CSEA fumes as sister union does right by students

In an earlier post, I wrote about the Bruce Randolph Middle School in Denver and its fight to break free from labor union rules and regulations that stifle the education environment. At that time, Randolph leaders were asking for waivers from labor union rules, and the school board seemed poised to grant these waivers. The question was: would the labor union agree to allow autonomy to the school. It is a sad situation when a private organization like the labor union gets to dictate to a public school, but that situation exists in D11 as well.

When the Randolph situation arose, other labor unions around the state began to panic. Leaders of the local CSEA were begging the labor union leadership in Denver to hold fast and reject any attempt by any schools to improve. The last thing that the D11 labor union wants is to see schools performing well by breaking free from the labor union clutches.

The Denver labor union board initially felt that their interests trumped the interests of the parents, staff, and students. Nothing new there; this is how labor union leaders think across this country. The astounding piece of this initial rejection of autonomy is what the labor union leadership in Denver gave as a reason. The Denver labor union board released the following statement in a press release:

"In good conscience we cannot grant the extensive waiver requested that would favor Bruce Randolph teachers and students at the expense of other teachers and students in the district."

Now go back and read that statement again. Remember, this statement came from labor union mouthpieces. For one of the first instances on record, labor union leaders admit that it is a benefit for teachers and students to be released from the education-stifling rules of the labor agreement. As I have pointed out time and again, the labor agreements with school districts contain nothing of value to students or parents, and they contain nothing of value for competent teachers. The Denver labor agreement is very similar to that of D11 because labor union negotiators have a list of requirements placed on them by their masters at the NEA.

The self-serving decision by labor union leaders did not sit well with school staff.

"We're pretty outraged that they can't give us a straight answer and accept the fact that we want to move forward with our proposal," said Greg Ahrnsbrak, physical education teacher and union representative from the school. "They want us to move back to square one, and that is unacceptable."

Fortunately, unlike in D11, the Denver school district has leaders in high places. The school board and superintendent Michael Bennett (a businessman by trade), would not sit still for this self-serving labor union vote. The parents and staff at Randolph were equally outraged. Finally, in a decision deserving of praise, the Denver labor union relented and changed the vote. As a result, the leadership finally placed the interests of the Denver students and staff ahead of the political and financial interests of the labor union bosses.

This was a big day for Denver students, and a big step for the labor union. Sister unions, such as the CSEA here in Colorado Springs, are upset by this action in Denver. The saving grace for the local labor union is that the school board is union bought and owned, and there are no leaders serving today who will dare fight for the students of this district. The superintendent is busy building up his administrative staff, so fighting for better schools is low on his list of things to do.

Congratulations to the Denver school district leadership, including the labor union leaders, for doing right by the students. Randolph should be a shining example of what can happen when site based management and strong leadership merge. The Denver leadership is taking its role of focusing on kids very seriously. As the population of D11 continues to bleed away, we can only hope that the community will look to the north and notice that the public can truly remove control of its schools from the grip of the labor unions. They will notice that true leadership involves much more than changing the administrative organization chart once every two years and calling it progress.

Watch your wallets – here comes D11

In 2000, School District 11 came to the voters and asked for a mill levy override. Give us the money, the district said, and we promise you that we will use it to improve performance across the district. The business community told the district to agree to a set of performance objectives in return for business community support. In 2000, the community passed this mill levy question, and the tax payers voluntarily raised their taxes, hoping for their kids’ sake that the district would keep its promise to improve performance.

As part of the mill levy question, a performance review of D11 is conducted every 2 years by an independent organization. Independent is used loosely here since the group is composed of ex-educators, and educators rarely criticize one another no matter how poor the performance.
In 2004, the review of D11 showed that of the 11 performance objectives that were directed by the mill levy question, D11 had achieved only 2. Give us more time, the administration begged, and we will show the community that we really will meet our obligation to improve. In 2006, the review showed the same result. No improvements were noted. While the D11 administration and anti-reform board members blamed “lack of time” for the continuing lack-luster performance of the district in 2004, in 2006, they blamed this stale performance on “too much pressure” from pro-parent/pro-reform board members. Quit asking us to do our jobs, they begged, because that was simply too much pressure for a 6-figure earning administrator to bear.

In 2004, the D11 community rejected a bond request by D11. In 2005, the administration begged the community to grant the bond request, pointing out that all it would take for D11 to improve was for the community to provide more funds for better buildings. Better buildings, we were told, result in better performance. The bond question passed, and the D11 community voluntarily raised their property tax rates.

Since 1997, the student population of D11 has steadily declined. The population of El Paso County and Colorado Springs has risen steadily in this time period, but parents have chosen to live in school districts that tend to focus on educating kids a bit better than does D11. Despite the mill levy increase in 2000, and despite the bond passage in 2005, D11 has failed to show improvement. Despite the declining enrollment, the labor union has insisted that the district maintain its teacher count. Despite an administrative hiring freeze ordered by the reformers in 2005, the administration has continued to add central administrative employees to its roles.

