Boardhawk Podcast Episode 2: DPS choice window, and more

Transcript

Alan Gottlieb: 0:08

Good morning, Alexis, on this cold inauguration day, which somehow seems appropriate. How are you doing?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 0:14

I'm doing okay, Alan. Very cold very it's feeling dystopian with today being both Martin Luther King Jr. day and inauguration day. It's it's a little bit surreal. But overall, I'm doing well.

Alan Gottlieb: 0:26

I'm curious about how many hearty souls are out there marching in the so called morale today because it's down around zero out there

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 0:33

Yeah, last I checked I think it was it was one degree when I a few minutes ago Well, hopefully everybody stays warm out there and safe.

Alan Gottlieb: 0:41

Yes So we've got three topics that we want to touch on today Too briefly and one in a little more detail the two we're gonna touch on briefly Our again, today being Inauguration Day, DPS's efforts, and other districts too, but DPS in particular, to protect migrant students as the new administration takes office with threats of massive deportations and lots of things like the end of birthright citizenship, even I read today, they're going to try and do away with it. We'll touch on that. We're going to give some updates on developments in the John Youngquist case and his reprimand by the school board and his claims of an illegal executive session or two that were held late. Last year, and then finally, and in more detail, because the school choice period for Denver Public Schools is beginning, we want to kind of talk about what to watch for, how it's going, you know, and maybe give some pointers to families about that. But that's going to be our run of show today, and we'll start again with DPS's protection of migrant students. Why don't you kind of lead off with That one, Alexis, and say what your impressions are of what the district's up to.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 1:45

Sure. Thanks, Allen. So last week Superintendent Marrero sent an email out to the DPS community, essentially doubling down on the district's commitment to create equitable and inclusive environments for all students. That includes our undocumented students within DPS. They sent out a family resource toolkit in English and Spanish containing information about you know, basic know your rights with the DPS policy is which essentially DPS policy is they don't track students immigration status. So even if they if, if somebody was to come in and say, you know, who, who are your undocumented students, they wouldn't even know because DPS doesn't ask that information. And then some of the social emotional pieces as well, like mental health supports. Obviously, this is a very Traumatic experience that many of our students may face given the Trump administration and some of the early calls for mass deportation for raids in sanctuary cities. We can get into that here in a second. And then it, it talks a little bit about how DPS is training its staff on On how, what to do should immigration officials come to your school. As a reminder, several years ago, the state passed a law which prohibited any coordination from local sheriff's offices and law enforcement with ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So prior to that law, If, let's say, a DPS parent was detained and was undocumented, the Denver Sheriff's Office could, after detaining that person and, and suspecting that they were undocumented, could reach out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and then prior to the release of that A person who was in jail, Immigration and Customs Enforcement would come and then pick them up and then possibly take them to the Aurora Detention Center. Now, the policy is, is the Sheriff's Office is not allowed to coordinate or even if they suspect somebody to be undocumented. They are not allowed to reach out to ICE and let them know that they have somebody who is suspected of of being in the country without documentation. Now in bluer states where we have, or I'm sorry, bluer cities or municipalities where we have more progressive leadership, You know, I don't think any sort of coordination is happening. We do know, however, that many of the more conservative sheriffs departments and municipalities are pushing back on that and there may in fact be some coordination. So in Denver, we're fortunate to both have a mayor and a superintendent and just general leadership and city council that are very much protective of our immigrant community, including Immigrant families. However, that's not to say that with this new Trump administration they're not going to try and coordinate anyway. What that looks like, I'm sure there, there will be some battles taking place in courtrooms. However, in the meantime, that doesn't stop so many families from being afraid of, of what's going to happen. And then Alan, I think you had mentioned to me that there was also a Denver Post article that came out about this as well. I don't know if you wanted to give a quick debrief on that.

