Angry parents from Centennial Elementary School vented to the Denver school board Thursday, demanding that Principal Laura Munro be fired over her decision not to rehire 75 percent of the school’s classroom teachers.
Photo from Centennial website
A less vocal group of parents wearing matching T-shirts said they supported the sweeping changes underway at Centennial, a previously marginalized school that they believe is on the cusp of greatness as it eliminates middle school and switches to an expeditionary learning model.
One of those parents was Ethan Hemming, who runs the Charter School Institute and formerly served as deputy executive director of Denver Public Schools’ Office of School Reform and Innovation, which oversees charter schools. Hemming and other members of the group said they supported the energy, vision and experience Munro brought to the school when she arrived last year.
Board OK’s redesign
The school board in December voted in favor of giving the Northwest Denver school authority to redesign in light of the fact it slipped from yellow to red between 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 in the School Performance Framework, which means “accredited on probation” and is the lowest rating. Board member Andrea Merida voted against redesign status.
Redesign status allows principals to make changes to academic programs and staffing. Teachers at the school were invited to interview for their jobs, but only 25 percent earned a spot at the school for next year.
Jessica Mullins is in her fifth year teaching for DPS and her first year teaching third grade at Centennial, where her son attends school. She was among the teachers who did not get re-hired. She said the five teachers who did get rehired were not as experienced as most of those who were not rehired.
Mullins said she was also upset that the staffing changes were announced the day after the school choice deadline, meaning parents who choiced into the school for next year had no idea such major staffing changes were coming.
Mullins said she has had great student growth scores and was told her pedagogy was not a problem. She said she believes she was not rehired because of her tendency to speak out at staff meetings and the fact that she is not completely on board with the changes happening at Centennial. She said she believes the bigger plan is to apply for innovation status and even turn Centennial into a charter school.
She also complained that she rarely saw Munro circulating around the school or visiting classrooms.
Parents even complained that Munro got the job because she was Superintendent Tom Boasberg’s neighbor in Boulder. Reached Friday, Munro said she indeed lives in Boasberg’s neighborhood but she wasn’t even aware of that until well into the interview process.
Parent Becky Dibattista, whose daughter is a kindergartener at the school, said she too wanted the principal gone.
“It’s terrible some of the decisions she’s made,” Dibattista said. “Our kindergarten teachers are performing above district levels. That’s a terrible decision to fire these teachers.”
Another kindergarten parent, Karen Nash, also complained that she rarely saw Munro out and about at the school or talking to students and families.
“Miss Munro does not know our community,” Nash said. “My son has told me he has no idea who his principal is and she still has not attended a PTA meeting. How does she know how my son’s teacher is doing if she has not observed the classroom?”
School seeks to re-define itself
Munro said a lot of thought has gone into the redesign. It became clear that 56 to 60 percent of families in the neighborhood were open-enrolling their students at other DPS schools.
In polling community members, it became clear families wanted a school with a special programmatic focus.
“We asked, ‘How can we define ourselves?” Munro said. “What does it mean to be part of Centennial?”
Other area elementary schools have International Baccalaureate or dual language. Munro said she has absolutely no plan to turn Centennial into a charter.
“I am fully committed to remaining a neighborhood school,” she said.
As for the teachers who did not get hired, Munro said those decisions were made by a team of people, including herself, Sandoval Elementary Principal JoAnn Trujillo Hays and the assistant principal. All three had to reach consensus on hiring decisions. She said the retained teachers have a range of experience.
Munro added that of 22 teachers the team interviewed, 12 were hired back. Of the 12, five are classroom teachers; the remainder are support teachers.
Parent Anna Hewson said the school is finally on the right track.
“Centennial has been stagnant for years,” Hewson said. “We all know the only chance our school has of succeeding is if all the staff are working toward the changes 100 percent.”
She said Munro is making the best decisions for the school based on her 12 years of diverse experiences in public education.
“There are many current and future parents who want to see expeditionary learning come to Centennial,” Hewson said.
PTA member Shannon Cruwys said it was time for Centennial “to rise out of mediocrity.”
Board splits on Centennial
Board member Jeannie Kaplan said she was disappointed Superintendent Tom Boasberg was not at the meeting. Boasberg had a personal conflict that caused him to leave early. Board President Mary Seawell was also out due to illness.
“I am deeply disturbed we have destroyed yet another community,” Kaplan said, referring to the lingering tension in Northwest Denver over the board’s decision to place a STRIVE Prep charter school within the North High School campus. “We’ve pitted people against each other.”
“When I voted in December on a resolution… I thought it was going from a K-8 to a K-5. I don’t know where the expeditionary learning came from. I don’t know … whether this is a good model for the population.”
Kaplan also asked for a list of the teachers who failed to get rehired, their ages, years of service and ethnicity.
“This really has to stop in Denver Public Schools. This is bad policy. How can you release teachers when they have another half year of school to go?”
