Denver East High School students talk about student use of marijuana

Steck Elementary students in Denver prepare for their first day of class in 2011-12.

Enrollment in Denver Public Schools is projected to hit 80,956 this fall, the first time the district has surpassed 80,000 since 1974 when the U.S. Supreme Court mandated busing to integrate city schools.

Families fled to suburban schools, and enrollment dropped to a low of 58,312 in 1989. It slowly climbed back to 72,437 in 2001, remained flat for a few years and began rising again, topping 75,000 in 2008.

See timeline of enrollment between 1962 and 2011.

Thursday, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock returned to the grade school where he was bused as a child, Steck Elementary, to join DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper as most DPS schools opened for another year.

They celebrated academic growth at Steck and across DPS in the past six years, with Hickenlooper describing the district’s success as “little less than a revolution.”

Thornton High School freshmen Emily Cunis (left) and Angela Abraham were among those testifying at a legislative hearing on school budget cuts.

The Senate Education Committee held a 3½ -hour hearing to take testimony from 40 witnesses on the effects of budget cuts expected in the 2011-12 school year.

Go straight to video highlights of the testimony.

Much of the testimony was familiar, with school board members, administrators and teachers telling of employees laid off, salaries frozen, furloughs imposed, purchases deferred and other savings squeezed out of district budgets.

But there was a tone that hasn’t been heard as much during budget debates in previous years – that the upcoming reductions will directly harm classroom instruction.

The session also surfaced some novel ideas about dealing with the problem – like using state funds to match local property tax increases in every state district, an idea floated by committee member Sen. Keith King, R-Colorado Springs and the administrator of a charter school.

And one witness, former State Board of Education member Randy DeHoff, argued that it’s “a mistake” to focus on funding alone. “Much of K-12 funding has little effect on the achievement of students” but is tied to state and federal requirements. “The better question is … given the level of funding available, how can that funding be used more effectively?”

DeHoff also argued that the current structure of public education is outmoded and will be disrupted by the rise of online learning. “We can lead that change or we can watch it, but it will take place.”

Here’s a sampling of the warnings voiced at the hearing:

• “This year it will affect the classroom. … We are looking at so many cuts I don’t know how much further we can go.” – Karen Stockley, Thompson board member
• “What is there left to give? Is education really a place where we can do more with less?” – Doreen Groene, Brighton teacher
• “We’ve kept our classrooms almost intact [but] there is not another $21 million in reductions we can make” without affecting classrooms. – Mary Chesley, Cherry Creek superintendent
• Cuts “are going to compromise the future of our kids.” – Kevin Schott, Basalt High School principal
• “We have no choice but to affect classrooms.” – Leslie Kiesler, Mesa board member
• “We’re unraveling something pretty remarkable that we’ve built.” – Don Haddad, St. Vrain superintendent
• “It’s hitting muscle” after four years of cuts. – Amanda Sheets, AFT-Colorado

Some witnesses echoed DeHoff in saying that state and federal mandates contribute to district financial problems.

“You shouldn’t have that many laws,” said former state Sen. Norma Anderson, holding up the thick book of state school laws.

Democratic Sens. Bob Bacon of Fort Collins (left) and Evie Hudak of Westminster listened to testimony. (Photo courtesy Senate Majority Office.)

Referring to a pending bill that specifies amounts of physical activity in elementary schools, Anderson asked, “Do you really need to?”

As for the CSAP tests, Anderson said, “Get rid of them. I carried the bill, but get rid of them.”

Haddad, referring to what he called “flawed ideological initiatives,” said, “There is a clear nexus between” reform initiatives and school costs.

“We have to have some mature conversation that recognizes that these things cost money.”

A mandates bill is pending in this year’s session, but its likely impact is narrow.

Several witnesses touched on the issue of conflicting fiscal provisions in the state constitution that have affected state and district revenues.

Lyndon Burnett, president of the Agate school board, said, “There is no cure short of constitutional reform.”

Margie Adams, board chair of Great Education Colorado, scolded legislators for failing to support a proposed school-funding referendum last year and for discouraging such efforts this year:

“We couldn’t do it last year; we’re told we can’t do it this year. In the meantime, the cuts build up and we’re losing another generation.”

While the hearing was intended for information gathering, King used it as platform to float some policy ideas, including his just-announced idea to reduce cuts through a combination of state funding and local property tax increases. King also is backing a plan to allow school districts to save money by reducing their contributions to employee pensions while increasing such payroll deductions for employees.

At the very end of hearing, when most of the crowd had left, King invited Jane Urschel of the Colorado Association of Schools Boards and Tony Salazar of the Colorado Education Association to the witness table to ask what they thought. Both were cool to the pension contributions swap, voicing concerns about its effect on the health of the Public Employees’ Retirement Association.

Chart shows components of school funding over the last decade. Click to enlarge; note legend on right

The hearing was prompted by the Hickenlooper administration’s proposed $332 million cut in K-12 total program funding. While the latest state revenue forecasts indicate it may be possible to reduce that amount somewhat, school spending is caught up with several other budget issues, including the size of the state reserve for next year.

