Could Crowded Brighton Schools (More Comfortably) Think Outside the Box?
A Denver Post Your Hub story from last week by Joey Kirchmer chronicles some growing pains in Brighton School District: Brighton High School and Prairie View High School are at or over capacity this school year, which has forced administrators to turn to outdoor modular classrooms, roaming teachers and possibly start looking at a split-schedule system.
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AFT's Randi Weingarten Steps Forward as Face of Opposition to Bold Dougco Reforms
Lucky Colorado. Yesterday the president of the nation’s second-largest teachers union paid a visit. Ed News Colorado reports that while AFT’s Randi Weingarten stopped in to tout an innovative school nutrition program at Denver’s Cole Arts and Science Academy, she also used her big political stick to bash the Douglas County school board: “This is what’s infuriating to me,” said Weingarten. “Here we have Denver, which took the germ of an idea and it has blossomed into this amazing thing with workers and management re-envisioning the school kitchen. “And across the border is Douglas County, where the school board is only interested in its own power. Douglas County schools used to be on the cutting edge in Colorado. But rather than respect the staff, for political and malevolent reasons the board has undermined the public education system that once was known as the jewel of Colorado.” Why is she so upset?
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Adams 12 Teachers Applaud Union Bargaining Transparency: Coming Soon?
Talk about picking up where I left off. On Wednesday I shared the story of Adams 12 taxpayer Joseph Hein, from his daughter’s difficult confrontation with a schoolhouse bully to his own experience having to be escorted for his own protection away from union bullies at a school board meeting. At the end of last week’s post I noted: Now he and other district residents have begun pushing for district-union negotiations to be open and transparent, so taxpayers and teachers can see what’s being negotiated, to be informed and act accordingly. Well, that very night Mr. Hein made just such a case in his public comment to the Adams 12 school board:
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From Schoolhouse Bullying to Union Bullying: Adams 12 Taxpayer Speaks Out
So you may have heard the Education Policy Center’s Ben DeGrow has started hosting a weekly K-12 education half-hour radio segment on AM 1310 KFKA in northern Colorado, every Wednesday at 10 AM. Earlier today he had a great conversation with a parent and taxpayer from Adams 12 in suburban Denver. Joe Hein was one of two speakers at a September 5 school board meeting who had to be escorted out for their own protection from teachers union protesters who didn’t appreciate a different opinion on the school board’s difficult budget cut decision. Protesters said the Board is violating the collective bargaining contract by asking teachers to make the same retirement contribution that other Adams 12 employee groups have to make. From the Colorado Watchdog: District taxpayer Joseph Hein, who has attended numerous board meetings this year, mentioned the extra burdens parents have taken from recent cuts made to transportation and middle school sports. He then gently urged the District 12 teachers in attendance to listen carefully to the board’s response. “You guys are part of the solution, as well,” he said, while union members waved signs from the crowd. Watch his brief remarks for yourself. To me, they appear […]
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Upward Spending, Revenue Trends Add Context to Tax-Hiking School Districts
From Todd Engdahl’s story yesterday in Ed News Colorado, at least 23 school districts in the state are going to local voters this year to ask for one or more tax increases–mill levy overrides for various operating costs, and/or bonds or BEST matching grant requests to pay for capital construction or renovation projects. (In the unusual case of Aspen, voters will decide on a sales-tax increase to fund schools.) The proposals follow one year after a historically-high 26 out of 38 local school tax proposals went down to defeat. Notably, this year five of the state’s nine largest school districts, cumulatively enrolling more than one-third of Colorado’s public K-12 students, are seeking voter approval of various tax increases. Some of them represent significant amounts (descriptions from Ed News in quotes): Jefferson County: “$99 million bond for a variety of building upgrades; $39 million override to maintain class size and protect some programs.” Denver: “$466 million bond for maintenance, technology, renovation and upgrades; $49 million override for enrichment, student support services and other programs. DPS also is an alternate for a $3.8 million BEST grant to renovate South High School, and some of the bond issue would provide a match.” Cherry […]
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Douglas County Stopped The Machine, Why Can't Other School Boards?
It’s Friday, so instead of making you read a lot, kick back and enjoy this 4-minute video from Reason TV, explaining how teachers unions’ influence on education politics works like a well-oiled machine:
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What Would Drive Families to Deceive to Get a Child into Aspen Schools?
A little over 18 months ago, a story broke out of Ohio that a mom was charged with a felony for falsifying information about where she lived to get her daughter into a different public school. Neither Kelley Williams-Bolar nor any other parent should be forced to choose between finding a better education and obeying the law. Back then I wrote: For someone like me living in Colorado, with a strong (but not perfect) open enrollment law, the first reaction was: You have to lie to get your kid into another school district? It’s very sad that some K-12 systems can be so backward and unresponsive, but it’s symptomatic of a larger problem…. Well, color me naive. A new story from the Aspen Times (H/T Ed News Colorado) reports that the problem is real in the resort town’s high-end school district, and includes more than just one person:
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Dougco School Board Challenges Union Leaders, May Seek Voters' Input
Believe it or not, it’s been a whole three days since I last shared some thoughts on the exciting goings-on in Colorado’s third-largest school district. An arbitrator ruled that Douglas County leaders couldn’t get back all the tax-funded union leave dollars because they didn’t get a change to the collective bargaining agreement in writing. So Tuesday night at the Board meeting, one of the directors offered a peaceful compromise: [Craig] Richardson said he wanted the district to “pursue every remedy until we have our money back … and I will not relent.” That is, he said, unless the union accepted his challenge – to move what he described as the $52,000 balance from a union political account into a fund created by board members to help teachers pay for classroom supplies. (You can read Richardson’s entire statement online here.) Keep the money in a political fund or donate it to cover the costs of teacher supplies? An interesting choice faces the local AFT union leadership. The $52,000 in question comes out to slightly less than $20 per Dougco teacher. But every little bit helps.
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State Board OKs Two More Falcon Innovation Schools; One Banishes Tenure
When Colorado passed the first-of-its-kind Innovation Schools Act in 2008, observers knew that the law was primarily tailored to transform the most challenging campuses in Denver Public Schools (DPS). And so it largely has played out. No one else has matched the 24 DPS schools who have taken advantage of the Act’s process to transform existing public schools by setting them free from many state laws, board policies and bargaining provisions. But if the state’s second-largest and most heavily urbanized district takes a look in the rear view mirror, they may begin to see a different district creeping up behind them: Falcon 49. Now, in one sense, Falcon cannot catch up, because there aren’t even 24 schools in its boundaries. But as a share of schools with officially approved innovation status, the El Paso County district is now clearly past DPS and behind only tiny Kit Carson, with its only two schools recognized under the Innovation Schools Act. Two months after granting innovation status to six Falcon schools, on Wednesday the Colorado State Board of Education unanimously approved innovation plans for two more Falcon schools–bringing the total to eight. In addition to the positive potential unleashed by achieving freedom through […]
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Local Breakdown of Colorado K-12 Spending Further Highlights Need for Reform
Since I got so long-winded yesterday (and because I know you’re tired of me hammering on the school funding issue once again), today’s post is going to be a short one. I’ve recently pointed out that the statewide K-12 financial trends are not quite as dire as some have proclaimed. But what about at the local level? The Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci has been doing his homework. Using the latest Census Bureau data, he has assembled a district-by-district comparison of Colorado K-12 spending between 2004-05 and 2009-10. It’s worth a look to get a localized sense of funding effects. On a per-student basis, all but 10 of the state’s 178 school districts spent more in 2010 than in 2005.
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