Re: “Education secretary’s visit to aid Bennet,” March 17 news story.
Six years ago, Denver voters overwhelmingly passed a mill levy to finance the “revitalization” of neighborhood schools. It was a mandate by the people to DPS and its board of education to use the monies provided by the mill levy to fix Denver’s neighborhood schools. Why, then, does our school leadership believe that its customers want something else?
The discussion continues to be characterized by Superintendent Tom Boasberg as reform vs. union-backed status quo. One has to question why the administration has turned the issue of school reform into a battle: You are either for us or against us.
There are many of us who land on the “against us” side, not because we think the current schools and the union are serving us well, but because we believe that the solution lies in revitalizing our neighborhood schools, not in replacing them with charter schools.
To further this “new school” effort, the superintendent recently issued a “Call for Quality Schools,” asking educators to do the work that should fall to the administration’s Office of School Reform and Innovation.
Then, last month, with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in tow, the administration took credit for the “redesign plan” for Brown Elementary. In fact, Brown’s design plan was created six years ago with Superintendent Jerry Wartgow at the helm of DPS. Its success is due to the hard work of Brown’s revitalization committee and the financial resources provided by the 2003 mill levy. The district did not “step in with a redesign plan,” as it claims; rather, Brown’s community stepped up with its own plan.
Brown Elementary is not the only “revitalization” success story. Hill Middle School and Montclair Elementary used mill levy monies and the tremendous support of their revitalization committees and communities to “reform” their schools, too.
So, why are we Racing to the Top? Are the reform ideas of Washington, D.C., better than ours? Superintendent Boasberg’s battle should focus primarily on revitalizing our neighborhood schools. That’s what the people of Denver wanted done in 2003 with their taxpayer dollars.
Kristen Tourangeau served on the Revitalization Committee for Hill Middle School.
