After three days of hearing and reading about all that could be wrong with Denver Public Schools, auditors had one early suggestion for the district:
Get help with the English-language learners.
Four auditors from the Council of the Great City Schools left Denver on Wednesday with an earful from parents, principals, teachers and administrators about how DPS operates.
While the auditors – a North Carolina math specialist, a consultant and two former superintendents from Detroit and Houston – are still mum about what their final recommendations to the district will say, they suggested that Superintendent Michael Bennet bring in a team of English language acquisition specialists.
However, Sharon Lewis, a research director for the council, stressed that Denver “is not what we’d call a broken district.”
Roughly 20 percent of the district’s 72,900 students are English-language learners.
Padres Unidos, a Northwest Denver parent advocacy organization, met with auditors Tuesday but criticized the process. Pam Martinez, co-director of the group, said community input was lacking. “And there were no students at the table,” she said. “They scratched the surface.”
Bennet has said he hopes to use the council audit to help guide his “strategic plan,” which will outline how he wants to improve the district.
“What I was struck by more than anything else was how consistent their … findings are with what I’ve been hearing from the principals,” Bennet said. Though, he added, “the district is not in crisis … we have a tremendous amount of work to do.”
Staff writer Allison Sherry can be reached at 303-820-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com.
