The civic health of Denver — its economy and its quality of life — is intertwined with the fate of the city’s struggling schools.
How Denver’s schools fare will drive the future of the city.
It is one of the reasons why Denver Public Schools has become such a major issue in this year’s mayoral race.
The next mayor will not have direct influence on DPS policy. That authority is held by the school board. But the mayor has a formidable bully pulpit, and an outsized voice in city politics. With key school board elections coming up — races that could change the delicate 4-3 balance of power on the school board — we think the stances that mayoral candidates have taken are crucial.
And there are clear differences.
Michael Hancock, a Denver City Council member, has a record and beliefs in line with what we think is the right direction for DPS. He took part in the effort to convince the legislature to pass the Innovation Schools Act of 2008, which has given schools the ability to control their budgets, hiring decisions and length of the school day and calendar.
Hancock also has fearlessly waded into the controversy over the DPS plan to improve schools in far Northeast Denver, endorsing the plan and countering criticisms that it was passed without enough community outreach. He is right on both counts.
Chris Romer has similarly strong and positive views about education policy and reform. As a state senator, Romer was a dedicated advocate for Senate Bill 191, which rewrote state rules for teacher tenure and evaluation. He believes in school choice and has served on the boards of three charter schools, including the Denver School of Science and Technology. Romer also supports the far Northeast turn-around plan.
Romer pledged to recruit school board candidates and raise funds for them. That is an important and appropriate role for the next mayor.
James Mejia, a former Denver school board member and founding CEO of the Denver Preschool Program, brings obvious educational expertise to the race. He favors rewarding and holding educators responsible for student results.
Yet Mejia has said he does not fully support the turn-around plan for Northeast Denver schools, a plan we think is important and well-conceived. In a meeting with The Post, Mejia said that if he were a school board member at the time of the vote, he would have voted against it because there was not enough community involvement in the process.
There’s a lot to like about Mejia, but we part ways with him on this issue. There was a broad-based effort to conceive the plan and many meetings that were open to the public.
This plan has become something of a litmus test in determining who favors continuing DPS reforms being pushed by Superintendent Tom Boasberg and who opposes them.
Carol Boigon has a history of working on relations between the city and DPS. During Mayor Wellington Webb’s tenure, she focused on forging cooperation between the entities.
However, the Denver councilwoman likened the relationship between the city and school board as being akin to the separation of church and state. As mayor, she said, she would be a good partner, and while she had a point of view on the current board strife, she wouldn’t go further than that.
We think the mayor must be a leader on education issues, and voters deserve to know where candidates stand on such matters.
Similarly, Theresa Spahn said the appropriate role of the mayor is to support DPS and positively work with the school board, but would not be specific about her views on individual reforms.
Councilman Doug Linkhart also said he didn’t want to get in the middle of what he considers a fight between factions over DPS policy.
He ventured that he thought teachers were being blamed too much for the failures of the school system when single parents, poverty and language barriers were the real factors bringing down schools.
With little more than a month to go before ballots are tallied, there are many issues for Denver voters to consider when weighing mayoral candidates. Even though DPS doesn’t fall under the mayor’s purview, it’s important not to overlook education as one of those issues.
