Special episode: The DPS board's "stupid and arrogant" superintendent contract extension

Transcript

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 0:08

Hi everyone. It's great to be here with Alan. We are recording this podcast on Friday, May 2nd. In the afternoon. This is another one of our fun emergency podcasts that we're trying to do in real time after big public actions that have to do with the Denver School Board. So last night as a quick recap. The Board of Education voted to amend the superintendent's existing contract. The amendments included removing his bonus, but he does get to keep his cola, which is a cost of living adjustment extending the contract into 2028. It was previously scheduled to end in June of 2026. It also, which most concerning to me. Now requires a five two super majority, whereas most things with the school board require just a simple four three simple majority requires a five, two super majority to fire the superintendent. If the contract is broken early, then one year full salary is paid out and he makes about$350,000 a year. So we are recording this podcast partly to just event and Alan and I to connect. We've been texting on and off this morning about this and a little bit last night. And just that we would share some of our personal feelings on this and talk about what the community has been saying out here. I will also add before I turn it over to Alan. I worked on a petition earlier this week that came about from a letter that I had also helped organize with a few fellow parents and concerned DPS stakeholders. And just wanna say to those listening who have signed the petition we had I. I actually haven't checked in a couple of hours, but as of last night we had over 850. I think we may be right at 900, if not a little bit over and just wanna say thank you to everybody who, who signed the petition, who has reached out since to try to stay involved. I don't know, I don't know what we're doing with this petition yet, but more to come. I guess I need to sit with my grief for a couple of days to figure out what to do, but I'll probably be sending a follow up email. And I'll just turn over to Alan before I get into my feelings. What do you think, Alan?

Alan Gottlieb: 2:17

I wrote a piece this morning that you can read on the board, hawk website, board hawk.org. That really sums up my feelings. I waited to write it till this morning so I could calm down a little. And also I wanted to watch the Avalanche game last night, so I didn't wanna, which was a great game. But. Basically what I said was this was a display of arrogance and stupidity on the part of the school board, and I very clearly said, I'm not calling any individual board members stupid, but to collectively, this was a really stupid decision for a number of reasons, and it was arrogant and beyond that it was, I. D I'm being very charitable to call it disingenuous the way they went about this and the reasons they gave for doing it and dishonest might be a more accurate word because they were trying to use the pretext of the fact that the superintendent had a bonus that, I know it made the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and others unhappy. He said he never wanted it, that it was problematic, and so they needed to get rid of it, so they needed to amend the contract. I think as you've pointed out, Alexis Yeah. Other superintendents in the past who've gotten bonuses have just written a check to the Denver Public Schools Foundation for the amount of the bonus, and then that kind of takes care of the problem without amending the contract. So it was very easily resolved without reopening the contract. This was clearly done because they, I don't see any other explanation. And the super majority clause that you pointed out, just. Proves this to me is that what they're really trying to do is lock him in and make it very politically and financially uncomfortable for any new school board to oust him if that's what they decide to do. But the other thing I just wanna say before I turn it back over to you is I don't, I. Feel like any of this objection to his contract extension had anything to do with people overtly wanting to fire Alex Marrero? Correct. It was more like, this is premature, especially given the fact that there's new evaluation criteria that we're just implemented at the beginning of this calendar year, and there hasn't even been half of a cycle, let alone a full cycle. Of data to see how well he's doing against those. Slightly more rigid and stringent. Criteria than the joke that was the previous evaluation criteria. So it, there's no rational explanation to me about why they would extend the contract early when they haven't even had a chance to evaluate how he's doing. It's just a clear, naked political power play and it's disgusting and they should all be ashamed of themselves.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 4:40

