As I run into people who read this blog here and there, I receive a lot of feedback. “Love (or hate) reading your blog, but why don’t you have more perspective from teachers, or principals, or parents or (fill in the blank)?”
Now deep into its second year, the blog has suffered a bit of attrition in its writer corps. So, dear readers, especially you who seethe when you read this blog, here’s your opportunity. I am looking for a few new people to write for the blog. If you’re daunted by the time commitment, you shouldn’t be. If you’re sweating bullets over writing blog posts, you’re going about it the wrong way. Toss off a few thoughts, and see what kind of reaction you get. But prepare to be challenged: if you haven’t done your homework, someone will nail you for it.
Interested? Send me an email: agottlieb@pebc.org Tell me a little about yourself, the perspective from which you’d write, and how what you’d bring to the blog would be different from what you typically read here.
I have issued countless invitations to people and groups who take umbrage at what they read here — politicians, union leaders, administrators, school board members. Invariably, they say they’ll get right on it, and I never hear from them again.
And for those of you who don’t wish to become a bona fide blogger, feel free to use the commenting feature, which is clickable at the bottom of each and every post. This is supposed to be a conversation, not a monologue. If you so desire, you can even comment under a psuedonym.
So come on, people: get in the game!
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Alan is right. There is too little honest public discussion or reasonable debate about what needs to happen to improve schools in Colorado. This is without question one of the most important challenges for our state and this country in the next few decades. More of you need to chime in…god knows there are no simple solutions for what ails us. More of you need to be engaged. It’s actually kind of fun and takes just a few minutes to contribute.
I’ve tried to do my part even though it’s been apparent that my fellow correspondents are vastly better informed on some of the issues. We are a 4-member family of Denver natives who had to bail out of our home town for the mountains, once the kids got old enough for us to be aware of educational opportunities in NW Denver. Our old home at 32nd & Raleigh is now worth a fortune but our Denver friends’ children failed to graduate from DPS schools; meanwhile our lovely children both graduated with high honors from Platte Canyon #1 in Bailey.
As it happens, my good husband worked for over 23 years as a classified worker for DPS and quit one awful day in 2001 after claiming he and other workers had been lied to by members of Human Resources, about the existence of a purported “new Board policy” that required existing workers to start at the bottom level of the salary scale in a promotional position while brand-new workers were no longer being hired at the bottom themselves. Since then he has never once been invited back even to discuss why in the world a veteran classified worker two years short of retirement, would want to depart. I am a longtime legal worker and couldn’t believe classified workers in the state’s schools were intended to contribute to a non-portable mandatory retirement account, without some merit-based mechanism to protect their jobs. Read this twice, as I don’t say it often: I WAS WRONG.
Classified employees who agreed to serve lifetime careers in the Colorado school districts have NO protections from civil service under the constitution, or statutory contracts under legislation. What they DO have, in Denver anyway, is a series of in-house “bargaining associations” that are not affiliated with any recognized larger entity, to which workers are unilaterally assigned by the District. On complaining of poor conditions, workers are warned these “associations” may be “decertified” while more compliant Association officers typically become DPS administrators themselves. I’m not aware of a single “grievance” that was resolved in favor of a complaining worker under the terms of these “union contracts.”
While schoolchildren may suffer a 12-year stint at DPS, my husband endured the equivalent of a K-12 experience twice over while working efficiently for DPS and is now being passed over for job opportunities at the District despite his lifelong career of efficient and spotless service to the District (his parents also served DPS, that’s why he signed up to begin with). After a few years that DPS refused to return him to the workplace, we had to cash in the DPS “pension” — which consisted ONLY of our own contributions plus nominal interest — for living expenses to support our children.
Bottom line: after working 23 continuous years for Denver Public Schools without a hitch, my 51YO husband has NO retirement fund — no social security, no nothing — and those of you reading this missive will have to either support him in old age or walk by his starving, shivering body on the street.
Sign me Disenchanted with Colorado, Disgusted with Denver Public Schools, Embittered by the state that fails to give it proper oversight, and for those reasons not an appropriate routine participant on these pages. I don’t believe a single word that falls out of the mouth of anyone at DPS, and am convinced its activities are really controlled by its intimidating legal counsel. The fact that ANY children manage to emerge intact from this sort of system seems miraculous to me.
In the midst of our suing DPS over these issues, a number of other classified workers appeared before the Board to complain of retaliatory, intimidating and unjust working conditions plaguing certain departments at DPS, and I submitted copies of meeting Minutes reflecting those complaints, to the Court. The District’s response?–it simply stopped approving Minutes of Board Meetings for over a year’s time.
So Disenchanted, Disgusted and Embittered? Oh Yeah. Everything I learned about Colorado law was wrong: DPS does what it wants, when it wants, the way it wants, and if you don’t like it, you can move away.
What we wouldn’t give to start my husband’s career over again, back when he was 21 and strong, innocent, eager and trusting. We truly believe it has ruined our lives.
I would not want my comments to conclude without some positive suggestions for the future since that was the subject of the blog post itself:
I would like to see a full state accounting of everyone employed at DPS, IMMEDIATELY, from the lowest paid janitor to the most highly compensated administrator. I would like this accounting to include not only the wage assigned to each worker but also the length of time employed and whether or not workers are related to, or were brought in by, other workers already on board.
My projection is that such an analysis would reveal that the majority of wages being paid out at DPS never hits the classrooms, and I would launch an argument that it should. In other words, my personal experience seemed to symbolize a sentiment and thought process that I believe is behind the District’s failures in the educational realm. The remedying of mismanaged public resources will be the key to curing DPS’ educational results for the simple common-sense reason that we tend to get what we pay for, no more or less.
In identifying which workers are truly indispensable and how many are add-ons, the public should never forget that people in my husband’s former classified position are in the most likely spot to affect children directly. If he had not been as consciencious and trustworthy as he is, public materials worth several million dollars were at risk…..not to mention he personally walked the halls of every school in the district on a routine basis, without once being asked for identification or a reason to be there, even after the Columbine disaster should have made administrators more aware of non-students in hallways. Luckily for DPS, Doug would not have just done his “all” professionally for DPS….he would have died for any child in any school if the occasion demanded it, and been proud to fulfill even this furthest extreme of public service for children seeking an education.