Alan Gottlieb: 4:48

Well, it really just goes into some detail about DPS actually, you know, telling families to you know, and staff how to prepare for this and, and that it could be coming and that people kind of need to be vigilant. And it's a good detailed story. Just a couple of things I wanted to add to what you said. One is that. It's really, it's great that DPS is doing it. It's commendable. It's not only DPS, there's actually a Supreme Court case from many, many years ago, maybe back to the 70s, that basically says school districts cannot ask about immigration status and must immigrate, educate any child that walks in its doors. I think the idea being that it's no matter what your own personal feelings about undocumented immigrants and immigration, people flooding across the border without papers and all that, once the kids are here, It only serves everyone to have them educated rather than, you know, at home and without anything structured to do. So that's a federal Supreme Court case that's in place, and I've heard and read that, you know, the Trump people are going to try and come up with a case to flip that during their time in power, but that's the law of the land right now. The other kind of alarming thing is that I've read, I happened to be in Chicago visiting family this past weekend, and that was the place where they were saying they were going to launch their first raids, not on schools specifically, but just immigration raids. And basically the, the guy who's going to be the, I think his name is Horman, who's going to be in charge of the, Tom Horman in charge of, Immigration and Customs Enforcement basically said cities and states that don't cooperate that we're just going to flood the zone with more agents and we'll just pour them in there and we don't need the local people. So it's definitely worth people being vigilant and paying close attention to that.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 6:22

Absolutely. And then, you know, the other piece is Family just being afraid to send their kids to school, so it'll be interesting to see if we have higher absenteeism rates from immigrant families, from undocumented families that same Denver Post article did reference briefly, you know, some of the comments made by Director De La Rosa, who, her Professional career prior to retirement was working in immigration and immigration policy. So it is nice that we have at least a school board member who understands policy, understands the law around this, but also is encouraging families to continue sending their kids to school. And if anything, I mean I'm, I'm certainly not giving any legal advice, however, I would feel safer you know, having my children in school than at home where there is, there, there aren't really any protections from immigration coming directly to your home. Whereas at least with the school, there's, there's going to be more protection and adults around who are not going to cooperate.

Alan Gottlieb: 7:19

Yeah, I think the most alarming scenario potentially, and this was a refer, you know, referenced in, in Alex Merrow's letter, Home to Families, was update your emergency contact.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 7:27

Yes.

Alan Gottlieb: 7:27

Because the thing I, the sort of nightmare scenario I can see developing is that is that, you know, a kid, the parents get arrested and the parents come home and or the kids come home from school and the parents are gone. And, you know, where are they? And so emergency contacts are essential. That, I mean, to me, that's the more, it would be more traumatic for the kids to be home and see it. Then their parents dragged out and be left at home alone or whatever. But I, you know, it's just, it's a real thing potentially, you know, and I'd rather be a little alarmist about it going into it than like laissez faire and saying, oh, they're all talking to action because that's not the way it seems right now

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 8:03

and completely agree.

Alan Gottlieb: 8:05

Okay. Well, anyway, on to again I think we both feel like DPS is doing the right thing and we want to praise them for that. And you know, I know people think we're critics of DPS and that's all we do, but this is something they're doing right. And having said that, let's now turn to something they're doing wrong. There

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 8:20

we go. Now we will be critics.

