Education

“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.

A small group of students staged a walk out at the magnet school off 6th and Fox streets and marched through downtown to the Denver Public School central administration building to protest potential budget cuts. If the worst does come to pass, reductions could take hold in the very department that draws students to the magnet school.

Denver Public Schools will expand a two-year-old pilot program that gives low-income students school choice enrollment priority. But without resolving transportation issues and expanding the network of campuses voluntarily participating, students may still be unable to truly choose their campus.

On January 19, 2017, the day before Donald Trump’s inauguration, we listed the ten worst American presidents of all time as chosen by members of the CU Boulder history department and interviewed Professor Thomas Zeiler, a key part of the group, about Trump’s odds of joining this roster. A year later, we checked in again with Zeiler in an effort to gauge The Donald’s progress in regard to this dubious potential achievement, and the prof says Trump has reached the peak in record time. According to Zeiler, Trump is already the lousiest chief executive ever elected in the U.S., and he sees no way for his status to rise during the remaining three years of his current term.

Colorado’s current public school funding model was created more than twenty years ago. A group of Colorado superintendents from across the state, from small rural to urban districts, are working to update it in the hopes of pouring more than $1 billion back into the public school system. Working with legislators, they will push a bill this month to “modernize” public school funding.

The state. Politicians. Educators. Activists. All stakeholders agree that Colorado schools are facing critical shortages of teachers. But the state’s most powerful teachers’ union is unsure whether lawmakers can do anything to fund the changes necessary to change the tide.

Although the University of Colorado Buffaloes aren’t going to a college football bowl game in 2017-2018 thanks to a mediocre 5-7 record, nine of its fellow members in the Pac-12 conference qualified, with eight of those contests taking place on or after December 26. If the Buffs fall short again next year, though, some of its staffers will be busy anyhow, since CU Boulder has been chosen to coordinate an ambitious research project into traumatic brain injury among student athletes, including those who slam heads on the gridiron, with one of the main tools being EYE-SYNC, a cutting-edge device designed to diagnose concussions by way of eye movement.

But for most of the instructors at Colorado’s community colleges, the holidays offer not a respite but a time of great anxiety and financial strain.

At a meeting on Monday, December 4, the Douglas County School Board killed the district’s controversial voucher program, ending years of conflict. The fight has waged for years in the court system, but in the end, victory was achieved at the ballot box thanks to the electoral success of anti-voucher candidates last month.