UPDATE: This story has been updated to include several paragraphs at the bottom that were inadvertently omitted by an editing error.
After eight years serving on the Denver Public Schools Board of Education — and twice as many years leading the non-profit Colorado Children’s Campaign — Barbara O’Brien said farewell to her board service on Tuesday.
A former lieutenant governor of Colorado, O’Brien is known for being an unwavering and dogged advocate for children’s education and health.
Now, O’Brien will watch from the sidelines, hoping that a new, Denver Classroom Teachers Association-backed school board will keep the same focus.
“We have a predominantly brand new board that doesn’t have that much experience with policy governance; how you lead an organization without micromanaging the superintendent,” O’Brien said in an interview moments after her board service ended.
“And we tend to drift into adult issues, and I’m worried that there won’t be a laser focus on how students are doing.”
O’Brien recently voted against the now-approved stipend for the incoming and re-elected DPS board members, describing it as one of the “adult issues” that could have waited until after the board had tackled student-related issues such as a lack of sufficient mental health services, low reading scores for young students, and declining enrollment.
She also spent recent years on the board speaking on behalf of school leaders who told her school nurses are scarce in the district, and she said it will take a great deal of professional development (a steep learning curve for new board members) to implement policy changes on complex issues.
“Even though I had a lot of experience in the public sector, my God, was my learning curve huge when I first got on the board,” O’Brien said, “and I just hope there’s enough time for the new board members to be open to learning and not have what we’ve heard on the campaign trail be sunk in cement for them.”
O’Brien and two other former board members, Jen Bacon and Angela Cobián, officially handed the reins over to their respective replacements—Scott Esserman, Michelle Quattlebaum and Xochitl “Sochi” Gaytan—during a special board meeting Tuesday evening. O’Brien was the only one of the three to serve two terms; the other two stepped down after one four-year term.
The new board voted Gaytan, who represents Southwest Denver, the board’s president, taking the position from the re-elected Carrie Olson, who was also nominated. Incumbent Tay Anderson was elected vice-president, also beating out Olson for the position. Quattlebaum, representing Northeast Denver, was voted secretary, and Esserman replaced Cobián as the board’s treasurer.
All three outgoing board members have said they plan to make themselves available to the new board members for any guidance they may want or need.
“I’ve sent my cell phone number to all of them if they want to talk, but I don’t think I’ll get a call because we were so divided on different things that are important,” O’Brien said.
One such division the former DPS board members had to work through was the search for and decision to hire a new superintendent after Susana Cordova abruptly resigned just over a year ago.
Even though O’Brien cast the lone vote against now-Superintendent Alex Marrero, she said she hopes Marrero can perform his duties without catching heat from the new board.
“I’m hoping that (Marrero) will stand up when board members try to micromanage him … He has to push back when they get into the weeds on things,” O’Brien said.
She also said that another major issue for the board to deal with is the fact that many DPS students are behind in reading.
“It’s frustrating to have change be slow, but I think the last thing we need is to slow down the superintendent when we have to recover from the shut-down and we have kids who were behind to begin with.”
O’Brien said DPS students in kindergarten through the third grade have fallen behind in their reading levels, according to not-yet-published results from the Colorado READ Act.
It’s going to take some “grit,” she said, from the new board members to figure out why reading scores are low and how to support Marrero in rethinking curricula. She also said in her experience, though, it can take at least a year for new board members to acclimate and set their campaign agendas in motion.
O’Brien had one final message for the new DPS board.
“You have to look yourself in the mirror and realize things are more complicated than you thought,” she said. “It just takes a while to realize that every vote you place has to be the right vote from your perspective for every child in the district, and their parents, not just your corner of the district.”
