Alan Gottlieb

The Denver school board’s focus on Black excellence is important, but looks two-faced when board members are ignoring the Black excellence at a Far Northeast Denver charter school.

Let’s cut to the chase: The likely refusal to allow a new DSST high school to open next year is all about the adults.

UPDATED: The Denver school board has decided to postpone its vote on allowing a DSST Rachel Noel High School to open next year. District officials worked this week with board members and DSST leadership to craft a compromise, but were unable to come up with a solution. An agreement satisfactory to all seemed a distant prospect at best.

The recently released school board evaluation of Denver Public Schools Superintendent Susana Cordova is a vague document that sheds light on little more than board members’ divisions over her future.

The 6-1 vote masks significant divisions on the board and, more importantly, indefinitely delays the development of any kind of new accountability system parents can use to figure out which schools would work best for their children.

Should parents be deprived of data on school performance because they might “weaponize” it? One Denver school board member said as much Thursday.

“Pandemic pods” have the potential to widen already gaping opportunity gaps. But there are ways to minimize the negative collective impacts.

Mike Miles, CEO of First Future Schools, has deftly threaded the needle in a letter to his staff about reopening school next month. Read the full letter here.

Yes, education needs to change fundamentally. For now, though, we need to set aside our differences to get through the next year.