about 6,500 students. The majority of those students come from low-income households, and from households where English is not the first language.

Right now Adams 14 is the only district in the state being managed by a for-profit company, MGT Consulting, under state orders to see if an outside group could do a better job of improving student achievement than the district itself has done.

While the district has faced several problems, the issue of community engagement has persisted. A 2010 federal investigation found that district leaders were discriminating against Spanish-speaking students, families and staff, and not offering English language learners adequate help in classes.

The district is under a federal order from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to improve those conditions, but a constant turnover in Adams 14 leadership has cut short several efforts to improve.

Parents at the meeting Tuesday raised that point.

Parent Maria Rodriguez said that Adams 14 had previous programs to help parents become more informed leaders, but said that eventually new district leaders scrapped them. Parents have said those abrupt changes make them distrustful of district promises to change.

Don Rangel, the district’s acting superintendent, said that he aims to create sustainable programs, but said that it will be on the next superintendent to continue the work, and on the board to hold that next superintendent to it.

Adams 14 has already launched a search for a new superintendent.

The parent and community group that made the request Tuesday sprang from a social justice group in Commerce City’s Catholic church, Our Lady Mother of the Church. When the group started talking to community members about their concerns, it found education at the top of the list.

The group first approached the district and MGT leaders in 2019 with five requests. On Tuesday they offered a mixed review of how the district has followed up.

One request it labeled “not accomplished” was creating an advisory group of middle and high school parents that could help MGT make decisions.

A new group was not created, and existing ones aren’t doing the same work, parents said.

“Advisory groups are only being used for advice and feedback, they do not have power in decision-making,” the group’s evaluation states.

But group members said they were excited that another of the five requests was accomplished: one that asked for a report in both English and Spanish that provided evidence of why the district’s new bilingual program will be effective.

Bautista said he gets chills of excitement when thinking about that work.

“We’ve had good programs in the past but they go away,” Bautista said. “Now I feel very good about the fact that we’ll have a bilingual program that continues through 12th grade.”

Students who can graduate proficient in both English and another language will see many benefits, including in their social and economic life, Bautista said.

His own children have at times struggled with mastering both languages, he said, and may not benefit from the new program as it rolls out starting in the early grades, but he’s still excited about what it will mean for others.

Rangel told the group he still had questions about one of the new requests, to collaborate with the group in choosing a research-based program or curriculum for following through on the first two demands to offer leadership and family engagement training.

“We need to be able to reach agreement about what that research looks like and how you want to go about it,” Rangel said. “I want to make sure there’s no misunderstandings. We are committed to sitting down and talking with you.”

Group leaders including Bautista said that they have done research already and particularly like two programs, including one called Paridad, which the Boulder Valley school district has used in creating Latino parent groups. The program may require some investment from the district budget, but parents believe the cost is “reasonable” and worth it.

Another of the group’s leaders, Reyna Soria, said even without a firm commitment on that final request, she felt encouraged that communication is continuing.

“There’s hope,” she said.

Superintendent Susana Cordova is leaving Denver Public Schools

2020-11-14T00:08:06+00:00

Less than two years after being appointed superintendent of the school district where she was once a student, Denver Public Schools Superintendent Susana Cordova announced she is leaving the district and her home city to take a job in Texas.

She will be the deputy superintendent of leading and learning in the Dallas Independent School District, according to an email sent to district families Friday afternoon.

“As the child of Mexican-American parents and a first-generation college graduate, I know that I owe a debt of gratitude to DPS, and I have been honored to spend the past 31 years as a member of Team DPS,” said Cordova, who started as a teacher in the district in 1989.

“I want you to know that Denver will forever be home to me.”

Cordova does not have a firm departure date, but she said she would work with the district “over the coming weeks to ensure a smooth transition.” School board Vice President Jennifer Bacon said the board will first select an interim superintendent and then build a timeline for hiring a permanent replacement, hopefully by next school year.

Cordova said she wasn’t actively looking for another position but rather was approached about the job in Dallas, a city she said “reminds me a lot of the Denver I grew up in.” She said she admires and respects the Dallas superintendent, Michael Hinojosa, and is excited for the challenge of working in a new community.

The past two years in Denver Public Schools have been tumultuous, partly due to long-simmering disputes. About a month after Cordova took the helm in January 2019, the teachers union went on strike. Cordova was at the bargaining table for every session and took part in an all-night negotiation that ended the strike after three days.

Last November saw a contentious school board election in which control of the seven-member board “flipped” for the first time to members backed by the teachers union.

The union had long opposed the education reforms shepherded by Cordova’s predecessor, Tom Boasberg, including the expansion of independent charter schools. Cordova served as a deputy superintendent under Boasberg, overseeing district-run schools.

Her departure gives the board an opportunity to select a superintendent who could shift the district even further away from some of those remaining reform policies.

For the past eight months, Cordova has led the 92,000-student district through the COVID-19 pandemic. In consultation with public health officials, she decided to close schools, then partially reopen them, a move some teachers feel is unsafe. As schools have experienced staffing shortages, Cordova herself has helped to fill in at a district elementary school one day a week.

Tiffany Choi, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, said in a statement that union members thank Cordova and “wish her well in her journey.”

“We understand that students and educators may be feeling a sense of uncertainty with the sudden structural change within the district,” she continued. “The health of our students and staff is still DCTA’s top priority during these uncertain times.”

Some district observers believe Cordova’s relationship with the school board played a role in her departure.

Van Schoales of the advocacy group A Plus Colorado described Cordova’s leaving as “tragic” for the district.