Is D11 facing a budget dilemma? Yes, it is. Is it going to cut staff to match the declining enrollment and associated declining budget? No, that is not the plan. In fact, hold on to your wallets, because Terry Bishop and his obedient sheep on the school board have decided that it is time, once again, to raise your taxes. The goal, of course, won’t have anything to do with raising student achievement; the goal is to maintain the high salaries and high standard of living for the ever-growing administration. The obvious answer to solving a declining budget would be for D11 to perform at a level that would attract parents and students. That is apparently too much like work. The easier route to solve a declining budget is to ask for the community to raise their taxes yet again.

You can be sure that with this tax increase request from D11 will come the typical promises (and threats). We promise that we will improve if you just give us a little more money, they will say. This time we mean it. We promise that we will be responsive to the community if you just grant us this request, just one more time. It’s all for the kids. Seriously, it’s all for the kids. If you don’t grant us this request, we will probably have to cut extra curricular activities. We really don’t want to hurt the children, but we just don’t have the money to do all of the wonderful things we need to do to bring us into the 21st Century. ½ billion dollars a year just doesn’t allow us to educate kids.

According to D11 employees, Bishop and his staff believe that this is a good year to ask for yet more money since it is a presidential election year. They feel that liberal voters, who typically enjoy high taxes, will vote in large numbers this November, so the chances of getting the voters to turn over more of their incomes to a lethargic district will be fairly high.

As D11 prepares to come to the community to ask tax payers to tighten their belts once again, you can be certain that there will be no belt tightening down at Central Admin. You can be sure that as you work harder to make up for your higher taxes, the administration will grow larger with the extra funds that it receives. More money has never improved performance in the past, and it won’t improve it this time, either.

She makes good money for this logic

Dora Gonzales is the head of the District 11 math department. She has been in place since Norm Ridder was superintendent. After the February 2004 math town hall and the very clear feedback from parents that they were not happy with the state of math in D11, Ridder began to have second thoughts about keeping Gonzales on board in her math role. She had a troubling habit of forcing lousy curriculum and textbook choices on schools in the district. Most schools took her advice because she and certain executive directors left the schools little choice. Schools with strong math leaders, such as Holmes Middle School, resisted the pressure and maintained math curriculum that actually works. As a result, Holmes is one of the highest performing middles schools in D11 in the area of math. Students depart Holmes with an understanding of math, and they are generally prepared to move on to the next level. Due to Gonzales' failed leadership, thousands of D11 students are being cheated out of a basic math education.

Ridder decided to implement a restructuring of his administrative staff in 2004. Superintendents move people and change titles of their executives every couple of years to make the public believe that they are actually doing something (Terry Bishop is going through this process himself). Ridder informed board members that he was changing the job title to Gonzales' job, and that she would have to reapply for her position. He stated that he was confident that Gonzales would not be hired for her position due to the demand for improved math in the district. Ridder expressed concern that if he fired Gonzales or asked her to step down from her job, the Hispanic community would rise up in anger. He never thought to inform the Hispanic community that the decisions made by Gonzales were particularly harmful to them.

Recently, Gonzales was invited to speak at a League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) meeting in Colorado Springs. The topic was obviously math. Gonzales was invited to speak because the Latino community is becoming more knowledgeable about the state of education in D11, and particularly with regards to the math education, or lack thereof.

Gonzales was peppered with questions about D11 math and any plans she had to improve the performance of the district. Gonzales was challenged on her support for constructivist math programs such as Everyday Math. She defended these programs, claiming that traditional math programs and approaches (commonly called programs that work) were historically harmful to minority children. Citing no evidence for this claim, she told the LULAC members that constructivist math was the correct fit for D11 and for Latino students.


The LULAC audience was not buying Gonzales' defense of a failed math program for the district. They had seen the data, and the evidence was clear: Latinos, and all other "groups" of students, were not learning math in D11. The audience asked Gonzales why the data was showing that her programs were not working. She had no answer. She assured them that the data don't tell the whole story. She could not explain what information she had that DID tell the whole story, and she became frustrated.

Gonzales finally told the LULAC audience what really mattered the most. When they wouldn't accept her excuses and lack of plan for improvement, Gonzales went for the logical conclusion. She said, "Well at least you should be happy that you have a brown face running the math department."

There you have it. The most important issue at hand in the whole math debate in D11 is that a Latino is the head of the math department. As one of the LULAC members asked: "Is it supposed to somehow make us happier that our kids are being screwed by a fellow Latino rather than by a white?" Thank you, Dora Gonzales, for confirming what many of us already knew. You aren't there to serve the community or to advance the education of kids. You are there to serve other interests, and based on your overly high salary (over $100,000 when benefits are included), the interest you serve is largely your own.