Education

Educators report that undocumented students have expressed increased fear in response to family separations on the border.

In a lawsuit scheduled to be heard at trial in August, former Colorado State University computer-science professor Dr. Christina Boucher claims that CSU reacted to her reports of a male colleague’s ogling by retaliating against her.

The big news about teens and marijuana in Colorado is that there isn’t big news. Just-issued federal government statistics show that the rate of cannabis use among high school students in the state is slightly less than the national average and below the percentage who smoked pot before Colorado voters approved legal consumption for adults more than five years ago.

Established in 2014, RiseUp is one of twenty Alternative Education Campuses — schools that accommodate at-risk populations — in the DPS system. The charter school specializes in teaching students who have either dropped out of school or are at risk of dropping out, or have a criminal background or a history of child abuse or neglect, among other criteria.

Two elite charter schools in the Denver area — Stargate School and STEM School Highlands Ranch — are some of the highest-performing schools in their respective districts. Both have long wait lists of parents eager to wield their choice and enroll their children. But families in both schools have learned the hard way that charter schools can come with a heavy price.

The latest order in a 2016 lawsuit filed against the University of Colorado by a male student who was expelled after being accused of sexually assaulting two fellow enrollees dismisses a claim that he was a discrimination victim under Title IX but is allowing an assertion that his due process rights were violated to move ahead.

Kris McDaniel-Miccio, one of the seven intervenors named in the consent decree between DU and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which brought suit against the university on the female full professors’ behalf, has written a letter to Chopp that she’s given Westword permission to share. And it pulls no punches.

The University of Denver has agreed to pay $2.66 million to resolve a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which accused DU of paying not just one or some of its female full law professors less than the mean average salary of male full profs at the law school, but all of them.

Parents, students and staffers at RiseUp Community School want answers about an alleged room-to-room search at the school conducted by the Denver Police Department, with officers said to have shown their weapons while searching for a student who wasn’t in the building.

The Colorado high schools ranked highest in the latest U.S. News & World Report analysis score better marks within the state than outside it. Not one of the top ten Colorado high schools in 2018 lands within the top one-hundred facilities nationwide, with the top finisher sliding 47 slots from just two years ago.

Colorado Department of Education data about marijuana violations in state schools reveals the facilities with the most pot-related incidents during the 2016-2017 academic year, with five registering fifty or more. The numbers also illustrate the wide variation in how schools handle such matters, with many seldom or never referring the students in question to law enforcement. The most common punishment: out-of-school suspensions.

Colorado State University is taking a barrage of flak after two Native American students who’d signed up to tour the campus were detained by police after the mother of another potential CSU attendee dialed 911 because their appearance disturbed her. But Cheryl Crazy Bull, president and CEO of the Denver-based American Indian College Fund, sees the university less as the cause of a disease than a symptom of one.

During its 10 p.m. broadcast on May 2, nearly two weeks after Westword revealed that an investigation into former Manual principal Nick Dawkins found he had violated Denver Public Schools policies related to “equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination” and “procedures for the investigation of employee complaints of discrimination or harassment,” 9News reported that DPS had finally sent a letter to Manual parents about the inquiry. But that wasn’t true. Or at least it’s not true yet.

According to former Friends of Manual board chair Lainie Hodges, staffers and students were left reeling by news that a Denver Public Schools investigation found that former Manual High School principal Nick Dawkins had violated policies related to “equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination” and “procedures for the investigation of employee complaints of discrimination or harassment.”

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.