But he also pointed to her complicated relationship with the new union-backed board. On a whole range of issues, from budgeting to police in schools to the district’s controversial school rating system to support for learning pods, Schoales said he saw board members working more directly with the community than with Cordova.

“The board should have a superintendent and a superintendent should have a board that are on the same page,” Schoales said. “Some people are going to say she’s leaving in a pandemic, and I don’t think people realize all the challenges she’s had to manage.”

Even the process by which Cordova became superintendent was controversial, with some community members objecting to the selection of a single finalist and concerned she would lead in the same manner as Boasberg. Advocates for education reform, meanwhile, worried she would not be as supportive of charter schools or school accountability.

Cordova strived to build bridges and find common ground. She leveraged her long history in the district and her classroom experience to build connections, often beginning anecdotes with “When I was a teacher ...” and she converted some critics into allies.

Cordova made equity her top priority, and she cited the concept frequently, especially as she guided the district through constantly changing reopening plans. She instituted training for educators in culturally responsive education, supported ethnic studies classes, and held regular Facebook Live briefings for parents in Spanish.

Cordova is bilingual, having learned Spanish as an adult. As the district’s chief academic officer starting in 2010, she oversaw English language acquisition programs in a district that has spent decades under a court order that governs how English language learners are educated. While large gaps remain, Denver’s English language learners regularly outpace statewide averages on state literacy and math tests.

Vernon Jones, executive director of the Northeast Denver Innovation Zone and an education activist, said in an emailed statement that Cordova “represented us” and that the district should have tried harder to learn from her lived experience. Instead, he said, she paid the price for unresolved tensions from the Boasberg era.

Cordova, however, said she believes conflict is healthy in an organization the size of Denver Public Schools — and also important to democracy.

“I have not shied away from engaging in difficult conversations,” Cordova said. “But I think it’s also really important to acknowledge that difficult conversations don’t mean that we are difficult people. If we always are just agreeing with each other, we’re probably not talking about the real issues.

“And I think that’s really important.”

Erica Meltzer contributed to this report.

Management and district leaders say first year of Adams 14 turnaround was a success despite pandemic

2020-07-07T00:32:39+00:00

Despite not having hard data on achievement, Adams 14 officials and community members say signs point to a success for the district’s first year in private hands.

One indication is more parent satisfaction.

When the principal at her Adams 14 elementary school changed along with other district leaders, Beatrice De Luna immediately felt more welcome.

This year she said she was more involved in school than she had been in the last five years of her children’s education. And one of her five children, a girl entering sixth grade this fall, started showing “huge growth” after two years of struggling.

“As a parent, this past year has been a great year,” De Luna said.

Connie Bonnel, a district grandmother who has served on a district oversight committee, said this was the first year her group was able to review each school’s improvement plan to make recommendations.

“Everyone was surprised,” said Bonnel, who sits on the district’s accountability committee. “I am grateful for how collaborative they are with us.”

The 2019-20 school year was the first year MGT Consulting, a private, for-profit firm based in Florida, managed the Adams 14 school district north of Denver. The year was marked by curricular changes, leadership reorganization, and a new plan for the high school. Four of the five board members joined halfway through the year.

But turnaround work was delayed as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down school buildings for the last 2½ months of the year and the focus shifted to teaching students remotely. Officials believe students did lose some learning, but it’s still unclear just how much.

It was the first time that a private group has taken the reins of an entire school district in Colorado. It was done under orders from the state as a last resort to try to improve the achievement of the nearly 7,000 students in the struggling district.

The order put MGT on a four-year timeline. Under the $8.3 million contract, each year the company would return more control to the district, slowly putting them back in charge. The state is closely monitoring the work, but with no state testing this year and thus no comparable achievement data, it’s hard to tell how effective the company’s improvements have been so far.

Don Rangel, MGT’s project director and acting superintendent for Adams 14, called the first year a success.

“It was critically important for the Adams 14 team and the external management team of MGT to develop a quality working relationship,” Rangel said. “Even though the year was interrupted we were able to do that.”

MGT officials provide quarterly reports to the State Board of Education. The next one is scheduled for this fall.

MGT and district leaders point to staff surveys conducted by the state. Overall, staff in Adams 14 feel more positive about the direction of the district than in previous years.

In a recent meeting of the local Adams 14 school board, Lisa Medler, the state’s executive director of accountability and continuous improvement, said the state has also seen positive work.

“On implementation, despite all of the disruption, certainly a lot of strides have been made,” Medler said.

Board members asked, given the pandemic, about giving MGT and Adams 14 more time to show improvement. “This was a huge disruption,” said Adams 14 board member Maria Zubia.

Officials said that’s being discussed. Medler suggested that if MGT or Adams 14 want to ask for more time, they must have specifics around what the time would be needed for.

Harry Bull, MGT’s Colorado project manager, said officials haven’t thought it through as the focus has been on adjusting to remote learning, and now planning for the multiple scenarios in the fall.

So far, like Rangel, Bull said that MGT has been able to make needed investments in the district, but is concerned about how the district will keep prioritizing improvements if more budget cuts are needed.

“It’s never a good time to be a turnaround district, but in a challenging economic time, it most certainly makes for a greater challenge,” Bull said.

In the first year of management, MGT focused on aligning varied curriculum materials at the district’s 11 schools. Adams 14 now has a new literacy and math curriculum across all grade levels and is planning to introduce a new social and emotional learning curriculum this fall.

Adams 14 has also expanded the career and technical education budget to create more opportunities for high school students.

District leaders also spent the year rewriting the district’s plan for educating English language learners, including creating a new bilingual education plan. The district is waiting for feedback on the plan from the federal Office for Civil Rights.

