Alan Gottlieb

Most of what I see looking back over the past year, on numerous issues, is a lot of time wasted and a road littered with the detritus of dysfunction.

Some board members are backpedaling as fast as possible from the understandably unpopular recommendation to close schools. But if their concern is so great, they could and should have intervened sooner.

Free speech can be hard to hear at times, particularly when blistering language is aimed at you. But if you’re in a public-facing position, sometimes you just have to take it.

The school board has sought no community input on Superintendent Alex Marrero’s performance, and it will be another year before the board is supposed to take a serious, data-driven look at his performance. That is just weeks before the next school board election.

In threatening to sue four of its former students and an ex-principal over an alleged trademark violation for a racial justice-themed podcast the students created, DPS is violating its own professed principles and making itself look like a big, bad bully. 

Denver Public Schools appears poised to marginalize the state-mandated District Accountability Committee. It is the latest example of using Policy Governance to drive agendas and limit public scrutiny and accountability. It’s just the latest example of the district and board’s move away from transparency and public accountability.

Based on state test scores released last week, many DPS students are in academic crisis, and some board members are ignoring that and opting to indulge in Trumpian grievance-fests instead of doing their duty.

The DPS board got back to work with a retreat Monday, and quickly got up to its old, bad tricks as well, violating the spirit if not the letter of Colorado’s open meeting law. 

Denver Public Schools board Vice President Tay Anderson discusses board relations, the coup that wasn’t, and other issues related to DPS board dysfunction