As soon as three new members of the Denver Public Schools Board of Education are sworn in today, they will be able to tout their first major accomplishment in office: replacing three members from the old board.
Yes, Denver’s previous school board was that bad, and a changing of the guard following last month’s election was that badly overdue.
And even though the reconstituted, seven-member panel still includes four holdovers — their seats weren’t up for election on Nov. 7 — we can anticipate a much-needed shift in priorities by the board. That’s so for a couple of reasons.
One is the gravitas of the three new members — heavy hitters with deep roots in Denver schools and public education. Voters picked John Youngquist for the open, at-large seat on the ballot; he’s a DPS graduate, parent, volunteer, former teacher — and longtime DPS principal who also served as an assistant superintendent. Voters also ousted two incumbents in Districts 1 and 5 on the board, replacing them with career educator Kimberlee Sia and veteran parent-activist Marlene De La Rosa, respectively.
The Gazette editorial board endorsed all three winners on last month’s ballot.
Even their resumes stand them in stark contrast to their predecessors, who had assumed office with no experience in public education policy. And then there’s the newcomers’ campaign platforms and pledges for refocusing the district on the issues that matter.
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The other reason to be hopeful the board now will chart a dramatically different course is the message the election sent to the four remaining incumbents: Straighten up and fly right.
Sia handily defeated the District 1 incumbent by a 10-point margin; De La Rosa crushed the District 5 incumbent as well as another challenger, garnering nearly 60% of the vote, and Youngquist won 62% of the vote in the at-large race, trouncing two other challengers. That’s a mandate for change, and it’s a safe bet the remaining incumbents got the point.
To say the least, the public was fed up with the old board. Hustled into office in the previous two elections by the teachers union’s cash and clout, that board set a new low for incompetence in public office. It was mired in infighting, obsessed with internal political rivalries and secretive about its proceedings.
More fundamentally, the old board was oblivious to floundering student achievement and cavalier about student safety — the two things parents care about above all else.
Our hope is for a realigned board that will get back to the basics that matter most in Denver Public Schools. That means tackling abysmal student achievement levels that have yet to recover from the learning losses of the pandemic. And that’s considering how, even before the pandemic, student achievement levels were embarrassingly underwhelming.
It also means responding aggressively and effectively to the troubling new normal of heightened violence in our schools amid an overall crime wave.
What will those two top priorities entail in terms of nuts-and-bolts policy?
It wouldn’t hurt to restore the district’s onetime commitment to advancing school-choice options like charter schools and innovation schools in addressing the district’s many learning gaps. On safety, now that school-resource officers at last have been brought back to high school campuses, how about revisiting the district’s “discipline matrix” to ensure kids facing serious criminal charges aren’t a threat to their peers.
Simply setting priorities is the first step — a step the previous board never was able to take. With new people in place, we look forward to that first step as well as those that follow.
Denver Gazette Editorial Board
