Tag Archives: vacancy

Last month, I wrote about how the Douglas County School District Board of Education’s anti-reform Toxic Trio—Anne-Marie Lemieux, Wendy Vogel, and David Ray—abrogated their duties as elected officials by refusing to accept board majority member Doug Benevento’s resignation from the board. In so doing, they signaled their willingness to leave tens of thousands of Dougco residents without representation on the school board and ensure deadlock on most important issues. Benevento’s resignation was accepted a short time later, but only after Benevento himself felt awkwardly obligated to come back to accept his own resignation—an unprecedented scenario to the best of my knowledge. Since then, the district has embarked on a process designed to fill the vacancy in accordance with board policy and the law.  Meanwhile, the Toxic Trio has continued to incessantly lecture their school board colleagues about the importance of “following policy and the law.” They have continued sermonize at every opportunity about the criticality of transparency and openness with “the community.” I happen to agree with both points. Policy and the law must be followed, and transparency is critically important. But all this proselytizing begs an important question: Why don’t they put their money where their collective mouths are?

I know I’m a little snarky from time to time, but I generally feel like I’m a pretty even-keeled kid. It takes a fair amount to get me mad. But if there’s one thing that is absolutely, positively guaranteed to send me off the rails, it’s when grown-ups entrusted with the levers of power choose to operate those levers to benefit themselves and harm students, parents, and taxpayers. That is exactly what I saw happen last night when I tuned in for my favorite biweekly Tuesday entertainment: the Douglas County School District Board of Education meeting. As some of you may know, Doug Benevento, a member of the four-person conservative majority on the board, resigned his seat on August 17. He submitted a brief but official “letter” of resignation to Dougco BOE President Meghann Silverthorn, who subsequently informed the other board members of the news. In case all of that wasn’t clear or public enough, Benevento also ran an op-ed explaining his decision in the Denver Post, the largest newspaper in the state. In addition to that, major news outlets across Colorado covered the resignation, including: 7News 9News Chalkbeat Colorado CBS Denver The Denver Post That’s only a partial list, […]

Earlier this week Ed News Colorado reported that five Jefferson County residents have stepped forward to fill the school board vacancy left by departing Scott Benefield: Here are the candidates: * Harvey Burns of Westminster retired from the district is 2004 after 30 years as an English teacher and librarian. He works as a substitute teacher. He was an officer of the Jefferson County Education Association and served on the board of the Colorado Education Association in the middle 1990s. * Edward Duran of Arvada is vice president of an information technology company. * Tomas Griego of Westminster is a retired middle school teacher and middle and high school administrator. After retirement he worked as a hearing officer in the Westminster schools. Most of his career was as assistant principal of Hodgkins Middle School in the Westminster district. * Robin Johnson of Arvada is the mother of three children in the Jeffco schools and has been a school volunteer and active in the Jeffco PTA. She works as an administrative assistant in an accounting firm. * Cody McNutt of Arvada is a graduate of the International Baccalaureate program at Lakewood High School, currently is a senior at the University of […]