Since the school is 80 percent Hispanic and low-income, Kaplan also wondered where these parents stood on the changes at the school.
Member Happy Haynes said she knew what she was voting for when the board OK’d a redesign strategy for Centennial.
“I had my eyes open when I voted about the changes at Centennial, including the redesign. I know what that means. I wasn’t hoodwinked about what it means. I think the angst is how the redesign is proceeding.”
Haynes said the board and district needed to monitor what’s happening, but not stand in the way.
“The process needs to move forward. We made that decision. I stick with that decision.“
Merida proposed a resolution to postpone the redesign until the board could get more information. Members Arturo Jimenez and Kaplan joined Merida in supporting it. Haynes and Anne Rowe opposed it.
In a last-minute surprise, district counsel John Kechriotis said four votes were needed to pass the resolution, or a majority on the seven-member board. Merida objected, saying that since Easley’s seat is open it is technically a six-member board.
Grumbling and cat calls from the audience ended the meeting.
BOE member Jeanne Kaplan was absolutely right when she said that DPS has to stop dividing communities and hurting children. For the first time, I heard a Board member address the damage that can be done to students in a school when they suddenly learn that their teachers are being fired. DPS does not do follow-up studies on what happens to students, not the school itself, but the students who were enrolled when the “ax fell.” North Denver has many such horrific “Blow Ups.” North High had such an event some five or six years ago.
The principal and almost all the staff were fired. Did North improve? No. The disaster that followed became the justification of yet another expensive intervention.
Brown Elementary had such a “blow-up” in 2004-2005. What happened to the children who were already enrolled in that school when their principal and then their teachers were fired? There are no studies.
I would suggest that the disaster that has been Lake Middle School for the last six or seven years is one consequence as students, “collateral damage at Brown,” moved from elementary to middle. I would like to be proven wrong if studies could be done or published showing how the students already at Brown in 2005 fared
as they moved through the DPS system.
I also cite the failure of the Regis DPS “building community consensus” program as another reason that there are such tensions in NOrth Denver. The “community consensus” report in December of 2011 never mentioned co-location at North, the neighborhood demand to reopen Remington, and the redesign at Centennial. What it did do is to place a moratorium on any changes in North Denver schools for a year. During that year, the new
principal at Centennial and Strive had time to plan the changes that are now causing such turmoil in North Denver.
Finally, Arturo Jimenez, the Representative from District Five in North Denver, said at the Board Meeting that he was not getting adequate information from the administration. I think it is time for the constituents of both Jimenez and Merida to file a complaint with the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Education, charging that they are being denied equal representation because information is being withheld from Jimenez and Merida, who are Hispanic.
and lets not forget the disaster in NW Denver when DPS ( which Happy Haynes supported) decided to consolidate 3 schools into one- rebranding it Tre Vista. This “experiment” must be a record in going from a redesigned model to a turnaround model in less than 4 years.
@Bruce Jones
You are right about the closing of three schools, including Remington, and turning them into TreVista.
I think DPS counsel’s move was a mean trick.
“Since the school is 80 percent Hispanic and low-income, Kaplan also wondered where these parents stood on the changes at the school.”
That’s the wonder of school reform for you. Do you think they’d try this in an affluent community? School reform attacks low income communities and calls it helping. They rely on test scores to identity low performing schools, but test scores show economics and NOTHING ELSE.
I allege that racism is a basic tenet of the reform movement.
It’s amazing to me that the people who champion this sort of thing on this website are supposedly so intelligent and well-educated,but somehow believe that a standardized, bubble-in test tells us anything about what a child knows or can do. The only other explanation is that they do know it’s wrong, but they don’t care, because they have a political agenda they’re pushing.
How sad for the students, parents, and teachers of Centennial. This is a crime.
Thank you for posting a balanced perspective. This is unique in the current world of reporting. The DPS current Board of Education is a facade of democracy. The “majority” seats were paid for by the “reformers” and they are getting their money’s worth. Thank you again, for telling it like it is, not like they would like us to believe it is.
Unless something has changed a lot since I studied these things, an official meeting of an entity (private or public) cannot act without a quorum of (in this case) Board members present. Acts taken at a meeting at which a quorum is present, are decided upon by the majority vote of those present and voting.
The longer I think about counsel’s odd maneuver at the end of the meeting, the stranger it seems. John…? are you ok over there?
Since outside counsel is inevitably secured to defend claims against the district, I thought the corporate stuff was John K’s backyard. Maybe he’s really good at evaluating bond investment proposals. Or something.
The deadline for parents to choose a school was Jan. 31 according to district policy. Making such a change after that date appears to violate that policy. Many parents chose Centennial because of teachers such as Jessica Mullins. Many in the “education reform” movement would apply a business model to education. That being the case, it appears that Ms. Laura Munro could be charged with a “bait and switch” scheme. In business, that’s a crime. Will the district reprimand or fire Ms. Munro or will the crime go unpunished?