One other critical piece of the district’s improvement has been to retain more quality teachers. Adams 14 historically has a high turnover rate for teachers, and many teachers just starting their career.

Adams 14 did approve a stipend, on top of salary, for teachers for their work during remote learning, but the district may not be able to pay teachers more soon if state revenue for schools continues to drop.

MGT plans for the district to hire its own superintendent again soon. The plan is for the board to begin a search in December, and perhaps have someone in place by the 2021-22 school year. For now, MGT has covered the role.

Deborah Figueroa, co-president of the Adams 14 teachers union, said she understands that there were unpredictable delays this year, but is still frustrated that the pace of change can’t be faster.

“There’s a lot of work that has to be done, and in my opinion, MGT is outnumbered,” Figueroa said. “For the millions of dollars we pay them, it’s been a handful of people — they have been of quality, but it is not enough for the amount of work that the system needs.”

The beginning of the year included coaching for teachers, but Figueroa said it wasn’t enough.

Figueroa said she especially wants to see a strategic plan. That’s one thing that the state is also tracking. While it’s not done, officials expect it could be finished soon. Board members worked their first months together to agree on a unified district vision with goals that are still being finalized.

Adams 14 board President Ramona Lewis said she believes that the work MGT and the new board have done is making a difference. Lewis and several of the other new board members ran in part with the interest of keeping tabs on the new company that would be managing the district.

To track progress now, Lewis said she hopes schools will be able to administer district assessments in the fall, and also hopes to see more staff surveys. If it’s safe to do so, she’d also like to see the district and MGT resume the listening tour that began and ended just before the pandemic.

“I think the climate of the district has changed,” Lewis said. “But we want to continue to make sure people are being listened to.”

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.

Judge dismisses lawsuits challenging private management in Adams 14, Pueblo districts

2019-10-18T23:30:16+00:00

A Denver judge on Friday dismissed two union lawsuits that challenged the state’s orders to Adams 14 and Pueblo school districts requiring them to hire an outside manager.

David H. Goldberg, a Denver district court judge, ruled that the union failed to establish how the order had caused injury and so lacked grounds to sue.

In the case of Adams 14, the State Board of Education in November ordered the district to hand over much of its authority to an external management company, the first district in the state forced to do so. The district has long struggled to raise student achievement.

In the case of Pueblo, the State Board had ordered the district to hand over management of two of its lowest performing schools. The district then closed one of the schools and signed a contract with a management company for one school.

In both cases, a Florida-based for-profit company, MGT Consulting, has taken over that role. In each case, the local teachers union sued the state and claimed the orders violated the state constitution, which grants local school boards the authority to make most decisions for their districts.

The cases were combined and presented to a judge in Denver in August.

In his ruling, the judge stated, “local boards of education are permitted to delegate some tasks.” In reviewing whether Colorado’s accountability law is unconstitutional because it allows the state board to order external management, Goldberg wrote, “the court declines to define the scope of the State Board’s authority.”

Union leaders did not respond to a request for comment.

“When the General Assembly passed the Education Accountability Act, the intent was to keep the focus on kids and to establish a process for eliminating the persistent gaps in student achievement,” the state’s Education Commissioner Katy Anthes said in a released statement. “We are pleased that the court acknowledged the state board’s actions were aligned with the statue, which sets clear requirements for the state’s intervention for persistently struggling schools. We are pleased that the focus can now solely be on improving outcomes for kids.”

Read the full rulings, below.

Aurora school board approves superintendent contract extension

2019-09-18T00:53:19+00:00

Superintendent Rico Munn will lead the Aurora school district for another three years.

The district school board voted 5 to 2 Tuesday night to extend Munn’s contract. He has led the district since 2013.

The contract calls for an annual salary of $267,422, which is what he already makes, and allows for future raises consistent with those other administrative staff receive.

While all board members said earlier this month that they supported renewing the contract, board member Kayla Armstrong Romero and board president Marques Ivey voted against the contract Tuesday. They previously said they wanted a shorter contract term.

The draft proposal had already been negotiated, and a district attorney told them it could not be changed.

The current contract, which ends at the end of this school year, did not need to be renewed yet, but board members chose to do so ahead of schedule and against the teachers union’s request to wait until three new board members who will be elected in November get a say.

By approving a contract for three years, the next renewal will not fall during an election year.

Bruce Wilcox, the union president, spoke to the board again Tuesday night and said the board’s opportunity for comment at the last meeting was “pointless.”

“Your discussion was more of a justification of your decision that you had reached one month prior,” Wilcox said. “You are simply checking a box.”

Munn thanked the board for renewing his contract, allowing him the opportunity to continue the district’s work.

Aurora school board to weigh superintendent’s contract renewal before election

2019-08-30T18:11:00+00:00

Update: The story has been updated to include details, and a link, to the proposed draft contract extension. A previous version of this story included incorrect information about the superintendent’s proposed salary.

The Aurora school board is taking up the question of whether Rico Munn should continue as superintendent months earlier than is called for in his current contract.

The Aurora school board has scheduled public comment on a proposed contract extension Tuesday, even though Munn’s contract doesn’t expire until June and the deadline for a decision isn’t until February, after an election in which three new people will join the seven-member board.

A final vote won’t happen Tuesday, but one is expected later in September.

The draft proposed contract extension would give Munn an additional three years with the district. The proposed contract gives a salary of $267,422, which is what district officials say Munn makes now.

Marques Ivey, the board president, said Munn had requested that the board take up the issue even sooner, but the board had refused until now. Making a decision as early as next month goes against a recent union request.

Bruce Wilcox, the president of the Aurora teachers union, asked the board at a meeting to wait on the decision so that voters could use the election to make their preferences known.