Disagreement over those issues appears to have hung up completion of the 2011-12 budget bill by the Joint Budget Committee, which has a 3-3 partisan split.

Thursday’s hearing was promoted by committee chair Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins, and by CEA, CASB and the Colorado Association of School Executives as a way of raising public awareness about the financial situation facing schools. The three groups organized several of the witnesses.

Video highlights of testimony before the Senate Education Committee

Jeffco School Board President Dave Thomas and Superintendent Cindy Stevenson at Friday's press conference.

GOLDEN – Colorado’s largest school district announced plans Friday to close two schools, cut all employees’ pay by 3 percent and trim two days from the school year in the face of nearly $40 million in cuts for 2011-12.

Jefferson County Public Schools’ budget proposal also includes charging students to ride school buses, reducing graduation requirements by a single credit and suspending a popular outdoor lab program that’s been a rite of passage for sixth-graders since 1962.

A total of 212 jobs will be cut across the district, including more than 100 teachers, but district leaders said most of that will come from normal attrition, not re-hiring temporary employees and leaving positions vacant.

“The impacts are deep,” Jeffco school board president Dave Thomas said at a morning news conference. “I am really profoundly saddened that we have to do these closures. However, we had very few choices and none of them were pleasant.”

The district of nearly 86,000 students had expected cuts in state school funding of $26 million, and already had drawn up plans to trim some jobs. School closures were considered, but rejected, by school board members in January.

That changed, Thomas said, when Gov. John Hickenlooper last month proposed steeper-than-expected cuts of $332 million in K-12 funding for fall. For Jeffco, the state cuts would mean a loss of $475 per student. Altogether, district officials say, they now must reduce expenses by $39.9 million.

“This is a lesson in frugality, unfortunately,” Thomas said. “During difficult times, you have to make difficult decisions.”

Proposal stems from budget summit

Hickenlooper’s budget announcement came Feb. 15, as Jeffco district and union leaders were participating in a national labor-management conference called by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

“We knew we had to do something different to address the crisis we were about to face,” said Kerrie Dallman, president of the Jefferson County Education Association, the teachers’ union.

Kerrie Dallman, JCEA

“The way we fund public education has got to change. Hopefully, this is a wake-up call.”

So on March 4 and 5, Jeffco held its first employee summit to tackle the budget, attended by two representatives each from the school board, district leadership, the teachers’ union, the administrators’ association and the union representing support staff such as secretaries and bus drivers. A federal mediator facilitated talks, and the budget proposal was created.

It is an all-or-nothing package, said Superintendent Cindy Stevenson, meaning it’s intended to be approved as a whole, without tinkering with individual components. A board vote is likely in May.

“If we start saying, maybe we won’t do this one, maybe we won’t do that one, we frankly go back to where we were before this two-day summit,” Thomas said. “Our intent was to do this as a unified group of people committed to the education of kids … We do not want to have a Wisconsin, believe me.”

Dallman and Bob Brown, executive director of the Jeffco Classified School Employees Association, met with their members Thursday night to go over the plan: The 3 percent pay cut comes from all employees working six fewer days in 2011-12. That likely means less time for training.

“Most people who work in support positions in public education do so because of the kids,” Brown said. “So I’m lucky they support the idea of trying to maintain as much as possible the quality of education in the classroom.”

Dallman said it was “difficult” to tell teachers about the pay cut, particularly since budget forecasts through 2013-14 look little better.

“We are fully committed to working with the district and our other employee groups,” she said. “But we also recognize that the way we fund public education has got to change. And hopefully, this is a wake-up call for the members of our organization, the community in Jefferson County and those across the state.”

Cuts rippling through school districts

Friday’s announcement makes Jeffco just the latest large metro-area district to propose significant changes to make ends meet.

On March 9, Douglas County school board members directed staff to explore placing a tax increase on the November ballot. The other budget option includes four furlough days for staff and sending $200 to $300 less per student to schools.

Denver’s budget decisions seem less dramatic, with $10 million in cuts to central services and schools receiving essentially flat funding for 2011-12. Employees will not get raises – but furloughs and layoffs are not expected, which Superintendent Tom Boasberg attributes partly to growing enrollment and $15 million in savings from a 2008 pension refinancing transaction.

Hickenlooper has said he is cutting K-12 education, which makes up more than 40 percent of the state budget, because he had nowhere else to go.

“We knew when the proposed budget was released last month that the fallout would be painful,” Hickenlooper spokesman Eric Brown said Friday. “There were no easy cuts in the budget, especially when it came to education. The state simply doesn’t have the ability to fund what it used to.”

Stevenson acknowledged that some of Jeffco’s proposed cuts – shortening the school year, reducing teacher training days – defy current thinking about what improves student achievement.

“We’re going backwards,” she said, at a time when expectations in law, such as Senate Bill 191, which ties educator evaluations to student academic growth, are increasing.