Alan Gottlieb: 8:23

And that's a quick recap of what's going on with the John Youngquist situation. We talked about it before, but really briefly. There was a, well, we have actually haven't had a podcast since the board meeting a couple of Thursdays ago where Youngquist was reprimanded by, by all six of his colleagues for having accused the board of having held an illegal executive session and having done it by writing a rather pointed letter to board president Kerry Olson. Even, even his allies were upset. This is what they said that he did kind of reach out individually to them and say, I'm troubled by this and what can we do about it now, here's the problem in my view and I wrote a column about this in boardhawk that you can that you can find if you go look at the site is that first of all DPS contracted with a law firm Kaplan and earnest, which is it. It's the bulk of its work is working with school districts and school boards on issues and defending school boards. So. I'm sure they're above board, excellent ethical law firm, but they're, you know, what lawyers do is basically what, you know, help their clients. And so when they were asked by the district to look at the legality of these executive sessions, they came back and said these executive sessions seem proper. John Youngquist had two basic objections to these executive sessions, as I understand it. One is that they weren't properly noticed. In other words, they should have specifically in the meeting notice said, to discuss John Youngquist's request for reimbursement for para fines or penalties for working too many hours while, while a para beneficiary. And then he also felt like he was excluded illegally from those meetings when they were talking about him. So he, he couldn't participate. Now I happened to talk. which no other media, same on you, other media bother to do. I called up Steve Zandsberg, who's the preeminent media lawyer in Colorado and one of the top in the country, in my opinion. I know him pretty well. And I asked him about this because the board members very, some of them very high handedly, hello, Scott Esserman You know, kind of demanded an apology for Youngquist and acted like the, this lawyer from, or this letter from Kaplan and Ernest law firm was, you know, the tablets handed down by God to Moses or something that, you know, it was absolutely, they said it wasn't illegal. Therefore, it wasn't therefore. John Youngquist, you must apologize. Well, Steve Vansberg had a very different take on it, which was that the notice part, he wasn't going to get into the part about whether John should have been in the meeting or not, because he said it intersects with open meetings laws and other complex school laws that he wasn't as expert in, but he said in his opinion, clearly this, these two executive sessions were not properly noticed where they discussed John Youngquist and the para benefits and that, you know, he would love to take it before a judge and show that once again, DPS. board and staff violated the open meetings law. My, my, my sense is John Youngquist is not interested in pursuing this legally, but I would hope that the board members would humble themselves a little, look at this and realize that they're still screwing up, that they're still not publicly noticing meetings adequately. And they're basically pulling the wool over the eyes of the public because they want to do stuff in secret and they need to stop it. Any thoughts on that?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 11:36

Yeah, I think as far as DPS going out and saying, you know, we've hired outside counsel and they said we're totally above board. I completely agree. It's disingenuous to say outside counsel when it's an outside counsel that always supports or often supports school districts and their interests. So there's that piece, which I completely agree. Where I do think I should say I was surprised when all six of the board members, including Directors De La Rosa and Sia came out also with critical comments against Director Youngquist. If I were to put myself in their shoes, I think I would also be frustrated that the letter went out that, You know, they were also part of the critique of, you know, you held an illegal session. So, while I agree with the sentiment that DPS maybe is being disingenuous and saying, oh, we were totally above board you know, the, the fact that you do have a board, especially with the new members, really trying to work collaboratively, the letter catching them off guard, you know, going back, I wonder if, if Director Youngquist would have sent the letter and done it the same way, now knowing what happened. And then, and then the last thing I'll say is, I was quite surprised that That they all spoke in that meeting including directors de la recencia with that critique. I was expecting them to probably be a little bit more reserved or quiet on that so for them to speak out really, to me, speaks volumes about their, their frustration about the letter going out in the first place. And I do think it's more the letter and thank you, him critiquing the board publicly, as opposed to the argument about the fact of what if it whether it was or was not a an illegal meeting or not,

Alan Gottlieb: 13:19

and he did acknowledge at that reprimand session that he wrote that letter. Out of some frustration, you know, I guess the only thing I'd say, and then we can move on to our main topic of discussion today, but is that he didn't write this letter and release it to the public. He wrote the letter and send it to the board president. Carrie Olson, which to me is, you know, maybe he should have done a little. Groundwork first and talk to the board members before he sent it. But he did not hold a press, you know, he didn't do the ante Anderson thing and hold a press conference and demand this, that, and the other thing. He sent the letter to the board president. So that seems to me, you know, yes, he could have done something else, but it also wasn't some giant public blow up until, until it became such

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 14:02

fair, totally fair. We, we, we shall see how they continue working together, collaborating yeah. And all things considered, and I think it could have been much more argumentative, much uglier and compared to what we've seen in the past this was pretty mild. So we'll see what happens in the future.