“Allow the electors, the voters in this district, to pick the school board and allow that school board to decide whether the direction is where it needs to be or not,” Wilcox said. “It’s about the process.”

The seven-member Aurora school board has three seats up for grabs this November. Two members are term-limited, and one, Monica Colbert, has said she will not run for re-election.

Colbert, who has been generally supportive of Munn and his reforms, said the majority of the board won’t shift after this election, so there is value to making the decision soon.

“Now is the right time,” she said.

The board’s four newest members were put in that position in April 2018. Just months after they were elected as a union-backed slate, they had to weigh whether or not to renew Munn’s contract, and they did. But they were criticized by some who said they thought their election would lead to a leadership change.

Ivey responded directly to the criticism at the time by saying at a board meeting that he did not run “to fire Rico.”

Now those board members say that it’s better for members who have had more experience with the district to be the ones to make the decision.

“It was difficult for us,” Ivey said. “It would be difficult for anyone brand new to come on and have to make a decision about an employee they’ve never worked with.”

The board, as it does annually, has been evaluating the superintendent’s performance. District officials did not respond Thursday to a request for the latest evaluation.

In November, the Colorado Association of School Executives named Munn Colorado’s Superintendent of the Year for 2019, pointing to his reforms and district improvements.

In the past year board members have applauded Munn for the district’s improvements in graduation and student achievement, but have voiced concerns about how the district engages the community.

Munn has led the district since 2013, through a period of intense pressure from state education officials to improve school performance. He is controversial among some teachers, and staff surveys showed many teachers feel a lack of trust and communication. In response, the board created a new district goal last year to foster more collaboration. Initially, the board was going to create a personal rule for Munn, directing him on how to engage the community in district decision-making, but the board decided fostering collaboration should be a job for everyone.

Tuesday’s meeting is a regularly scheduled board meeting happening at 6 p.m. at the Professional Learning and Conference Center, 15771 E. First Ave.

For those who can’t make it in person, Aurora started livestreaming meetings this month. Instructions to set up the online stream are on the district’s website, here.

Adams 14 schools won’t have a superintendent as private company takes over operations

2019-06-18T23:05:16+00:00

As a private, for-profit firm starts managing Adams 14, the school district is likely to be without a superintendent for some time.

The Adams 14 school board removed Javier Abrego from daily duties as superintendent in April, but allowed him to finish out his contract, which expires at the end of June.

The board has not named an interim superintendent or started a superintendent search process.

Abrego’s removal came as the Adams 14 board, under an order from the State Board of Education, was in the process of choosing an external manager to take over most operations for the long-struggling district. Adams 14 recently finalized a four-year $8.3 million contract with MGT, a Florida-based education consulting firm.

“We don’t need a superintendent right now,” said board member David Rolla. “Realistically, MGT is our superintendent right now.”

Much of the scope of MGT’s work was dictated by the State Board of Education when they ordered the district to hand over management of the district to an outside group. That order is currently being challenged in a lawsuit by the teachers union, but MGT’s work is moving forward for now.

“The duties largely if not completely overlap with the duties of a superintendent,” said board member Dominick Moreno. “But we’ll be working with MGT on how long we’ll go without a superintendent.”

The management plan from MGT has been that they would slowly release some responsibilities back to the district over the course of four years, so that the district could be equipped to take back control at the end of the contract. Moreno said more conversations with MGT need to happen to decide when in the process it makes sense to add a superintendent.

In the contract, and per state orders, MGT has a say in such a decision, though company officials said those discussions haven’t happened yet.

Adams 14 board member Harvest Thomas said he believes that ideally the district should have a superintendent, or at least a point person who is more involved in daily operations than the school board, to look out for the district’s interests. Since Abrego’s departure, Darci Mohr, the district’s executive director of human resources/legal/risk management, has played this “point person” role.

But, Thomas said, MGT’s role complicates the lines of authority for such a position.

“How would you write a contract for that person?” Thomas asked. “And then how many people would want that position?”

MGT will have authority over any superintendent contract while they manage the district. That means MGT could recommend who should fill that role — and could ask the board to remove a leader whom the company believes isn’t working out.

MGT officials said it was too early to comment on what factors they may consider in choosing a leader for the district or in deciding when the district should hire a superintendent.

For now, the local team MGT has hired includes several experienced Colorado superintendents, including Harry Bull, who led Cherry Creek schools; Don Rangel, who has been superintendent in Weld County; Ron Cabrera, a former superintendent in Boulder; and Cindy Stevenson, a former superintendent of Jeffco Public Schools.

The district will have to pay MGT a base salary of $3.4 million in the first year. Officials received at least one grant of $200,000 per year from the state to help pay for that cost.

Abrego’s annual salary was raised to $177,581 at the time that he was released from his daily contract responsibilities. Not paying that salary also saves the district money that then can go to pay MGT, district board members said.

Adams 14 finalizes deal with company taking over management of the district

2019-06-10T19:56:10+00:00

Adams 14 officials have signed an $8.3 million, four-year contract with Florida-based MGT Consulting, officially becoming the first district in the state to hand over management to a company.

The state Board of Education in November ordered the Commerce City-based district of Adams 14 to hire an external manager for at least four years, to handle much of the district’s operations in an attempt to improve the achievement of its approximately 7,000 students.

The contract, which took effect Saturday and will go through Sept. 30, 2023, lays out specific deadlines for initial work which will include conducting a needs assessment, collecting data, and prioritizing school needs.

According to the contract approved unanimously by the Adams 14 school board in a special meeting on Friday, MGT will manage the district through a newly created subsidiary, Adams 14 Schools Succeed, LLC.

