DPS attorney Andrew Ringel goes far beyond Pryor to argue that Kane is interfering with the district’s independent oversight of schools and threatens school safety by usurping the district’s rules for school visitors and volunteers and encouraging others to harass district employees.
The generic-sounding email that landed this fall in KIPP Colorado charter school network Executive Director Tomi Amos’s inbox, presaging a $6 million gift from philanthropist MacKenize Scott, could easily have been passed off as some kind of unwanted solicitation.
The lengthy hearing has gone beyond Pryor’s actions to probe a deeper undercurrent whether DPS has done enough to provide adequate resources and opportunities to Black students in response to longstanding equity concerns by community leaders, parents and educators.
Students, namely Black boys, are significantly more likely to graduate high school and enroll in college if they have a Black man as a teacher in elementary school. Black boys improve standardized test scores when they have Black men as teachers. Simply put, Black boys – and students more broadly – benefit from having Black men in the classroom.
Last week I came across the latest example of at least one Denver’s school board member focusing on the trivial in place of substance, while simultaneously trying to use board power to breathe down the neck of innovation schools.
Chalkbeat has an excellent update on the Know Justice Know Peace podcast dispute, after senior reporter Melanie Asmar viewed video of an August meeting...
A divided Denver Public Schools Board of Education Thursday restored some of the autonomy to 52 innovation schools it had stripped away in an overly-hasty move last March.
Denver Public Schools board members received an earful Tuesday evening from parents and teachers who said they fear a proposed new policy would gut the autonomy of the district’s innovation schools.
Teachers at the Center for Talent Development who rely on flexibility in terms of hours and teaching duties, have said they do not understand why the school is moving to curtail innovation schools like theirs.
Board members got an earful on Wednesday and Thursday nights during a town hall meeting and a work session from innovation school leaders, who’ve relied in part on waivers from the teachers’ union requirements to provide a unique educational experience for their students.
From a Colorado League of Charter Schools press release:
Colorado continues to have the nation’s second-best public charter school laws, according to a ranking released...
The teachers union-friendly Denver school board will consider stripping some flexibility from the district's innovation schools and zones, a high priority for the local union.
"The story that you'll see in my professional arc, is working to ensure that as many kids as possible, especially those who come from a background similar to mine and face similar challenges, have access to high quality education, regardless of what they look like, how much money their parents have, or what zip code they they live in."
The Denver school board approved contract renewals for 16 charter schools Thursday, even as the board president continued to spread false information about charter schools' impact on district enrollment.
The two dissenting board members and a vociferous champion of the contract extension explained their votes at the conclusion of last Thursday's DPS board meeting.
The percentage of K-3 DPS students reading “significantly below grade level” had remained steady between 21% and 23% in the past five years. This year, that number jumped up to 31%.
The new Denver school will vote Thursday to extend Superintendent Alex Marrero's contract from two to four years, just five months into his tenure and before any kind of performance evaluation has been started, let alone completed.
Some board members made it clear that, in a perfect world, they would like to shorten the length of charter renewals and have an option not to renew a charter if its enrollment slips below a certain, as-yet undefined threshold.
"We tend to drift into adult issues, and I’m worried that there won’t be a laser focus on how students are doing,” eight-year incumbent Barbara O'Brien said moments after her board service ended Tuesday evening.
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