Category Archives: School Board

The Aspen Daily News yesterday reported on the struggle facing school board members in the upscale mountain community as they ponder whether to support the billion-dollar tax hike headed for November’s ballot: Board member Elizabeth Parker told Pitkin County commissioners in a joint meeting Tuesday that she would have a hard time throwing her support behind Amendment 66, which voters will decide in November, because it will likely lead to future requests for local tax increases. Yes, that’s one valid concern. One can imagine how that might make it difficult for a school board official to hesitate in supporting a proposal that means more tax dollars for education programs. Initiative 22 (probably soon to be renamed Amendment 66) puts the heat on a number of districts to ask local residents for more in property taxes. It also provides state dollars to underwrite many local mill levy elections, and creates three new types of mill levy taxes.

It’s been awhile since I’ve written about good old SB 191, Colorado’s 2010 law passed in an attempt to create a more meaningful teacher and principal evaluation system. As the 2013-14 school year gets underway, school districts across the state are meeting the requirement to put the new system into place. What can we expect? That’s the question to ask, as observers wonder how the new system will affect classroom practices and behaviors, as well as interactions with principals and the role of districts in support. What we do know as of August 1 is who will follow the state’s model evaluation system. Ed News Colorado tells us that 160 of 178 districts have adopted this approach fully, further noting: Another 10 districts will use a “hybrid” – usually the model system for principals and their own systems for teachers. Jeffco, the state’s largest district, is among the “hybrid” category. According to Ed News, only seven districts are going their own route completely:

A good reminder when analyzing policies, including in the world of K-12 education, is to take some time to look beneath the surface. A policy may not be exactly what it seems. The inimitable Mike Antonucci recently offered up a telling example. Under the heading “How to Close ‘Open’ Bargaining Sessions”, he points readers to a column written by Las Vegas teacher Chip Mosher, recounting his adventure trying to attend so-called open negotiations. The result? It turns out before he could enter a session in which a union bargaining team was supposed to be bargaining on his behalf, Mr. Mosher says he had to sign a form that’s somewhere between a nondisclosure agreement and a “loyalty oath.” This encounter came after two previous attempts to observe negotiations. When Mosher asked if the union leader could sign his own form, something to the effect that he wasn’t being singled out, he was refused. The Las Vegas teacher tried to get more of an explanation, wanting to know from the union representative at the door if only teachers had to sign the union’s “loyalty oath” form:

There’s a growing appetite to change the way schools run and learning is delivered at the local level. The forward-thinking innovative programs of Douglas County and Falcon 49 have raised interest in a number of areas. One of those school districts is Greeley 6 in northern Colorado, which my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow has just highlighted in a brief new issue backgrounder: Northern Colorado’s Greeley Public Schools serves a challenging population of nearly 20,000 enrolled students. Receiving nearly $9,000 per student, the district has achieved unacceptable academic results–including low performance on state assessment tests, high remediation rate for graduates, and a decline in the district’s accreditation rating.

Let the head-scratching commence. If you read this article by Yesenia Robles in today’s Denver Post, you’d think that Adams 12 school district had been hoarding money and just started to fix the problem, thanks to the watchful eye of the teachers union: After a year of deflecting accusations of questionable and unethical budget practices, Adams 12 Five Star Schools officials say they are changing the way they develop district budgets. Unfortunately, the story just doesn’t add up. First of all, it was only a week ago we learned about the Colorado Department of Education’s latest school district fiscal health report. The auditors gave Adams 12 and four other districts a risk indicator for “spending down fund balances.” So how can it be hoarding and overspending at the same time?

Danger, Will Robinson… danger! Ed News Colorado today brings our attention to the latest edition of the state education department’s “Fiscal Health Analysis of Colorado School Districts.” Agency workers take a look at five key indicators to see if a school board is undertaking risks that lead a district into financial stress. This year, 48 of 178 Colorado school districts earned at least one of the five warning lights — which are based on careful looks at things like assets, expenditures, fund balances, and debt. Nine of the 48 districts picked up two indicators. Two of the nine districts earned two indicators for the second straight year: Jefferson County and Trinidad. But Jeffco, the state’s largest school district, stands alone in having multiple fiscal health indicators for three consecutive years (only Trinidad and tiny Hoehne Reorganized 3 had even one indicator throughout that time span).

Let’s talk about cutting-edge changes to a K-12 school system. Let’s talk about reimagining education, by changing the policies and power structures that confine rather than thrive. Let’s talk about unleashing a flexible system poised to achieve excellence. Change isn’t easy, but one Colorado school district is head and shoulders above its peers in taking these bold steps: Douglas County. Cue school board member Doug Benevento’s excellent guest column in Sunday’s Denver Post:

A few days ago I told you about the national attention attracted to Douglas County School District’s market-based pay system. That was before Choice Media highlighted the story on its Ed Reform Minute, or the Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci linked to the Reuters story with the quip: In Douglas County, Colorado, they are actually going to offer more pay to attract teachers in shortage areas, thus becoming the first school district to enact the law of supply and demand. Supply and demand? Whoa, how radical for K-12 education! First, let me assure you there is no known threat of economists taking over schools. Put those conspiracy flowcharts away. Douglas County’s fluid system assigns new teacher hires to one of five different salary bands, based on which of 70 teaching job descriptions for which they have applied. Both middle school and high school social studies instructors (who presumably cover economics in class) fall in the lower two pay bands. For some, however, like displaced union president Brenda Smith, a basic principle of economics is just a passing fad for the world of education:

Douglas County School District continues to move forward with major system changes that recognize and reward performance in meaningful ways. And the press continues to pump up the controversy while leaving factual disputes unresolved. Today’s Denver Post turns attention to a DCSD elementary school where a principal misapplied the new employee evaluation standards, creating a false impression of how many teachers rate “highly effective.” I already provided some clarification to that story, when it still only graced the pages of local newsprint. But the Post story includes an observation about a different Dougco elementary school that bears a closer look: Parents at Saddle Ranch Elementary held a rally Thursday in support of the school’s teachers after they heard that about 18 of the campus’ 35 teachers were leaving the district. They said none of the teachers at the school were given a highly effective rating, and they believe those teachers are not being valued. District officials would not comment on teacher ratings at the school, and said only eight teachers, including three retirees, have officially said they are leaving. [emphases added]

It’s Friday! Which means it must be time to provide some more clarity on the bold innovations taking place in Douglas County. Today provides a great opportunity to highlight a fairly balanced 9News story, making sure to emphasize and elaborate on some key points and add one or two others that may have been left out for sake of time. The premise of the report is an unusually high number of teachers leaving DCSD’s Chaparral High School. Two teachers and union members — including one who served on DCFT’s 2012 negotiation team — say they are departing for greener pastures because of an “adversarial” relationship with the central administration, particularly related to the development of a teacher evaluation system: “Teachers were not a part of the process. We did not collaborate. We were not a part of the conversation of what was going to be included in it,” [Chaparral teacher and DCFT negotiator Carlye] Holladay said. The first issue to address is the entire perception that Chaparral is representative of some massive teacher walkout. The 9News story showed a slide of district figures that indicate teacher turnover is only up ever so slightly, in line with last year’s numbers. Given […]