Harry Bull, the former superintendent of Cherry Creek schools who was named Colorado’s 2017 superintendent of the year, will lead the turnaround of the district for MGT. The company has hired other former educators including Ron Cabrera; Don Rangel; and Cindy Stevenson, the former superintendent of Jeffco Public Schools. Babette Moreno, Kate Greeley and Ron Peterson will also lead segments of the project.

The cost of the contract will be spread over four years, and will decrease each year. Besides the $8.3 million base cost, an array of performance incentives in two categories could add nearly $1.7 million over four years if the district achieves all the contact’s set performance measures.

The first year, the most expensive, requires the district to pay a base of $3.47 million for the work and offers $385,000 in incentives.

Besides monthly reports, in the first year the company will be required to report to the state possible further actions that may be needed to improve Adams City High School and Central Elementary, two schools whose low performance individually triggered the state to step in. For the time being, the state opted not to give separate orders for the schools, to allow MGT to suggest a plan. Those school reports will be due Sept. 1.

The company must also submit a needs assessment 20 days after the state test results are released this fall, and must submit a plan to address the district’s culture and climate by Dec. 13.

The Attorney General’s office will review the contract to ensure it complies with the State Board order. If it doesn’t, the department could report the noncompliance to the State Board which could issue potential follow-up orders.

Throughout the process of selecting an external manager, State Board of Education members have had concerns that district officials would refuse to give up authority to enable the selected company to turn things around.

The contract attempts to clarify that the district will give the company “all formal decision-making authority needed to administer the affairs and programs of the district,” subject only to the limitations in law and board policy.

The contract allows for situations in which the district can end the contract sooner, such as if the performance of the district or its schools decreases substantially, if the district can’t afford the contract, or if the state releases the district from the obligation to hire an external manager.

Read the full contract below:

Superintendents: Colorado schools must evolve to prepare students for a changing economy

2019-06-04T02:06:21+00:00

In a rapidly changing economy, Colorado students will need skills that they can apply across a range of fields. But state systems don’t always encourage schools to provide career training or the so-called soft skills that will help students adapt over time.

That was the message from five rural, urban, and suburban superintendents who spoke Monday on a panel at an annual superintendents forum hosted by the Denver-based Public Education and Business Coalition. Their discussion focused on the intersection of business and education — particularly how schools could help students prepare for meaningful careers.

Speaking alongside the incoming executive executive director of Clayton Early Learning, Becky Crowe, and attorney Craig May from the Denver-based firm Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell, the district leaders described innovative experiments in school systems around the state — from helping high school students obtain specialized industry credentials to training parents to advocate for their children to measuring how well schools are turning out students with “grit” or perseverance.

The superintendents were Rico Munn of Aurora, Lisa Yates of Buena Vista, Scott Siegfried of Cherry Creek, Thomas Tucker of Douglas County, and Pam Swanson of Westminster.

Several superintendents also said that the state accountability system, with a focus on student performance on math and literacy tests, doesn’t recognize efforts to provides vocational training or develop soft skills that will prepare them for work; that rural districts struggle to provide some opportunities that are common in urban and suburban districts; and that all districts lack the resources to focus on students’ social and emotional health.

Here are four key takeaways we heard at the superintendents forum:

Some skills will always have value.

Tucker said even as the district looks for ways to new ways to collaborate with business partners, “there are things that will not change.”

“Those are the essential skills we first called the 21st century skills: collaboration, communication, critical thinking skills, literacy, and so forth,” he said. “Regardless of what the landscape is for the next 10, 20, 30, 50 years, those essential skills always be necessary in producing a graduate who can be successful and be a great citizen.”

Colorado needs major fiscal changes, but they won’t come quick or easy.

In opening remarks at the forum, Gov. Jared Polis said the state needs fiscal reforms to “fundamentally make this state more governable for future governors, for future legislators” who want to make additional investments in such areas as education, water infrastructure, and transportation.

Cary Kennedy, Polis’ senior policy advisor for fiscal issues, also addressed the forum. She said the governor is always asking whether policy proposals before him will “make Colorado more affordable for families.” In the years to come, she said, Polis would push for expanded access to free preschool and limited tuition increases at public universities.

Kennedy said part of the solution lies in a broad tax reform that didn’t get much traction this legislative session. She also touted a request that will go to Colorado voters in November to allow the state to keep all revenue from existing taxes, instead of issuing refunds to taxpayers when the economy is strong. If the referendum passes, a third of any additional money would go to K-12 education, but the amounts likely would be modest.

Larger solutions that allow the state to make big investments in education will likely take many years and require building a consensus that has proved elusive, she said.

Citing an analysis showing that Colorado spends $2,300 less per student than the national average when cost of living is taken into account, Kennedy said that disparity “is denying kids opportunities from career and technical education to behavioral health services. It’s real, and it impacts every single student in every single school district.”

Changing the trajectory of children’s lives starts before they’re born.

The Clayton Early Learning Center’s Crowe said that investing in public education starts well before kindergarten. Students who enter kindergarten without attending preschool are several years behind, she said, but that interventions that would make a real difference start “literally prenatal.”

“We know now so much more from neuroscience around brain development and what happens for kids who are living in trauma and living under extremely stressful circumstances that if we can actually get at those challenges, support those families, support pregnant moms, we have got an incredibly different trajectory for kids as a result,” Crowe said.

Tucker recalled that as a child growing up in a small Arkansas town, he attended free full-day preschool and kindergarten. Such opportunities — only now becoming reality in Colorado, in the case of kindergarten, and still not widely available, in the case of preschool — allowed him to reach the position he holds today, he said.

School districts are trying new things to prepare students, but those efforts need more support.