Yeah, not all. I will say to Kimberly and John's credit, they. Didn't obviously vote the way that the rest of the board members did, but I'm deeply disappointed in all of them, and was surprised by at least Carrie and Marlene's votes. To Carrie's credit, I will say I, I'm not being very generous, but to carrie's credit, I don't know if you saw Alan during the board meeting. She tried to. Move them into executive session because that was in the agenda. And Scott had asked a question about what happens if they run out of time?'cause the executive session was gonna take up to 45 minutes and I heard behind the scenes that at least one board member had to run to catch a flight by seven 30. So they had to get everything done by seven 30. So I almost took that a little bit as, carrie trying to filibuster the vote. So we would run out, they would run out of time and have to take it up at a later date. So we'll talk about that in a second. But to the point about this wasn't. The community pushback, the majority of it. I think you certainly saw a couple of individual outliers making this personal about the superintendent, but the majority of the reason that this pushback came about was the transparency. The concern about this being really anti-democratic, the rush doing this before any type of assessment of his evaluation. And then not surprisingly, he took it very personally, even though it had nothing to do with him as, or his character as an individual. And he I would say like toxic male fragility, but it's really more toxic. Machi machista fragility here. He took this and decided to make it a PR campaign for himself. If you read the Denver Post article. He called the pushback that a lot of us were doing delusional. It's quite arrogant. I think it's a really nice word to describe it. It's quite arrogant and bold to be willing to just call a large group of Latino community leaders and then followed up by even a significantly larger group of DPS parents and DPS teachers. Delusional. I don't know that I've ever. Witnessed something like that from another DPS superintendent. Certainly I've seen it from some of the more erratic members of previous iterations of this board. But this just speaks to the type of now I will make it about character. I guess it just speaks to the type of character of our superintendent that he's willing to call DPS, parents and teachers delusional. And there were some other the thing is language too that he used that it just was laughable.

Alan Gottlieb: 7:09

The thing that's truly delusional, and I feel like a broken record'cause I'm almost sure we've talked about this before on the podcast, but it's the way they spin the data. First of all, Scott Erman, who was at his worst last night, and it just obnoxious tirade, he went on. But said there's no, nobody presented any data. Aon Anderson, who was the first person to speak, said there would be no data. And now he's prescient. He seems to worship anonte. But there was data and it was referred to by at least one speaker, if not a couple. But I've written about this as well, but the way they. Spin and somebody did it. One of the board members did it last night, and their justification for the vote, the recent NA scores that came out. Denver's part of this sub cohort of nap, which is the NA Nation's report card. That really's rigorous national test that's given every few years called tuda, and I can't write now. Remember what TUDA stands for? It's something urban districts. It has to do with. How urban districts do on this test and DPS ranked near the top of urban districts and how it did on the test which looks good on the surface and certainly DP S'S communications team trumpeted that and board members have trumpeted it. But it's actually very bad news when you dig into the data a little bit because what it shows is that. The great gains and or the strength of DPS on the nap is almost exclusively carried by affluent, mostly white and probably Asian students, and that in fact, the students that this board and the superintendent profess to care the most deeply about low income kids of color. Do worse in DPS than they do in most other urban districts. The gaps are enormous and there's nothing to be proud of. There's a lot to be set for humility, and there's a lot to be set for saying we're working hard on things and we're doing our best and we still aren't where we need to be. But instead, they're trying to paper over real problems. Now, I also want to just take this moment to give full credit to the district for a few things. To me, graduation rates, which they're trumpeting, are meaningless without context, because graduation rates can go up for a number of reasons, including pushing people through. And do we know whether kids are actually leaving school for, ready for college or career? It doesn't really look like. A lot of them are so that's a false thing. But, the district has done a great job with welcoming migrant students in I really want to give the district a shout out for the great job they did on this choice process for the schools that were closed and how they accommodated parents and have provided transportation. I had somebody who's pretty knowledgeable about national stuff tell me this is actually one of the most impressive processes of this kind they've seen. So it's not like everything's terrible and the district's doing everything wrong. But the thing that. Really should be the North Star and everybody cares about, which is, are students and particularly students who need public education the most, are they getting what they need out of the system? The answer is resoundingly no. And they just don't want to confront that or confirm that. Or acknowledge that.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 9:57

Yeah. It was the, as you described, his tirade, he was getting red in the face, and I knew that a lot of Esther Erman,

Alan Gottlieb: 10:04

erman? I'm just, you just didn't say who he was. Oh, yeah. Sorry.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 10:06

