Education

Day two of teacher protests at the Colorado State Capitol, following a boisterous turnout in the same location yesterday, is expected to attract educators from across the metro area and the state. The atmosphere is tense, given the introduction of a bill that threatens to jail teachers who strike and a call for doctors willing to write notes for protesting instructors who may otherwise have their pay docked for attending rallies even if schools are closed in their district. But Amie Baca-Oehlert, vice president of the Colorado Education Association, prefers to keep the focus on the reasons teachers are demonstrating.

A post on the popular Nextdoor site suggests that some educators planning to take part in teacher walkout day protests scheduled for Friday, April 27, may have their pay docked for doing so without a doctor’s note and requests that medical professionals who sympathize with their plight volunteer to write one up for anyone in this situation.

With more and more Denver-area school districts choosing to close on April 26 and 27 because of planned teacher walkouts over low pay and poor classroom funding, and protests over teacher pay in places such as Oklahoma raising passions nationwide, two Republican legislators have introduced a bill that could potentially jail striking teachers in Colorado for up to six months. All four Democratic candidates for governor on the June primary ballot are aghast at the notion, with former state senator Mike Johnston, who initially sounded the alarm, leading the charge. But none of the three GOP hopefuls who made the ballot responded to Westword’s question about the measure.

An investigation has found that Nick Dawkins, who resigned last month as principal of Manual High School, violated Denver Public Schools policies about discrimination, harassment and retaliation.

In recent weeks, stories about sexual harassment allegations aimed at Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, as well as state legislators Randy Baumgardner (who dodged expulsion from the general assembly) and Steve Lebsock (who didn’t), show that even powerful figures aren’t immune from criticism over improper behavior. And that’s proving to be the case with offenders who are no longer among the living, too. Witness the decision by Colorado College to rescind an honorary degree bestowed more than a century ago on former school president William Slocum, and the stripping of his name from a campus building. These moves were made because of what CC’s board of trustees describe as “overwhelming and uncontroverted evidence that Slocum engaged in instances of sexual misconduct and egregious sexual assault while he was president of the college.”

For decades, the University of Colorado Boulder student government, known as CUSG, has been among the most powerful organizations of its type in the country, overseeing cost centers valued in excess of $20 million per annum. Last week, CU Boulder administrators announced their intention to strip all but a token amount of that responsibility from the group, only to temporarily back down in the face of protests by students and former CUSG members led by state senator Steve Fenberg. But Fenberg fears Chancellor Phil DiStefano and his staff plan to push through their proposal over the summer, when they have a better chance of dodging demonstrations.

The state’s largest charter school for gifted and talented students is seeing some change in leadership in the wake of several federal complaints filed against the school last year.

A new study about the impact of marijuana on Pueblo County maintains that there’s no evidence linking cannabis legalization and the increase of homelessness in the area. This contention has been ripped by Pueblo Police Chief Troy Davenport, who strongly believes such a connection exists, as well as the authors of a Pueblo Chieftain editorial that dismissed these findings as “junk science.” But one of the academics behind the document suggests that such critics would rather believe the sort of nonsense churned out by prohibitionists for decades than look at actual facts.

“It’s not like he had sex with [the players].”

Inspired by cities in Latin America, many of which are built around “plazas” that are home to government buildings and the biggest church in town, the ten-year-old Plaza program is a way for Denver’s immigrant, refugee and asylum populations to access each other as well as resources they need to navigate the city.

Outgoing Manual High School principal Nickolas Dawkins created a stir when he alleged in his resignation that he was being “targeted by those who called me n*gger.” The district alleges that Dawkins created a hostile work environment and was being investigated for concerns about his leadership. Now, more information may potentially point to allegations of sexual harassment that led to Dawkins’ resignation.

After months of heated parent town halls and tough community discussions, a school district in Adams County has become the first urban district in the state to transition to a four-day school week starting this August. Years of low teacher pay had taken its toll, and district leadership were desperate to try something different to change the tides amid a statewide teacher shortage and an underfunded education budget.

Parents are worried that DPS cuts in the central office will hurt the quality of special education services for their children. The district says these cuts will provide more school-based resources, especially for mental and emotional health.

For folks in the United States and much of the Western world, renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, who passed away early today, March 14, in Cambridge, is the most famous person to die thus far in 2018, and the social media reactions vary from heartfelt tributes to bizarre takes along the lines of a Facebook item that reads, “Stop trolling. Stephen Hawking is not dead. Chairs can’t die.” Such reactions are to be expected according to a recent report by University of Colorado Boulder researchers.

Last night, on the eve of planned gun-control-related student walkouts at schools throughout the Denver area and the nation, Adams 12 Five Star Schools superintendent Chris Gdowski sent a letter to parents warning about “a high volume (over 40 at this time) of anonymous Safe2Tell reports…raising safety concerns at each of our five comprehensive high schools (Horizon, Legacy, Mountain Range, Northglenn and Thornton) for tomorrow, March 14, 2018.” Gdowski added that “we have been in contact with neighboring school districts in the Denver-metro area and this is consistent with what they are experiencing.”

The March 2 resignation of Manual High School principal Nick Dawkins and his subsequent assertion that he “was targeted by those that called me a nigger and vowed to bring harm to me” after reports of a confederate flag at a Manual-Weld Central High School football game last September was preceded by a Denver Public Schools investigation into an alleged hostile work environment, as he has acknowledged. According to multiple sources, staff concerns about Dawkins included inappropriate sexual and racial comments, his lack of discretion about sensitive personnel matters (including copying others on an implicit job threat to a staffer on family medical leave), and his disappearance after a meeting in which he accused DPS of compiling a secret dossier on him due in part to complaints from white women.

Pending a few bureaucratic steps, School District 27J will become the first urban school district in the state to transition to a four-day school week.

Controversial columnist and media figure Ann Coulter is scheduled to give a free talk at the University of Colorado Boulder campus on Wednesday, March 21, and campus officials will no doubt spend the time between now and then preparing for potential trouble.

On Friday, March 2, news broke that Nick Dawkins had resigned as principal of Manual High School, and the initial letter describing the reasons behind his decision was exceedingly polite, albeit with an edge of sadness. But the following day, in an essay entitled “Why I Left Denver Public Schools,” Dawkins was much more blunt, revealing that a controversy over reports of a confederate flag at a Manual-Weld Central High School football game last September was among the factors that led to his departure. “For weeks as this situation played out I was targeted by those that called me a nigger and vowed to bring harm to me,” Dawkins wrote.

The Denver General Defense Committee, a progressive group affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies, has published a fiery account of the clash between members of a white supremacist group and Antifa protesters outside a controversial event on the Colorado State University campus earlier this month. In it, the authors explicitly state that members of the CSU Police Department stood “on the side of the neo-Nazis and fascists” during the confrontation and argue that a video shared here provides evidence to that effect by way of an officer telling a protester afterward, “If you guys need something, let us know.”

On Friday, February 2, a feared confrontation between members of a white supremacist group and Antifa protesters outside a controversial event on the Colorado State University campus came to pass. Although no arrests took place, multiple reports say things got physical between the antagonists, with injuries suffered on both sides.

At 5:30 p.m. tonight, February 2, at Colorado State University, members of an anti-fascist organization are expected to come face to face with alleged neo-Nazi recruiters from the Traditionalist Worker Party, which has been identified as a hate group fueled by white supremacist views. The potential for trouble has led CSU president Tony Frank to send out a campus-wide denunciation of the TWP that makes prominent mention of a safety plan developed in the hope of preventing violence.