Munn touted his district’s micro-credentialing program, which allows students to receive dozens of industry-recognized credentials and certifications in a range of skills, as well as a new partnership with Colorado State University that provides affordable college for more Aurora students.

Yates, of the Buena Vista district, said rural districts struggle to match those kinds of opportunities. They don’t have the same variety of business partners in their communities, and they don’t have the resources to offer lots of different pathways.

“With limited resources rurally, it’s difficult to make a lot of options for students. We could have a welding certificate program, but that means we’re not going to have hospitality. There’s an economy of choice, so that ability for students be adaptable to whatever opportunity is coming next is really what our focus is.”

But in comments echoed by other superintendents, Yates said the state accountability system needs to evolve to better measure the work schools are doing to develop character traits that will help students succeed on the job.

“What gets measured and gets reported is what gets done,” she said. “As long as what we’re doing to have students that are hardworking, that are committed, that communicate, that are creative, until that gets measured and reported, I think we’re going to stay stuck where we are.”

State Board, despite misgivings, approves Adams 14’s selected external manager

2019-05-09T19:52:57+00:00

Putting aside some of its concerns and noting its limited options, the State Board of Education cleared the way Thursday for Adams 14 to work with a for-profit consulting company to turn around the troubled school district.

In a 6 to 1 vote, the State Board approved Florida-based MGT Consulting as the district’s external manager.

The State Board had ordered Adams 14 to hire an external manager to run much of the district for the next four years. The law compelled the state to take action after the district had received the state’s lowest ratings for student achievement for more than eight years in a row.

That order, the first of its kind in the state, allowed the local school board to select who to hire, but also set deadlines and consequences. Some of the deadlines have already been pushed back multiple times as the process has hit roadblocks.

For instance, the district solicited proposals then presented its neighbor, Mapleton Public Schools, as the preferred external manager. The State Board then asked both districts to work together to strengthen their proposal, but later declined to support the arrangement and said no school district should manage another.

At the same time, some State Board members said they had early concerns about MGT, the proposal that had been ranked second by community reviewers. State Board members wanted a group that has already successfully completed a district turnaround. MGT is currently managing a full district in Indiana, but is only in the second year. The Adams 14 school board backed the firm anyway and asked it to work with another company, Schools Cubed, as a way to strengthen its plan.

Just before Thursday’s vote, State Board Chairwoman Angelika Schroeder said she was disappointed with how things worked out, but said she had to respect the local board’s ability to choose who it would hire.

“I definitely have some misgivings,” Schroeder said. “I don’t believe we have another choice.”

But she said she would like to see an external manager have more experience.

“I don’t think you know how hard it’s going to be,” Schroeder said to MGT officials. “Some of your colleagues do.”

State Board member Rebecca McClellan cast the only vote against MGT.

“I’m not convinced the contractor has all the capacity to manage the 25 to 30 people they’re bringing to Colorado,” McClellan said, noting that MGT’s listed local office in Centennial is actually a mailbox.

McClellan also pushed to get answers about the potential cost of the contract.

MGT officials revealed that their proposal could cost $8.4 million over the four years. Now that the State Board has approved the district’s selection of MGT, Adams 14 has 30 days to draft and sign a contract that specifies MGT’s work in more detail. As part of the contract, the district will begin negotiations about the cost, which the district excluded in selecting the manager.

McClellan said she felt as if the contract had an unlimited budget. Other State Board members noted that the cost, while high, is necessary, and may not come to more than $300 per student per year.

“If it works the way it should relative to student improvement, it will be the best money the district has spent,” said State Board member Steve Durham.

The State Board recently also approved MGT to do turnaround work with schools in Aurora and in Pueblo. Those projects also did not set a cost prior to the State Board’s vote.

Other state questions centered on details of the work MGT plans to do, how to communicate its progress, and how it plans to interact with the district’s school board, especially given that four of the five members on the board may be new come November.

District and MGT officials tried to reassure the State Board that the two sides are working well together.

“Authority will not be an issue in this partnership,” said Jonathan Fero, the district’s attorney.

MGT’s officials said they see positive signs that the district is willing to give the company input into major decisions. For instance, the district has put off some actions, including whether to replace the superintendent, whom the board ousted last month.

Yvonne Bradford, a director of the teachers union, including for Adams 14, said teachers will work with MGT.

“We’re going to roll up our sleeves,” Bradford said. “It’s what we’ve been doing. Our focus remains the same.”

The final deadline for the external manager to sign its contract and start working is July 1. Officials have said they may try to get to work sooner.

In ordering the district to hire an external manager, the State Board had spared the community from more drastic possible actions, such as school closure or dissolving the district. But at any point, state officials can take more action if they see that the State Board’s order isn’t being followed.

The State Board also voted Thursday to delay any action on the district’s Central Elementary School, which has persistently failed to improve, thus triggering state action of its own. The State Board voted to allow the district’s external manager to propose a plan to improve the school later this year.

Few easy options as Colorado State Board weighs outside manager for troubled Adams 14

2019-05-06T16:14:56+00:00

Colorado’s top education officials have already said they don’t think Florida-based MGT Consulting has the necessary experience to turn around the state’s most troubled district. This week, they’ll have to decide if they’ll approve the for-profit company anyway.

This isn’t the first time this year that Adams 14 has come before the State Board of Education seeking approval for an external manager that it must hire by July 1. The district was the first in the state ordered to hire an external manager after failing for more than eight years to improve student achievement. But the State Board rejected the district’s first choice — and then expressed skepticism of MGT, its runner-up.

The Adams 14 school board chose MGT anyway.

