In the week following Denver’s three-day teachers strike, some of the district’s educators are now trying to seize the momentum from the historic walkout and focus it toward new goals they hope will improve the city’s academic outlook — including helping elect preferred candidates to the school board this fall.
Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association reached a tentative agreement before dawn on Valentine’s Day. The deal has been up for a ratification vote by the district’s educators all week, with the results scheduled to be announced Monday.
If the new compensation agreement — which puts an additional $23.1 million toward teacher pay, and includes average 11.7-percent raises next year — is approved by the union’s members, it will go to the Denver Board of Education for final approval.
“The issues raised during the strike made people aware that there are bigger structural problems in DPS that need to be fixed and could not be fixed by the contract alone,” said Margaret Bobb, a recently retired Denver teacher who helped organize and monitor a Facebook group full of teachers, parents, administrators and community members in the lead up to, and during, the strike.
The Facebook group, , was a hub for motivation, venting and updates about the oftentimes confusing contract-negotiation and strike process. The day after the strike ended last week, the group changed its name from “Fair Pay for Denver Teachers” to “Flip the DPS Board 2019.”
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“As people organically began to voice their concerns in this group, we would always put out there to stick around because we have three seats on the (school) board that are up for election in November,” Bobb said. “If we can take those three seats, that will make all the difference.”
The board positions that will be up for election this year include Happy Haynes’ at-large seat as well as the District 1 seat occupied by Anne Rowe and the District 5 seat now held by Lisa Flores.
Bobb said she wants to see “pro-teacher, community-minded” candidates who can combat “dark money” and “corporate reform.”
Representatives of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association along with members from various education-focused community groups were meeting Friday to begin a vetting process that would result in endorsing a single candidate for each board seat.
“If we can be united, I think it’s going to be very do-able, even against large money which I anticipate will come in,” Bobb said. “We can’t split the vote.”
Nina Conley, a Collegiate Prep Academy teacher, said she wants to be more involved in making sure board candidates who support teachers and students get elected, but she has another goal she wants to galvanize around: making sure teachers of color in DPS receive the support they need to stay in the district to serve as role models for students of color.
“As an African-American female and 17-year teacher in the district, that’s where my focus is,” Conley said. “I see decreases in teachers of color and increases in students of color, so what are we doing as a district so that we have culturally responsive and sustained teachers who can work with our students?”
Conley teaches African-American literature, a reading and writing course, and a concurrent enrollment class for high school students interested in becoming a teacher.
When she came back from the strike, her educator-aspiring students were full of questions about the affair and the agreement that meant their teacher could return to the classroom.
Conley incorporated aspects of the strike and its conclusion into her lesson plans, dissecting the tentative agreement with her students, who pored over it like members of the bargaining team.
“I think the result of the strike was positive for teachers, but it was even more positive for my students,” Conley said. “I’m having students talk to me who said they weren’t sure about becoming a teacher but now they’re thinking about it because they see that teachers stand for something.”
Conley is relishing the unity she said was created after days spent on picket lines and in long bargaining meetings with her colleagues and educators across the district.
Autumn Jones, a Marie L. Greenwood Academy teacher, said she wished her post-strike experience was as positive.
Jones described the culture in her school as “not very welcoming” as teachers came back with no time to debrief after three days of walkouts and months of emotionally exhausting bargaining sessions.
“The strike exacerbated tensions that already existed between our administration and teachers,” Jones said. “I’ve tried to focus on what’s in my locus of control.”
In her classroom, Jones also used the strike as a teaching tool in her middle school journalism class, having her students review media coverage of the event and social media mentions.
Even after experiencing unpleasantness in the strike aftermath, Jones still plans to vote in favor of the agreement to support her colleagues.
“I do hope that there is something district-driven with facilitated conversations and encouragement to be very transparent and say what people need to say after the strike because I don’t think true healing is going to happen or true progress is going to be made until people start talking,” Jones said.
