I too grew up in Chicago during the Richard J. Daley Administration. I saw many a political maneuver used by those who were fighting the Boss’s Machine.
They were fighting because they were marginalized and disenfranchised from city politics. They used these ploys as a way to bring attention to their plight.
I am not comparing the machine politics of Chicago to the Denver school board. I am trying to reframe the issue with the recent school board hearing and Lake Middle School voting, from one that focuses on the intended results from the political maneuver to what I see as the more important issue: a lack of community voice in the reform movement in Denver.
Let’s use the recent events not as a moment to cry foul, but to look at the reason why people felt that they had to prematurely remove Michelle Moss from her seat. The issue is access to the process.
DPS knows it has work to do in bringing the community into the various conversations about reform. But what concerns me is that there is no formalized effort to monitor or set benchmarks to ensure that the community is involved.
DPS has established the Office of Community Engagement. Good step in the right direction. That Moss was unceremoniously removed from her seat should not cloud the real failure here. It truly was a failure to constructively engage the community.
Popularity: 3% [?]
“The community” What does that even mean? There IS no community voice to be heard.
There are communities. The ‘community’ is only a trope, a common political nicety used within certain arguments to score rhetorical points. Everybody thinks like the community is their community, or part of their constituency but not some other. Listen, there are multiple points of view, multiple constituencies and sometimes both of those multiplicities can exist within the same person!
Just stop talking about the community already. It’s not about them–whoever they are. It’s about teaching and learning and what should be done and how we go about doing it–for the children, not the childish adults. I find it amusing doctors do not consult the ‘community’ about treating diseases but somehow teachers must consult their community through the mouthpieces of district stooges and union hacks and school board egos before they do ANYthing.
I don’t think doctors have to go through all those layers of stupid…wait a minute…oh, they do! In the USA, doctors have to wade through a minefield of quacks, hacks and insurance companies before they can actually treat anybody for a hangnail.
Nice country we have here.
I wonder if JJ & Horse are from and live in any neighborhood of Denver? I also wonder if they are a part of the hordes of tourist-transplants who have moved into the many neighborhoods in the waves of gentrification in Denver? Because anybody who was raised in a Denver neighborhood and, yes – community (or any other similar community) knows what community is. Those who romanticize the hip “urban” lifestyle of living in the many older neighborhoods now being gentrified – those who usually were raised in non-communities in the lily-white suburbs – usually have no real concept of community. These are the same folks who want to live in those neighborhoods but are afraid of having their kids actually go to school with the kids who’s parents – and often grandparents – came from that neighborhood. I wonder.
Yes, those who lose these types of battles cry there was never enough community engagement in the same way that those who win these battles claim there was. Irregardles of who “wins’” or “loses” is not the point. Horsewithnoname asks a good question: How much is enough? I do not know if there is a quantifiable number. Do we quantify justice? The point is that there is never enough. It’s an issue of always seeking and never being satisfied with how much the community is engaged.
JJ as a teacher I do not fell like I have the ultimate say in decisions like the Lake Middle School issue. Do we just let doctors vote on the Health Care Bill? There is a difference between practice and public policy. BTW, while your postmodern relativist twist is impressive, we are talking about people here. Communities are dynamic. But they are still communities.
Without getting into the perennial quality vs. quantity debate, authentic community engagement isn’t a numbers-of-meetings issue. There are many community voices, and one of the things that has emerged in the discussions about northwest Denver is the large amount of common ground among these different voices. There are a lot of great models of how you authentically bring community together and have conversations, not presentations, and reach common ground. The Save Lake IB blog did a posting over a month ago with a youtube clip of one of Richard Harwood, a guru on this stuff. View the clip and let’s start thinking again about how we do this. http://savelakeib.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/what-true-community-engagement-is-like/
I live near Mile High stadium, btw. I actually like that Mark noticed my postmodern twist, thanks
I’, still convinced that community is in the mind of the (political office) holder and/or whomever thinks they can use community as a rhetorical device. Yes, I am considering what the alternative looks like!