The Damage they Did

The above statements were made at a D11 work session in January, 2004, just 2 months after the swearing-in of the 4 Board members who were elected in November 2003. The presentation was made by then Deputy Superintendent of IT Terry Bishop. This is the reason that 4 of us swept into office in 2003. Who was it that allowed D11 to get to this point?

Lyman Kaiser served on the D11 Board for 12 years. He and Bruce Doyle took turns swapping jobs as President of the Board and Vice President. They were extreme micromanagers who believed that their belief system was the only belief system that the parents and students of D11 should ever need to survive. Sadly, both of these men truly believed, and still believe to this day, that only white middle class or wealthy students are able to learn and achieve at an average or higher level. They never felt the need to hold the district accountable for performance because in their minds, there was no use in pushing harder. After all, with a growing minority population, they and their colleagues felt that test scores would never improve. Why hold employees to a standard that was not possible to achieve? To this day, Kaiser argues before the Board that minority students are simply unable to achieve at a rate similar to white students. This man ran D11 for 12 years.

Kaiser and Doyle are directly responsible for the flat test scores mentioned above, yet both are actively involved in undermining the current Board and the D11 administration. Kaiser literally belongs to almost every Board sub-committee that exists. He is known for talking endlessly about meaningless (and usually non-factual) data. His ability to filibuster meetings has led to many citizens leaving committees out of frustration. Kaiser's objective is to thwart any effort by the 2003 Board members to improve anything in this district. His personal animosity and political agenda takes priority over the welfare of the students in D11. He has no children in school so he has no regard for other people's children.


The above chart is the legacy of Lyman Kaiser. The man who is responsible for this type of performance continues to fight reform today. Rather than walk away in shame, he continues to insist that black and Hispanic students are incapable of improving their lot in a public school.

Kaiser did not cause this damage on his own. Assisting him on the Board were people such as Delia Busby, who literally slept through Board discussions (an impact of Kaiser's endless and meaningless discussion). Busby also walked out of the boardroom for many votes, and she used meeting time to catch up on her reading of the Gazette. Karen Teja and Mary Wierman are 2 more ex-board members who helped in leading D11 to mediocrity. Wierman served for 12 years and broke a promise to the public that she would honor term limits, which would have sent her packing at 8 years. Wierman had no stomach for pressure, so she would often have to leave meetings if anything controversial arose. With this timid demeanor, you can be sure that she never made the effort to hold anyone accountable. It was easier for her to agree that poor kids could not learn anyway, so why risk an asthma attack by asking employees to do their jobs. Wierman was one of the primary forces behind the spending of thousands of D11 dollars each year on pre-board meeting dinners. These pre-meeting feeding frenzies cost the D11 taxpayers more than $10,000 per year.

Karen Teja was one of the most self-serving Board members that D11 has had to suffer through in years. She used the Board position strictly for personal and political gain, although losing by over 100,000 votes in the state Board of Education race was not much of a gain. Teja sued her own District as a sitting Board member and often used D11 tax dollars to finance her private Boulder attorney. Teja is vehemently anti-parent and would not think of allowing anyone other than liberal Board members or employees to receive vouchers for their children's education.

The Board that we replaced was a dysfunctional collection of weak minded individuals who would do nothing other than what they were told to do by union bosses and District administrators. This list of underwhelming Board members includes Mary Ellen McNally, Lynn Peterson, Norvelle Simpson, and David Linebaugh. Each of these people spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy out not only superintendents, but also other district employees. During Kaiser, Linebaugh, Wierman, and Teja's reign, the Board bought out an employee who had sexually assaulted a subordinate and they paid this employee over $250,000. McNally, who is leading the recall effort against Eric Christen and Sandy Shakes for firing Sharon Thomas, was responsible for 3 changes of superintendents during her 4-year tenure on the Board. Her buyouts cost the D11 taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars and, in percentage of total budget at the time, was more than the Thomas buyout.

It is easy to understand why the D11 voters voted for change in 2003, and it is easy to understand why the 3 Board members who were elected in 2005 had to borrow the same campaign platform that was successful in 2003. The question is, are these 3 true reformers or merely union puppets?