When Erman at the end, he had his, I think you said in your, in your article with a seven minute tirade and I'm glad you timed it because it, it definitely felt longer than that. Sitting in the room, in the back of the room and I could tell that I was getting under his skin and others that were helping organize the letter and some of the pe that the parents that then subsequently spoke had were getting under his skin because, he started looking at me during the meeting, and then I got a couple of other stares by by the superintendent and then also a member of the public that spoke that had been organizing on and support of the superintendent. So it just makes me chuckle that something that should just be about good governance and policy and process becomes so deeply personal. It really makes me concerned about the. Where people are and what their motivations are when they choose to make personal attacks about people in the room or pushback, especially on parents and teachers. But the comment you made also about it just not being factually true. There were people that did share data and what I actually was also concerned about. Was when Marlene went up or Marlene was speaking about the data. Clearly she had asked the district for some of the data,'cause a lot of community members had spoken to her, said, what? Outcomes? Like we're not seeing the progress. And so she went and she was fully ready with her bulleted list. Which is also concerning because then you have, incredible amount of district resources going into the DPS spin machine. Beyond just the communications office I was talking to someone who had gotten a call from a pretty high person within the DPS political machine. Basically whipping votes on this other letter that was being organized by other Latino community leaders. So when you have district staff whipping votes on. What community members are saying. There's probably a better use of your time, especially during the legislative session. But the last thing I'll say on that piece that I was trying to get to is. So much of what the DPS propaganda machine was saying was really about inputs and not outcomes. And even some of our own items that we put in the letter were about inputs, right? Like the Latina student success team, the hiring of Dr. Rietta, who I adore. Those are great things, but that's an input that is not an outcome. We do not yet see what the outcomes of these efforts are, and I hope and pray that. We will see the success because you're putting in a strong leader like Dr. Wood, that like you're willing to prioritize these things. I wish we were in a situation where you didn't need to prioritize or do a Latina student success team where you didn't have to have a specific group just targeting individual groups that all students are doing well, but. The fact is that DPS has been failing, and this does I, I will say this is not just under this current superintendent and board to their credit, but we have seen gaps between white students and students of color for generations, and we saw progress in closing those gaps under the previous. Superintendents and we are not seeing that same level of progress here. So to be able to say, here's all the things he's done for students, those are not outcomes. Those are inputs. And I think it's really important that our listeners and the board understand the difference between an input and an outcome.

Alan Gottlieb: 13:24

Yeah, that's a great point. And in terms of inputs, I also wanna, just to be fair, also, give credit to them for the stance they've taken against the attempts by the Trump administration to absolutely intrude in schools. They've shown courage and that's really admirable.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 13:37

Yeah I've, I said that it's, it was bold leadership and I absolutely give Yeah. The superintendent and the board credit for that. That's great. To be able to seek an injunction to not have federal agents come onto DPS property, like kudos as the daughter of immigrants and the daughter of. Immigrants who have been undocumented at one point coming into this country thank you. And there's a, there's things you can do really well. But there's also something to be said about leading a process in a way that is also reminiscent of some of the Trump administration that is authoritarian and that is anti-democratic.

Alan Gottlieb: 14:11

I see so much of that. There, there are so many parallels in behaviors as. Everything else. I, in my piece today compared some of Scott Mann's rantings to like Stephen Miller the

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 14:23

The sort of

Alan Gottlieb: 14:23

rabid attack dog Trump advisor. And clearly Scott Esserman is not to that level, but he was. Spreading kind of falsehood, half truths and just be attacking people. Groundless and I also compared Kerry Olson to Susan Collins, the senator, Republican senator from Maine, who's always on the cusp of voting against Trump for something or voting for. Conviction and an impeachment, but then you expressing concerns, but then at the last moment, always doing the wrong thing. And I'm afraid as much as I like Carrie as a person and admire her and respect her her leadership has been lacking in this and in some other issues as well.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 15:03

