Category Archives: Suburban Schools

Summer vacation is almost over (for some students, it already is). Any reason why I can’t write about Douglas County again? That’s what I thought. So here goes… Education Week‘s Stephen Sawchuk reported last week from the annual the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention that members sounded off on a local Colorado issue: The union passed, unanimously, a special resolution pledging solidarity for AFT affiliates that it asserts have been attacked, beseiged, or had their contracts superceded, as in Detroit, Chicago, and Douglas County, Colo. Today a friend found and brought my attention to a copy of the resolution. Truth be told, it contains more Whereas‘s than you can shake a stick at, including the paragraph that honed in on Colorado’s third-largest school district:

Here’s a good question I haven’t thought a lot about before: What kind of payments should school board directors be eligible to receive? I’m not talking about campaign contributions, which most districts unfortunately allow from groups that get dues collection services from government payroll systems. Special interests stopped Colorado from cleaning up that unethical cycle four years ago. No, I’m talking about publicly-funded compensation for official service. Last week a school board member from Loveland proposed that her Thompson School District might help cover expenses: Board member Denise Montagu sparked the conversation during a special meeting this week in which the application deadline for the vacant District A board seat was extended. Specifically, she asked if the board members could be reimbursed for mileage or receive a stipend towards their personal cellphone bills.

So no more union monopoly collective bargaining agreement exists for teachers in Colorado’s third-largest school district… Now what? Change certainly isn’t easy. And the group losing its prestigious status, in this case the Douglas County Federation of Teachers, isn’t just going to walk away quietly into the shadows. The largest teachers union, NEA, already is experiencing a serious membership decline nationwide. So I’m sure national AFT leadership doesn’t want its largest Colorado chapter to set the precedent of surrendering exclusive bargaining authority, government dues collection, and taxpayer-funded personnel. In that sense, seems like they almost had to ask the state to get involved. What state officials opt to do is almost anyone’s guess. I pointed out before that while taking such a bold step may be unsettling to some employees accustomed to old patterns and relations, that in the end Douglas County teachers will have both a less filtered professional voice and more effective membership options without a master agreement. Reporter Jane Reuter’s new story for Douglas County newspapers brings home that latter point quite well:

For the record, it’s been more than three weeks since I’ve mentioned anything here about Douglas County. (So yes, I was gone for about two weeks of that, not blogging at all, but anyway….) In the meantime, quite a bit has happened — such as the 60,000-student school district became the state’s largest without a recognized teachers union. As of July 1, when the collective bargaining agreement expired, Dougco also stopped collecting dues for the union and its political activities. On June 21, receiving a clear signal that the reform-minded Board of Education wasn’t going to back down on its key proposals, the Douglas County Federation of Teachers (DCFT) sent a letter to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE) requesting state intervention. Read for yourself, but as best as my Education Policy Center friends can tell, union leaders’ argument boiled down to this: The Board made big changes to its proposals midway through the renegotiation process, right before open bargaining sessions began [without noting that the union’s very same request for intervention included several points in which the union was backing out of previous agreement]; We’ve had this monopoly bargaining power for 40-plus years; Our exclusive representative status […]

About six weeks ago I shared with readers that the Falcon School District 49 innovation plan was nearing a crossroads. That crucial time may now be upon us. As reported in the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Colorado State Board of Education yesterday unanimously approved requests to give six District 49 schools official innovation status: “Innovation is here to stay,” said Bob Felice, Innovation Zone leader/assistant superintendent, adding that the plans grant a lot of autonomy to teachers and parents. Yesterday’s Board votes bring the list of innovation schools to 33, including 24 from Denver Public Schools and now the following six from Falcon 49:

So I hear there’s this little election going on in Wisconsin today. As is so often the case, the political happenings are closely connected to the issues of our public school system. One of the nation’s leading education reform voices, RiShawn Biddle, has written a two-part series (here and here) highlighting the dilemma centrist Democrats face regarding aggressive collective bargaining reforms like those advanced in Wisconsin by Governor Scott Walker. Biddle shines a big spotlight on the national implications of today’s likely Walker victory for the future politics of education reform. You really need to read both pieces in their entirety. But in this passage he really drives the point home:

What if I told you the Colorado school district with the second-highest average teacher salaries just dramatically increased compensation for new hires and is still figuring out how to pay for it? A few days ago the Boulder Daily Camera reported that the Boulder Valley School District agreed to boost starting teacher salaries to one of the state’s highest, increased by 17 percent from $34,192 to $40,000 (H/T Complete Colorado). As the article explains, that figure is for teachers who hold a bachelors degree. Such an across-the-board pay increase certainly represents a nice gesture from the district. For teachers with extra credentials, it gets even higher: For Boulder Valley, the major changes are the $40,000 starting salary and incentives to earn advanced degrees. A master’s degree, for example, would bump a starting teacher’s salary up to about $51,000. That’s an even bigger jump from the current starting MA salary of $36,927. The question for BVSD officials is what will they get for their money?

School is out… Hooray!!! But in Douglas County, Colorado’s third-largest school district and a true hotspot of education reform, the summer months still give us plenty to which we can look forward. First, this month of June represents the final 30 days before the collective bargaining contract with the Douglas County Federation of Teachers (DCFT) expires. What happens after that, no one knows. It’s going to look much different, though, that’s for sure. Groundbreaking open negotiations kicked off there more than seven weeks ago. I applauded the bold proposals set forth by the Douglas County school board, some of which also caught the favorable attention of Denver Post columnist Vincent Carroll. Previously, my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow had raised the question of how serious DCFT was about embracing open union negotiations. Transparency has seemed to suit everyone just fine, even as a few hundred teachers showed up at the last session to send a statement. It’s good to listen to the voice of teachers. Especially the best teachers. And an organization doesn’t necessarily have to be recognized by a government body as exclusive bargaining agent to ensure that happens. Are the teachers in Colorado’s 137 non-bargaining districts (as […]

A team of local education reform groups has partnered to release the new report True North: Goals for Denver Public Schools. It’s a quick, worthwhile read for anyone interested in improving the outcomes of American urban education. Denver Public Schools is often cited as a reform model for districts in other cities across the land, but this new report says even DPS isn’t aiming high enough. True North places a healthy focus on academic achievement as measured by “exit-level proficiency,” or how much students know when they complete elementary, middle and ultimately high school. As Ed News Colorado commentator Alexander Ooms notes, this focus corrects a misplaced obsession on academic growth scores as an end unto themselves. While DPS is above the 50th percentile in growth, not enough students are catching up to where they need be. In some cases, they’re actually falling further behind. DPS justly has been lauded for the development of its School Performance Framework (SPF) that incorporates a range of meaningful factors to determine how well schools are doing. But the new report makes a great argument that the current bar is set too low. Expecting more DPS schools to earn 50 percent of the available […]

On Monday night, Denver CBS4 investigator Rick Sallinger broke a story about Adams 12 dismissing two teachers for allegedly bilking thousands of dollars in PTO funds that were supposed to go for student trips. I never like to see such a story as the one featured in the 3-minute video. Interviewed by Sallinger, school board president Mark Clark made a great point: We hold our kids accountable. We have them expelled or suspended for their behavior. I think the same rules apply for everybody. The husband-and-wife educator duo look to be in hot water. According to the CBS4 report, the decision to pursue firing Johnny and Pamela Trujillo followed an internal district audit. I’m not able to comment on the specifics of the case to presume anyone’s guilt, but if further investigation confirms the truth of the serious charges, it also reflects on an important policy: teacher tenure (aka “due process”).