Alan Gottlieb: 14:19

Right. And partly the reason it was mild is because I think they decided they made a strategic decision to talk only about this illegal meeting stuff and not about the other accusations that were made against Youngquist by certain members of the staff that he was racially insensitive, etc. That, that was, that was not touched on. And, and I think that was a wise decision by all the members of the board. Okay, so now we are going to talk about school choice, the school choice period opening and what. everyone should be watching for and what we'll be watching for. And Alexis, you're going to lead this portion of the conversation. And I'm just interested in, you know, maybe give a little background to start about what this whole thing is and why it's kind of unique to Denver.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 14:58

Sure. I mean, I'm, I'm very interested in this for a couple of reasons. So the first being given the closures that happened earlier in the school year. There is going to be a lot of eyes on how the students who are displaced as a result of closure, how they will, they are coming into school, the school choice process, and if they truly will be given preference what that preference and priority looks like, particularly in schools that that already are at full capacity, and we'll get into what that means here in a second. The second reason I'm particularly interested in this is deeply personal. I have a fifth grader. So an incoming sixth grader in the, in the new school year, and on the one hand, I'm incredibly grateful that we have choice because our neighborhood school for middle school isn't my preferred option, but on the other hand, now as a parent navigating this and maybe knowing too much about school choice, it's also a little bit stressful and nerve wracking because so many of the schools that are the most desired in DPS tend to have longer wait lists and And you really have to figure out, you know, how are you going to rank number one, two, and three, knowing that if you put a school at number two you know, there may be a strategy there. And so again, we'll, we'll talk about that. And then the final piece is, is something I'm curious and we'll probably bring somebody on from DPS sometime in the future to talk about this part, is given declining enrollments, Is it easier now to get into a school than it was maybe five years ago when we were sort of at peak enrollment numbers as well? So those are the things I want to talk about and why I'm particularly interested. Before we jump into that though, Alan, anything that you that you're observing in this space before we dive in?

Alan Gottlieb: 16:39

I'm going to be very interested to watch whether there is an extra layer of preference given to some of the Noisiest populations. And what I mean by that is I'm not going to be able to remember the terminology exactly right now. But in Central Park, in addition to enrollment zones, there's some smaller subset that gives people who live in the immediate vicinity of a certain school some preference over that. I don't remember the name of it offhand. But there's all there's talk based on some of the things Superintendent Marrero said during the votes on which schools were going to be closing next school year about families in the Palmer area, which is sort of Congress Park Hilltop area, more or less that school closing that those that well, he wanted to guarantee families in in some of those neighborhoods surrounding the school. They will be going to instead tell her that they will definitely still be able to go to teller. Again, this is a more affluent part of town. Central Park is a more affluent part of town. It sounds like that no matter how much lip service is paid to equity, when it comes down to it, the parents who know how to advocate most effectively, who tend to be the more affluent parents, get some sort of preferential treatment in these processes. And I don't know. I know it's not easy to be a school board member or a district staff when you've got people threatening lawyers jumping down your throat and all of that, but I'm going to be watching to see how all of that plays out. And if the families who have been displaced at Palmer really do get to go kind of get in the front of the line about where they where they get to send their kids.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 18:17

Yeah, I mean, let's start there. So when going back and listening to the public comment around school closure, it was fascinating how the comments by families who are going to be displaced in Southwest Denver, you know, was very different than some of the comments made by the families who are going to be displaced at Palmer. Some of the Palmer parents comments were things like, well, I might have to send my kids to private school or Just sorry, just the fact that you had parents in Southwest Denver, predominantly Latino families talking about the, you know, transportation and the concerns about the school culture, you know, loving their teachers and then Yes, there was a little bit of that with with Teller, but a couple of the, the moms who spoke who appeared to be white, making comments about poor me, I'm going to send my kids to the private school instead of, you know, the, the other schools, and I don't want to do choice, and then the Teller Parents, actually, which was interesting. Teller family is coming out and speaking, talking about what it would mean should their school then receive new students who are outside of the boundary. So, exactly to your point, Alan, you know, Palmer being in Park Hill, a fairly affluent community, and then Teller being in Congress Park. Just as affluent, if not more so Teller is a school that is at max capacity and Teller is one of the top ranked DPS elementary schools. So there are families from across the district who are applying, trying to get into Teller through the school choice process. To me, again, it's disingenuous to, to say, well, if you're a Palmer parent, you're going to be guaranteed access to Teller when Teller is already at 100 percent enrollment capacity, and so the way that it works for a neighborhood school, which, which Teller is, you have preference for the students who live in that boundary zone within Teller, and then from there, you get preference based on other criteria, so whether it's you know, you have a sibling there, you have You have a, a parent who works at the district or a family member or who works at the school excuse me. Then you open it up to the rest of DPS and, and Denver residents, and then from there you open it up to any non Denver residents. Now, I don't see a world where any non Denver resident is getting into Teller, but when you open it up to those Denver residents outside of the boundary zone, I would envision there's going to be a lot of Palmer parents applying to try to get into, to Teller as their number one choice, should they be going through the choice process and not going private school. And what then do you do when, you know, you maybe have two seats open in that, in that second preference? To me, that is not truly equitable. And then to your point, Alan, I was very confused by that comment that superintendent Maidero made in, in that specific board meeting, where he, it, it seemed like he was guaranteeing or saying that there was going to be preference, but everything I read in policy, Does it reference