To strengthen the proposal, the local board asked the company to work with another consultant, but the proposal isn’t changing for now. However, MGT and district officials are pushing back against criticism and the company announced local hires, including prominent retired superintendents, who could lead districtwide changes.

Now the question is whether all of that is enough to convince at least four of the seven State Board members to allow Adams 14 to work with MGT.

If they reject the local school board’s choice for a second time, the State Board’s alternatives in a state that has a strong focus on local control are limited.

“We have very primitive tools,” said State Board President Angelika Schroeder. “There’s not much we can do.”

She said the process with Adams 14 has been complex and disappointing. The uncertainty of what exactly will change also has stretched out longer than some had hoped, so the board must weigh the urgency of starting the turnaround with the desire to get it right.

The November order that asks Adams 14 to hire an external manager specifies that if the State Board rejects MGT, the state and local board must work “cooperatively” to ensure a “prompt” selection of a manager that meets the state’s criteria.

The State Board can also take other action which includes the options originally available: closing schools, turning them into charter schools, dissolving the district, and giving schools innovation status to free them from some state or district rules.

Those options also come with their own challenges. For instance, although State Board member Steve Durham suggested he would push to turn all district schools into charters if the district didn’t select an appropriate manager, finding a charter organization that can take over in a matter of months could be difficult. Much of the community also opposes charters, and not having buy-in for a state-ordered turnaround could complicate how effective it would be.

Closing schools is a problem because some of the other schools nearby aren’t much better or don’t have space. The district only has one high school and one alternative high school, so closing one of those would essentially leave students without an in-district option.

Dissolving a school district so that it can be absorbed by neighboring districts is a complicated process under state law. Legislators this spring changed the law so that in cases like this districts no longer need local voter approval, but the law won’t kick in until August.

As far as giving Adams 14 school innovation status, state officials had recommended against that option because having more autonomy requires strong leadership and a strong plan. Adams 14 has had constant problems with turnover, including in leadership positions. Just last month, Superintendent Javier Abrego was released from the job. The district has not launched a search for a new superintendent.

Trey Traviesa, the chief executive officer of MGT said that one benefit of choosing MGT would be that the company has the ability to get to work right away. He said he expected that, if approved, MGT would begin working in the district this month.

“That really needs to happen,” Traviesa said. “We’re a little bit behind, but we’re comfortable with the timeline. It’s up to others too, but we’re ready.”

Schroeder said Thursday her concerns about MGT hadn’t gone away, but she said she was unsure of how to vote or best help the district.

In approving the MGT proposal to run the district, the Adams 14 school board approved a resolution, without discussion, that lays out why MGT is a strong candidate.

“MGT uses research-based strategies and has an impressive proven track record of success managing and working with school districts and schools across the United States, including schools in Colorado,” the resolution states. It goes on to say that the company also “affirmed that it honors local control and works to build trust and faith in the community, so it will support and be actively engaged in turnaround efforts.”

MGT has worked as a consultant to Colorado schools for years, but the company is relatively new to turnaround work as a full manager. Law didn’t require it until recently, so many companies haven’t done it yet. One of the other finalists for management of Adams 14, however, was the nonprofit Empower Schools, which did complete a turnaround in Lawrence, Massachusetts. MGT has worked with two Florida schools, is about to start working with middle schools in Pueblo and Aurora, and is managing the Gary, Indiana, district, a project that is still ongoing.

Adams 14 has asked the company to take on another partner, Schools Cubed, a third group that had proposed to run the district.

Based on an initial staff analysis by the Colorado Department of Education, Lisa Medler, executive director of improvement planning for the department, told the Adams 14 school board that only one of the district’s four finalists was likely to be able to meet the state’s criteria. That was the proposal from District Renaissance Partners, a joint application from Empower Schools and a local charter operator. That proposal was the community’s least favorite of the finalists.

In documents prepared for the meeting this week, department staff lay out new data about MGT’s previous work, but don’t draw any conclusions about the company.

School board members already fielded concerns and questions from some Commerce City city council members and the mayor at a joint meeting last week, mostly about community input, the fact that MGT is a private for-profit company, and the potential cost.

“We have orders from the State Board we have to follow,” said Connie Quintana, Adams 14 board president. “If it was our way, we probably would have did it a different way.”

Quintana urged the groups and the community to focus on the positive, and said she was sure the district could still succeed. Adams 14’s attorney, Jonathon Fero, tried to express confidence, telling city leaders it was highly unlikely the state would reject MGT as the district’s manager.

External manager choice unclear as Adams 14 board takes no action

2019-04-04T03:18:27+00:00

Uncertainty remains as to who will manage Adams 14 to try to raise student achievement in the struggling district.

The Adams 14 school board met behind closed doors for almost three hours Wednesday to talk in part about the external manager situation, but the board adjourned after the session without taking any action. Wednesday was the deadline the board had set last week asking Mapleton to commit to working with a new group, or risk losing the position as the district’s selected external manager.

The State Board of Education in November ordered the district to find an external manager after it spent eight years on a performance watch list. In February, the Adams 14 school board selected its neighboring district, Mapleton, to be the external manager, following the community’s wishes.

But when the district took the decision to the State Board of Education last month, state officials doubted Mapleton’s ability to effectively lead Adams 14. State officials postponed finalizing a manager, and instead asked Adams 14 and Mapleton officials to get together and talk. They encouraged them to identify a third party that could help Mapleton do the work of managing Adams 14.

A spokesman for the district said Wednesday that Adams 14 is going to work with the Colorado Department of Education to set up a meeting between Adams 14 and Mapleton “to try to honor the State Board of Education’s request.”