Yeah. You have a Susan Collins type. What we really need is more of a Janet Mills, who's the governor of Maine speaking of Right. Who I adore. I've had the chance to meet her a couple of times in my professional capacity in a previous job. And she is just. She cracks me up and she is so unapologetic about pushing back on the Trump administration. I actually commented on those of you who know van, who's pretty active on social media and has been a thought leader in this space. He, he posted something about this in his disappointment this morning. And Van Sko. Van Skool, thank you Van, or thanks, Alan. Yes. Van Skool, who I know many of our listeners have probably know and probably follow. Van had posted something and I encourage you to go read that on his Facebook page, but. As I was reflecting on his comment, it really and my own frustration and anger about this vote. I wrote about this in my comment, but speaking of Janet Mills, I think what we're lacking here right now is I. Really just strong political leadership. And I'm not talking about the board'cause clearly we don't have strong political leadership from a majority of the board, but strong political leadership that is willing to courageously speak out and call this board again on like the authoritarian, anti-democratic style of governing. There was a piece written on op-ed, written by former DPS school board member and former lieutenant governor Barbara O'Brien. And that's the type of, sort of political leadership. We need. However, we also need that leadership from your everyday Joes, not people who have been former elected officials. I'm so appreciative of all of our former Denver school board members who have engaged. But what I was saying to Alan before we before we started the podcast is I was really excited to see how many. Teachers and parents got involved over the last couple of days, and yet, as I was wa also sitting with my husband last night watching the AVS game and reflecting it I just realized how exhausted I was doing this little, crusade here the last few days, impromptu that. This can be a full-time job. We have so many organizations that have full-time people that are, whose job is to lobby the district. And you see it on both sides of the ideological spectrum regardless of where you fall. But for the average parent who's the average working parent middle class, it's hard to be able to get involved. And so I think where what we are missing is that grassroots leader. That can really speak out and support and has the time to do so I really hope going into this election that we start seeing just more parents and teachers, especially over the summer who are willing to spend the time doing this to take the mantle on us. And again, this isn't about ideology. This isn't about where you. Sit on any specific school board member, but if you are not happy with what you're seeing, like no one is coming to save us. This is the same thing with the Trump administration. No one is coming to save us. We need to take this into our own hands. And I'm hopeful based on the parents I've spoken to that, that some of them will be stepping up.

Alan Gottlieb: 18:07

Alexis, you're one of those people, but I know you don't necessarily have the time to do it, but you're clearly one of the people in the position to do that. I don't think so. One, one last thing. I just don't, I'm I have a lot of respect and fondness for John Youngquist and Kimberly. See, but I do wanna call them out a little bit too, because I think last night they were too meek and to. Monosyllabic really in their objections to this contract extension. Neither of'em spoke for more than about 30 seconds, and I thought there was an opportunity there for one or both of them to really call this out for what it is. But that didn't happen, and I was a little disappointed in that. Yeah. So go ahead.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 18:41

Oh I agree with you and what was interesting is, or what's interesting to me, at least, this board has been very cautious to try to not. Get caught up in the same infighting of previous boards. And so I think that's part of why you see that from at least John and Kimberly. But then I've also heard that there's like this whole idea of, one voice we're, we're gonna stand united on things. We're not gonna have these, public debates and tirades against each other like previous boards had. But then you saw Sochi and Scott basically breaking from that and going and speaking to the Denver, or was it the Denver Post or channel? Channel four. I know Carrie, for example, was approached by a couple of outlets and she said she would speak to them after the fact, which I think was the right call. So you're starting to see the cracks. I'm starting to see the cracks in this board and I I hope that Kimberly and John will take this as an opportunity to maybe be a little bit more outspoken. And they can still do that. They can put out their own press release, they can put out their own statement, they can held, they can hold a press conference if they really wanted to. Certainly previous board members were a huge fan of press conferences and hearing their own voice and, you have the complete opposite. You have a lot of humility from Kimberly and John and I would ask them to be a little bit less humble and really get out there and speak your voice a little bit more.