Alan Gottlieb: 21:02

for reference for who just

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 21:05

for families who want to go to the next closest neighborhood in that area with in this case, Teller, similar to the far northeast enrollment zone you have guaranteed you have guaranteed access to one of the schools in that zone, but there seems to be this confusion now from from that specific comment that he made that Even though there's the enrollment zone that there's still somehow proximity preference, but again, from what I've read in policy, I don't see that written down anywhere. So it's, it's sort of left confusion for me and a couple of folks that I've been speaking to about this behind the scenes. When it comes to the displaced students, particularly at Palmer who are, were likely going to be applying to those schools that have very high wait lists.

Alan Gottlieb: 21:51

My guess is that when choice one. School choice round one and in mid February, the next public comment session is going to be filled with parents who are feeling like they got screwed one way or another. That's that's just an educated guess.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 22:05

I think that's probably that's probably right. And and I do want to bring somebody on from DPS, who's more of an expert than we are about this, especially once we have you. February 18th the deadline passes to hear about what what the numbers look like, how many students got their first preference, how many students got their second preference, et cetera. And how, how the students who were displaced by closure are faring through this process. So as a reminder, I wanted to share with folks what choice is and then how DPS. So. DPS, I would argue, is very fortunate to have school choice. Some, some may disagree. The critics of school choice would say it creates unnecessary competition. It creates more of a free market. It's too capitalistic when you shouldn't, you know, be operating that way with with government. As a parent, I would say. The reason I really love school choice is that every child is unique and you can really pick a school that meets your child's best interest. And if you live in a neighborhood where maybe your school is chronically underperforming academically or is having challenges you can choose to apply to a different school outside of that neighborhood. So, the way that school choice works in DPS prior to 2011 2012, I believe, There were applications for every single school, so you would be sending in, you know, potentially 10 applications to different schools, and every process was a little bit different. In that 2011 2012 school year, they really did a unified school choice process. So, from the application side, it's incredibly easy. You get a list. You basically pick five schools. You're ranking them in priority order. So number one is a school you absolutely want to get into, and then your preference is after that from two to five. And then the district will assign on a lottery basis at random, your family or your child will get a number between one and I think nine hundred and ninety nine thousand. 999. So almost a million and based on how they fare in that lottery if they're closer to one they will be more likely to get their first choice and then if they're closer to a million they are obviously going to be selected later in that process. Now where it gets a little bit tricky and what my family is now sort of struggling with as we think about what school to put as number one. is you have different types of schools. So we talked about Teller, we talked about Palmer. Those are traditional neighborhood boundary schools. So there's a boundary around that school and any child who lives in that boundary is guaranteed admissions should they choose to go to that school. If you don't choose that school as number one and you get into a different school, then you forfeit your your guaranteed admissions to that school, should you change your mind later. Then you have what are called enrollment zones. So, this is something that we see in the far northeast, for example, where you aren't guaranteed access into your neighborhood school, which may be the closest, but you will be guaranteed access to a school in that zone. And what's nice about the enrollment zone is that You do have buses in most of those zones that sort of go back and forth. And so if you're a little bit further away and you can't walk, then you have a sort of this express bus that goes all over. Alan, do you want to add something to that part?