“We have to start having the kind of discussion and the dialogue about what we expect of our public services,” said Dallman, with the teachers’ union. “What kind of education do we want for our children in Jefferson County? It’s going to be the taxpayers that are going to have to answer that.”

Video highlights of Friday press conference on Jeffco budget cuts

Video length 1:59 minutes

Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp

Teach for America recently celebrated its 20th anniversary and Kopp, the CEO, was in Denver earlier this week to talk about lessons learned and her new book, A Chance to Make History.

She fielded questions from Dan Ritchie, chair of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and a standing-room-only audience at the Tattered Cover bookstore in Lodo.

“We didn’t create schools to transform kids’ trajectories,” she said. “We’ve never really said that’s the mandate. So we need teachers who are willing to go way outside of the four walls, the traditional expectations, to provide their kids with the extra supports that they need.”

A big fear, she said, is the oversimplification of the solutions needed to improve public education.

“It’s funding or charters or vouchers or any one thing,” Kopp said. “Now it’s teachers, that’s the latest thing, just fix the teachers and we’ll fix the problem.”

It’s not that simple, she said:

“And the longer we defer the effort to basically build the capacity of our education system so that we have the people power, and also change the policy context so that they are kind of empowered to do what it takes to fulfill a different mandate, we’re just deferring the day when we actually make serious, big change in a meaningful way.”

Pro-labor demonstrators shout at Tea Party counter-protesters Tuesday at the state Capitol.

Several dozen members of the Northern Colorado Tea Party staged a counter-demonstration on the street below.

Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget-balancing package includes changes in collective bargaining rights for some public employees, including teachers, as well as increases in employee contributions to health insurance and pensions. The plan has sparked days of rallies and protests at the state Capitol in Madison.

Early in Tuesday’s Denver rallies, civil if heated debates took place between dueling demonstrators. Later, however, the civility vanished as the two sides lined up 20 yards apart and hurled insults at each other.

Click on these links for the latest New York Times coverage of the Wisconsin rallies, “Wisconsin senators meet without Democrats,” and reaction against a similar bill in Ohio, “Thousands gather to protest bill in Ohio.”

Meanwhile, Colorado’s House Republicans issued this statement on the demonstrations.

Could a similar scenario play out in Colorado? As EdNews noted in an earlier story:

While proposed 2011-12 cuts of $332 million in Colorado school spending could lead to teacher job losses and hit their salaries, decisions on salaries, health insurance and collective bargaining are made at the district level here.

Employer and employee contribution rates to the Public Employees’ Retirement Association are set in law by the legislature. No proposed change for teachers is pending this year, and a Republican-sponsored bill to allow school boards to decrease their pension contributions while increasing those made by employees was killed last week.

Legislation is pending that would continue for one more year a shift for state employees. That program, in effect now, increased employee pension deductions by 2.5 percent and decreased the state’s contribution by the same percentage. Several thousand higher education employees are included in that.

And Gov. John Hickenlooper has proposed increasing that shift by another 2 percent. He argues it’s a fairer way to impose cuts on all state employees. Gov. Bill Ritter used employee furloughs as a budget balancing measure, but many state workers – such as State Patrol officers, prison guards and health workers – were exempt from furloughs because of safety concerns.

Denver mayoral candidates at a forum on education Friday at KIPP Collegiate High School.

They’re not eager to take over Denver Public Schools and they give mixed marks to recent DPS reforms, such as the turnaround plan in Far Northeast Denver.

But with one eloquent exception, they raise a thumbs-up to Senate Bill 191, the educator effectiveness law that will link student achievement to teacher and principal evaluations.

Seven of the 16 candidates seeking the job of Denver mayor met Friday morning for a mayoral forum on education, hosted at KIPP Collegiate High School on the Rishel campus.

The candidates who appeared, in alphabetical order, are Doug Linkhart, James Mejia, Chris Romer, Kenneth Simpson, Theresa Spahn, Thomas Andrew Wolf and Eric Zinn. Click on a name to link to the candidate’s website. Go here for information on the other candidates.

Candidate intros – Sound bites from their brief opening remarks

On the issues – Short clips of their responses to questions

Video notes – Not all candidates were asked all questions. Order of response was determined by random drawing. Some candidates passed when asked for responses on more detailed education proposals.

Sonia is one of three students who spoke at Wednesday’s press conference at the state Capitol about the impact of her undocumented status.

Like the others, the Denver college student did not provide a last name but she talked freely about her status, her high school and college experiences, and her hope for the future.

It is a marked contrast to what happened in 2002, when the Denver Post ran a front-page story about an undocumented Aurora high school student named Jesus Apodaca. Former U.S. Congressman Tom Tancredo sought to have the teen and his family deported, prompting outrage from some and praise from others.

“Living under fear like that is something you don’t ever wish upon anyone,” Sonia said. “And that’s why we come out. For the sake of other people who are behind us, for the sake of their future and for the sake of them not ever going through stuff like this.”

See the related EdNews’ story, “Supporters rally behind in-state tuition bill.”