Alan Gottlieb: 19:56

Great. Before we wrap this up, I mean my sort of the question that's hanging there for me, it gets a little bit of what you were saying before about community leaders emerging to take this on and continue to carry the mantle, but where do we go from here? It's a done deal. He's got his extension. The evaluation hasn't happened yet. The election's in November. We don't know for sure who's running where. There's lots of rumors, but only a couple of declared candidates where do what's next? Where do we go?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 20:25

That's a great question. I really think it, it has to be e. We have to see a grassroots movement come up from this. It can't be A-D-C-T-A LED movement. It can't be a Denver families led movement. And as much as I love 10, it can't be a 10 LED movement. It has to be a grassroots led movement that any organization can sign onto and co-sign. I think until that happens, you're going to see an whatever the board gets elected. Whether it's a full chart, all of the members are supportive of charters or all the members are supportive of unions, and that's a very simplistic description. I think if they think those new, the new members that are elected or the incumbents believe that they were elected by organizations and special interest groups, community voice will never take the front seat. And that's I think that's where we go from here is. I don't know, somebody needs to make a call to action. I don't know who that is, but it needs to be community and grassroots led efforts. That's what I, that's what I think should happen. The cynical part of me thinks it will be business as usual. It will be the same players, the same money, the same interest battling this out in the campaign and getting ugly and splitting along these ideological lines. And I really hope we can move away from that tonight. And from the incredible outpouring on that petition. I'm hopeful we can, if people continue to stay engaged and it's hard to, and I will, I just wanna name it, it is hard to stay engaged when, at least if you're someone like me, you have all these other worries and threats. Like I, I worry about family members being deported. I worry about. That my children's safety, I worry about so many other things with this Trump administration. I worry about women's access to, to healthcare. And so when you're fighting these battles on other fronts, for you to take time away and also do this too it's hard. And I just wanna say that whoever's thinking about stepping up you are not alone. I think that there will be other people who will stand alongside you, but we need to start being vocal.

Alan Gottlieb: 22:40

Yeah. And I think, as I wrote in the piece I wrote this morning I do think that the people who are paying attention to this and who are angry by this are also people who vote. And the question is how do you mobilize people who might not typically vote To get engaged.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 22:54

I mean my, I, and I know it was probably a little bit more of a rhetorical question, but I think it happens at the school level. It happens at the individual school level. For me, I posted this on my, on my school PTO, and I was like pleasantly surprised that our PTO president took that up. And then not long after, I saw a ton of our school teachers who are, I think all DCTA members sign on. And then I saw other DCTA members sign on. And then I had parents reaching out to me and saying what is this? What's going on? And just texting parents like, here's the situation. Here's some news articles. It's informing people because. Who's opening up Chalkbeat and reading Chalkbeat every day. And then Chalkbeat didn't even cover this until the after the fact. Where are you The co-founder

Alan Gottlieb: 23:36

of Chalkbeat? I was so disappointed in their lack of initiative. Yeah, me too. Covering this.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 23:41

Me too. And Channel four, like they've done generally a good job, but Channel four I was disappointed in just misinformation in some of their coverage and they corrected some of it, but. It's really sharing information in your own local communities, with your fellow parents, with your, your book club, with what, whoever your small circle is. And just starting with your circle.

Alan Gottlieb: 24:02

Tell people about this podcast.'cause I think there's information here that it's hard to find anywhere else.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 24:07

And I, the last thing I'll just say is I. Maybe I put too much stock in, in the little thumbs up on Facebook. Or like Instagram reels. So I'm like, oh, nobody's listening to our podcast. And I talked to Alan about that too. I was like, are we getting much attention? But people coming up to me and just saying, I listen to your podcast. Thank you so much. When I'm out kinda doing like community stuff, I'm like, oh, you listen thank you so much. And so that's been that's been really nice and something I hadn't expected, but sometimes I'm like on and I just talking out into the void. But no, we're not like. We actually have listeners, so thanks all and things for yeah. And more all the time,

Alan Gottlieb: 24:42

which is great.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 24:43

Yep.

Alan Gottlieb: 24:44

Okay, to keep listeners, let's not have this go on any longer. I think this is we'll get this posted today, so it'll be up, it's Friday, May 2nd. This will be up sometime this afternoon. And thanks to everybody and keep the faith.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 24:57

Thanks all. Bye.