Alan Gottlieb: 25:23

No, no. I think you're, you're, you're the expert and you're giving a really good summation. So I just had my microphone on mute because my dog was barking at the male character.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 25:32

Okay. And I have my, my kid over here who, who may also be interrupting here in a second. And then you have non enrollment schools that may or may not have qualification process. So think of schools like Denver School of the Arts or Maury, Polaris, where. you have to meet a different criteria to get into that school. So in the case of DSA, you know, you'll have to be accepted through some submission process. So whether it's you're there on dance or music or whatever your, your, artistic medium is, you would have to be admitted. And then in the case of Mori and Polaris, those are the two DPS magnet schools, Polaris being an elementary school, Mori being a middle school. You have to be what's called magnet eligible, which essentially means you were you qualify and then I believe 95 percent of gifted and talented students, which makes you highly gifted. So then there's that process as well. What's tricky about Morrie and we're dealing with this right now because I do have a child, my fifth grader is magnet eligible, is you have part of the school is providing preference to the students who are magnet eligible, and then the other part of the school is, is serving the zone in that neighborhood. So when I went and toured Morrie into the open house, Back in December, it was fascinating because so many of the parents were there with students who did not live in the neighborhood who were talking about you know, we're asking questions about, well, what does it mean to be a magnet school? What are the special services you're getting and really diving into those students who are, who are highly gifted, but then one mother spoke up and, I was, I was kind of taking it back and it makes a lot of sense. She said, you know, we live in the neighborhood. Our student is not highly gifted. We want to know how you're prioritizing our children and how are you making sure you're serving all of the kids in the school? I thought that was a really interesting point. Because unfortunately, especially when you get into. Middle school and high school one of the critiques that I certainly have had, and I think DPS is doing a much better job than they were five or six years ago when I was more involved in the district, is you will sometimes have sort of students in two different tracks, so you might have like the IB track or the highly gifted track or the AP track, the advanced placement track, and then students who are not on the advanced placement track and not surprisingly it's Those tracks also tend to segregate the students unfortunately, biracial and ethnic lines too. So, you know, if you're going to, to George Washington. And socioeconomic. Exactly. Yep. So if you're going to a school like George Washington or South and you have an AP program the students who are sitting in those advanced placement courses don't necessarily reflect the full student body. I, I do commend DPS. I do think they're doing a much better job of trying to Encourage all students to take more rigorous courses however, you know, I haven't yet seen that bear out when we actually look at the test scores and how students from low economic backgrounds and students of color are doing in those specific examples. And then what else was I going to add to this? Look at my notes here. Oh, so so you're guaranteed enrollment if you live in a neighborhood school. If you don't live in that neighborhood if the school is very popular, it will likely have a wait list. So this is where as a parent you're having to sort of figure out what is the, what is your strategy and what is the game you're playing here. And this is, this is a valid critique of school choice. So. As we're thinking about the schools we're looking at, we are looking at a charter school, we're looking at a magnet school, we're looking at neighborhood schools, and each of those schools has a different what's called priority preference. So, In the case of one of the schools that we're looking at they don't have a boundary for middle school. However, because they are a K 8 school the students who are in 5th grade are guaranteed admissions going into 6th grade. So this is where you do have parents who would even consider moving or renting a place in a highly affluent neighborhood and possibly even changing their school. kid in fifth grade or fourth grade in order to get into that school. And I've seen this in with my own neighbors. I have a woman who lives down the street from me. Our kids went to school together and she choiced them into this K 8 school in fourth grade in order to get them guaranteed access in In middle school, and that school happens to be Slavens which is one of the most affluent number one, number one or number two middle schools in the district. Now, this is where I think one could argue, and I certainly would, that this makes choice not equitable, is that families who can play the game in such a way where they're able to either move into a district, or You know, change schools in fourth or fifth grade in order to guarantee admissions to one of the most highly sought after districts sought after schools they will be given priority over a family who's realizing, you know, at the end of fifth grade, Hey, Slavens is the best school. I want to send my kid there. If you're realizing that at the end of fifth grade your chances of getting into a school like Slavens is, is virtually impossible. So, and, and the last thing I'll say on that part is. And this may be a little bit radical, but I'll just say it. I think true choice would mean no boundaries. It would mean transportation, like very, very robust transportation infrastructure across the district now. That would take us back to sort of the the time of school busting and that's not certainly not what I'm advocating for. However, if we were to really say we have equitable school choice, I would say we have to remove boundaries and allow families to to go anywhere they want and have transportation to those schools. We will not have school choice as long as we have segregated neighborhoods that and have boundaries around those segregated neighborhoods. So if you're a family who lives in Southwest Denver or Green Valley Ranch and you want to get into a school in Congress Park, Park Hill yeah, in, in those areas, it's, it's virtually impossible under the current model.