Last week, stating that they were following the state’s wishes, the Adams 14 board voted to select MGT Consulting, a runner-up in the search for a manager, as that other group, and asked Mapleton to commit to work with them by Wednesday afternoon.

Mapleton officials responded in a letter right away that did not commit to work with that group specifically, but asked for a meeting to talk about it.

Mapleton officials were not present at the Wednesday meeting, and reached earlier, officials said they have not had a meeting with Adams 14 since their correspondence last week.

Why the Denver school district’s top boss wants to create a ‘unified equity plan’

2019-04-01T21:02:58+00:00

It has been more than a year since a blue-ribbon committee presented the Denver school board with recommendations for how to better integrate the city’s schools, many of which reflect the racial and class divisions of Denver neighborhoods.

Now, some members of that commission — which included university professors, former elected officials, and city staff members — say they are disappointed that the district hasn’t made more progress on putting the recommendations into action. Seven of the 42 original committee members recently wrote a letter to the school board, expressing concern that “the work we did, in good faith, may end up on the trash heap.”

“You had some of the best thinkers around that table,” said Collinus Newsome, director of education for the Denver Foundation, a local philanthropy. “Not to have these recommendations in place, or starting to operationalize some of them, is a little frustrating.”

It’s a familiar complaint about blue-ribbon commissions. But Denver Public Schools officials insist that while this particular work may have been hampered for months by an all-consuming superintendent search, followed by contentious pay negotiations with the teachers union and a three-day strike, the recommendations aren’t headed for the heap.

Superintendent Susana Cordova envisions pulling together the recommendations made by the integration committee with a long list of other district initiatives, school board directives, and task force recommendations. The result will be a “unified equity plan” that will “align efforts that currently exist in silos,” according to an entry plan Cordova released in February after the strike was over. The unified equity plan will be completed this spring, the entry plan says.

“We must lean into the hard work of eliminating barriers,” Cordova wrote.

Equity is one of the district’s stated core values, and Cordova made it a focus of her bid for the top job. Closing test score gaps between white students and students of color, students with and without disabilities, and native English speakers and English language learners, is part of the district’s strategic plan. Called the Denver Plan 2020, it was introduced in 2014.

The district has also been under a federal court order for decades to provide a certain level of service to students learning English as a second language. The order was updated in 2012.

In the past two years, the administration and school board have developed several other initiatives that touch on issues of equity, as well. They include:

A resolution passed by the school board in February 2017 pledging to provide a “safe and welcoming” district for immigrant students
Recommendations made in May 2017 by the district’s African-American Equity Task Force, aimed at improving the treatment of African-American students and teachers
A district policy passed by the school board in June 2017 to limit suspensions and expulsions of preschool through third-grade students
A resolution passed by the school board in October 2017 pledging that the district become a “trauma-informed school district”
Recommendations made by the district’s integration committee, officially known as the Strengthening Neighborhoods Initiative, in December 2017
Feedback gathered in fall 2018 from community members during the superintendent search that ultimately resulted in hiring Cordova
A “black student excellence” resolution passed by the school board in February
The entry plan Cordova released in February
Recommendations made in March by a district task force on improving special education

The idea of the unified equity plan is to find the commonalities between these initiatives and others. For example, Cordova said, many of them stress that the district should recruit and retain a more diverse teaching force. Currently, about 76 percent of the district’s approximately 93,000 students are students of color, but 72 percent of teachers are white.

“Rather than have four or five different approaches to that, let’s have one approach to that in a unified equity plan,” Cordova told the school board recently.

The recommendations and initiatives that do not overlap will be divvied up among the departments most suited to put them into action, said Allen Smith, a district administrator whom Cordova recently named senior deputy superintendent for equity. The timeline will depend on how the district prioritizes those actions and the capacity it has to carry them out, Smith said.

The consultant the district is hoping to hire is Antwan Jefferson, a University of Colorado professor and Denver Public Schools parent who served as co-chair of the integration committee. Jefferson was also one of the seven committee members who signed the letter expressing frustration at the pace of progress. While he acknowledged that unforeseen circumstances, such as the resignation of the former superintendent, likely contributed to the delay in putting the recommendations into place, he said the time lapse is concerning.

When the district asks community members to participate in a dialogue about a complicated issue, “the assumption is it will lead to change in the district,” Jefferson said.

“When that isn’t the case, it is justifiably disappointing,” he said.

Diana Romero Campbell, the president of a local organization that provides after-school and summer learning programs, served as co-chair of the integration committee alongside Jefferson. Though she did not sign the letter, she said she’s glad other community members are raising the issue.

“Do I think it’s good that people are holding the flag and saying, ‘We need to focus on this?’ Absolutely,” she said. “It’s just a matter of style. I don’t want it to be contentious.”

The committee’s recommendations included setting a districtwide goal for increasing the socioeconomic diversity of Denver’s schools, launching a “meaningful” communications effort about the value of integration, and considering asking voters to raise tax money to pay the transportation costs of students who want to attend a school farther from home.

While the biggest-ticket recommendations have yet to come to fruition, Romero Campbell and others point to other wins. Several more Denver schools last year joined a voluntary district pilot program that gives enrollment preference to students from low-income families who don’t live within school boundaries but want to attend. The committee had recommended expanding the pilot, although results show it is only having modest effects.

The district also increased the number of school seats it holds open for students who move over the summer, which district leaders say provides late-arriving students more access to the district’s best schools that might otherwise be full. The committee had recommended that all Denver schools make seats available to students who enroll mid-year.

And in soliciting a new middle school for northeast Denver last year, the district asked for proposals that would be “diverse by design.” The committee had recommended the district evaluate all new school applicants on their ability to appeal to a diverse student body.