Category Archives: Governor

Update: Pam let me know that a couple things quoted from her interview with 9News weren’t quite right. So I’ve marked them below. Yesterday, Education Policy Center Director Pam Benigno spoke out about a proposal to raise school property taxes in Jefferson County: “Well, I think this is definitely not a good time,” said Pam Benigno, director of the Education Policy Center within the Independence Institute. The Independence Institute is a Golden-based, non-partisan government watchdog group. Benigno says the homeowner should not have to shoulder the burden of JeffCo’s increasing costs. “I think that this is, this is too much,” said Benigno. “However, the system is the problem. They will always need more money.” Benigno claims that while attending a meeting on the 2004 bond election [it was actually many years before that], a district staffer told her JeffCo plans on a bond issue or mill levy increase once every four or five years. “As a citizen of Jefferson County, that really makes me uncomfortable to know that they’re planning on raising my taxes every five years,” said Benigno. “And, this time, this has been only four years.” Benigno says the district should take a hard look at the way […]

Roy Romer is the former governor of our state and leader of a national group that wants politicians to talk more about education. This very important man sat down with Berny Morson from the Rocky Mountain News to answer five questions. Here’s the very first thing Gov. Romer said: Since ’83, we’ve really made relatively little progress, we’ve really been static. The rest of the world has been going up very rapidly. Among 30 industrial nations, we’re 25th from the top in math. We’re 21st from the top in science. Other countries have made great progress. Poland, South Korea, Singapore, Finland, Canada – we simply have not kept pace with the progress in education worldwide. Graduation will occur in a couple of weeks, and nearly 1.2 million kids won’t graduate who should have graduated. We have a real crisis on our hands. A good reminder for people around Denver to come out this Wednesday, May 21, to see Flunked: The Movie. Gov. Romer might want to see the successful innovations featured in the film, innovations that offer hope to America’s public schools. Time is running out to sign up for this exciting, limited-space event.