Alan Gottlieb: 31:25

Well, being as old as I am and having watched DPS for as long as I have, I was a Denver Post reporter at the time that they redrew the neighborhood boundary schools after bussing ended, and I mean, there was certainly a huge amount of pressure on the district to go back to neighborhood schools, which meant going back to segregated schools, and interestingly enough, it wasn't just white affluent families that were advocating for that. There were A lot of people from mostly Latino and mostly Black neighborhoods saying, we want our schools back. Our kids have been bused out of our neighborhoods for decades now. We want our, we want our neighborhood schools back and, you know, shame on you for thinking that we can't make our schools good. But I think the way reality has played out is that we've kind of gone back to what there was before. And yeah, you're right that a very radical form of choice would be the only thing that could change that. But I also think the political pressures against that would be so overwhelming that it's hard to imagine it. It happening, unfortunately.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 32:16

Yeah, I don't see it happening. But if we were to say, you know, truly equitable choice, that's, I think the only way to make it happen. I don't see that happening even under a fully reform board either.

Alan Gottlieb: 32:28

Oh, no, no. I mean, they didn't want it. It was a third rail for everybody all along. Every time I would push superintendents on it and ask them questions and yeah. People didn't want to even talk about it really because it was too politically too much of a hot potato. Unless you've got anything else on choice, I think this, we've actually gone a little longer today because we had a lot to talk about, which is fine, but probably should wrap it up, but I don't want to cut you off if there were other aspects of choice you wanted to talk about. Before

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 32:53

I mean, there's one other piece I will say that I didn't anticipate as a parent. So having worked in education policy and generally having a You know, a basic knowledge of school choice. I felt pretty confident going into this. The one thing that I wasn't expecting was you know, my kid really having a strong preference for wanting to go to the same school as their friend. And it sounds so simple. And obviously I was incredibly naive going into this process. Like, of course, my fifth grade kid is going to have a very strong preference. I want to go to the same school as my friends. I want to play basketball with my friends. And so the negotiation at home between my husband and I and our child on why we're not choosing that neighborhood school has been, has been pretty challenging and I think what has really helped at least in our family is having him go to the school tours with us doing the open house and in many cases he's actually seen friends from basketball or seen friends from school there so then he knows, oh, I may not be the only kid new, or I might not be the only kid from my school who goes here now. The overwhelming majority are going to go to our neighborhood middle school. But that's been really, really helpful. So to all of those middle schools that are holding open house, who are doing the shadows, who are doing The, the tours, I really appreciate that and making it welcoming for the middle school, the incoming middle school students because it certainly made it easier on my family when, when we started this process and he heard we weren't going to the neighborhood school, there were, there were tears, there was, there was frustration, there was some yelling but we finally have figured out what our top one and two schools are, which are not our neighborhood school. And he's he's okay with it now. And, and I think he's actually looking forward to it.

Alan Gottlieb: 34:33

Well, good luck with the choice process. Thank you. Definitely check in when you hear and see what wound up happening and whether you were satisfied with the way it worked.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 34:41

Thanks, Alan. And thanks everyone for listening. And again, you know, Alan said this at the beginning when we first started the podcast feel free to reach out send a message. We'll be posting this on Facebook. Feel free to comment on Facebook. If you have things you disagree with if you have different comments, different opinions, we'd love to hear them.

Alan Gottlieb: 34:57

If there's somebody you'd really love to hear from on this podcast as a guest, we can always consider that too.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 35:03

Absolutely.

Alan Gottlieb: 35:04

All right. Well, again, stay warm and we will be back in a couple of weeks.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 35:08

Thanks everyone. Take care. Bye.