Hello, readers. We are pleased to introduce Boardhawk, an independent service dedicated to community-based commentary and advocacy-focused coverage of Denver Public Schools and its recently reconfigured Board of Education.
The November 2019 election yielded a ‘flipped’ school board, with its three new members skeptical of the direction the district had taken under its two previous superintendents, Tom Boasberg and Michael Bennet. While recalibration, flexibility, and open-mindedness are always important, the founders of Boardhawk worried that the new board might throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, and make changes detrimental to the most vulnerable DPS students. That’s why we decided to launch this effort, to act as a monitoring service in this era of upheaval.
In the midst of our planning, the COVID-19 pandemic threw the world, including education, into disarray. The ground shifted under everyone’s feet in ways no one could have anticipated. We pledge to be sensitive to the tenor of the times as we launch this service, understanding that everyone is operating in uncharted territory.
Boardhawk will feature a variety of voices from the community, many from partner organizations including Transform Education Now, FaithBridge, African Leadership Group, and A+ Colorado, with additional partners to be announced soon. We will challenge decisions we believe are not in the best interests of all children, families and everyone with a stake in public education in Denver. We will simultaneously celebrate those decisions that are. Our commentary and reporting will always be fact-based, and never anchored in the fear or smear tactics that have, sadly, become commonplace. Our commentary and reporting will come from distinctive points of view that represent our diverse collective.
If you would like to submit a piece to Boardhawk for publication, please reach out using the contact form on this site. We will review all submissions, and welcome points of view that diverge from ours. We cannot, however, guarantee that any piece submitted will be published.
Alan Gottlieb is Boardhawk’s editor. Alan has been a Denver-based journalist for more than 30 years. He covered DPS for the Denver Post in the mid-1990s, worked as an education program officer for The Piton Foundation, and co-founded Education News Colorado and Chalkbeat. For the past five years, he has worked as a contract writer and communications consultant.
We’re grateful to our funders, including individual donors, and RootED, and our fiscal agent, the Colorado League of Charter Schools for helping support our work. No organization or outside individual exerts influence over the site’s content. Nor does their support constitute agreement with opinions expressed here.
