Last week, the local alumna chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority and the Epitome of Black Excellence and Leadership hosted two forums for school-board candidates running at-large in Denver and in its northeast and central regions.
These forums focused specifically on the needs and interests of the 11,000 Black students served by the Denver Public Schools and were billed as “Hard Questions Only.”
Only two of the 10 eligible candidates showed up: Scott Esserman and Michelle Quattlebaum, incumbents with actual track records to dissect (and dissected, they were.). Nine candidates originally confirmed they would attend, and seven of those candidates later backed out, in some cases just hours before their scheduled forum.
Candidates decline to attend forums for many reasons: illness, real scheduling conflicts, and sometimes concerns about a host’s possible bias. As noted in a recent Boardhawk podcast, Esserman and Quattlebaum did not attend an event put on by TEN Collective Impact, based on concerns the group had issued its endorsements prior to TEN’s forum. (Neither the Deltas nor the Epitome are endorsing.)
I attended both Black-student-focused forums, and they leveraged an incredibly thoughtful, interactive and revealing format, which included well-researched questions from community specific to each candidate and in-the-room performance tasks. Moreover, the focus on Black students was explicit in each and every minute of the 120-minute run time.
DPS has not kept prior promises to Black students and families. DPS is not getting it done for Black kids, academically. These realities mean Black people should ask hard questions – and candidates should answer them.
During the forums, for example, the Black community clearly was holding Esserman and Quattlebaum to account for system failures for Black children under their watch as current board members.
Again, some candidates may have backed out of these Black-focused forums for real reasons. I suspect some opted out for different kinds of reasons, however. Reasons like: it was going to be hard, and maybe confrontational and uncomfortable, and the forum was designed as a smaller, intimate gathering or “Black people don’t vote” or “There aren’t a lot of Black voters in the grand scheme of things” (so, is it worth the time?). And the moderator knows some candidates well, so would she be biased?
And also the reality that moderator MiDian Shofner, the Epitome’s founder, signs her emails: “I’m just here to make racism as uncomfortable as possible.”
And it was uncomfortable to sit in the audience and see how few school-board candidates showed up for forums about Black students in DPS. Very uncomfortable.
Black students deserved more from the adults on those two nights. They deserve more from adults in the system every night and every day. That’s the whole point.
The candidates who dismissed these opportunities may have avoided Ms. Shofner and her community’s “hard questions” for a night or two, but, if they get elected, they will see Ms. Shofner again. I suspect they will see her and her compatriots a lot.
As board members, elected candidates will see and hear from an array of unapologetic advocates, regularly. The board role requires listening to community and learning from them, linking arms with community to enact policy changes to improve student experiences in DPS, and later being accountable to community for actual results, or the lack thereof.
After attending last week’s forums, I know two candidates are ready for those parts of a board member’s job. Everyone else? I guess time will have to tell.
