Episode 12: Van Schoales and hosts discuss the current state of DPS

Transcript

Alan Gottlieb: 0:08

Hi everybody and welcome back to the Board Hawk podcast. Today we have as a guest, van Sko, who will be familiar to many of you. Van's been active in Colorado and Denver public education issues for more than 25 years. I think that's right, van and maybe even longer in Colorado. But he's been a teacher, a charter school founder and leader, an advocacy organization executive, and just has been an influential voice locally and nationally in education change efforts. Because the van has a long historical perspective on DPS, we invited him on the podcast to discuss first DPS Superintendent Alex More's new school transformation process, unveiled earlier this month during a board meeting, as well as other current DPS issues. Welcome Van, and over to you Alexis.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 0:53

Thanks for joining us fan. So let's start off first talking about the STP, the school transformation process. After speaking with a few folks in the scene over the last couple of weeks, a lot of us can't help but compare it to what many of us were once upon a time involved with or covered closely the school performance compact that existed under the Tom Boberg era in a previous, reform Board of Directors. Curious to get your perspective on this on this current transformation process and how the superintendent and the administration are looking at chronically low performing schools.

Van Schoales: 1:28

Great. Thanks for having me. And I'm so excited that Alan and you Alexis, are doing these podcasts. They're so engaging. Interesting. And I learn a ton. Yeah, I've been involved with DPS for 30 years, I'm afraid to say in one way or another. Since moving to Colorado yeah, it, when I saw the new school improvement process that was outlined a few weeks ago, I really was scratching my head. It was a little bit of, I don't know, deja vu all over again. On one hand I was actually. Super excited and actually grateful that the district has understood what's worked in terms of school transformation. I've been involved with trying to improve schools for over 30 years and Denver was one of the national leaders in terms of. Figuring out in some ways as best you can, and it's a very imperfect science, the right level of support in terms of resources coaching for schools, and then flexibility around how you organize staffing or provide supports for school leaders in terms of getting the right folks on the right page. And then also providing accountability around a. Sort of detailed set of metrics about where a school is and whether or not you're making progress in real time. All of those things are incredibly complicated and even the best places in the country. And Denver was at one time the best place in the country at doing this. Probably only get it right half to three quarters of the time just because it is so complex. So I. Like I was stunned actually, when I saw the plans. It was so similar to what had been done under Tom Bosberg and was started under Michael Bennett. Some of the names were changed. There was some language that was a little different. There are big differences in terms of what the standard for where a school is and whether or not it's making progress, but much of. The bigger picture sorts of mechanisms were very much the same. And I guess the head scratching part about it is how this school board and the school lead or the district's leader, Alex Morero, could have come up with this when they've said in the past, they're so opposed to what has happened in terms of school improvement as it relates to sometimes closing schools when. They were low performing or reconfiguring them in some way or another. So that's the part that doesn't make any sense. And I, and I would say I'm grateful. It feels like the district is there is some facts I. Basis for some decisions, which often there hasn't been the last three or four years.

Alan Gottlieb: 4:37

Quick question if I might van, and that is that, at least three of the current board members, and maybe four, but certainly Michelle Kaleba, Sochi Gaan, and Scott Erman. I looked back, their campaign material statements they've made in board meetings and in the media, they're so opposed to test-based accountability, having anything to do with judging the quality of a school. And yet their own decision back a few years ago to do away with the Denver, school performance framework, which was basically a report card-like analysis of how every school did and to use, instead, the state's version of a school performance framework actually does the opposite of what they say they want because, and that's what they're gonna use for this because it has bigger emphasis on using the state standardized tests. The CMAs then the DPS School Performance Framework did, which had a number of criteria involved in evaluating schools. So it seems I mean it, I don't think it's hypocrisy because I don't give them enough credit here for being hypocritical. It's more like just. Amnesia, or, I don't know what it is, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Van Schoales: 5:40

Yeah it's bizarre. The state framework is more focused on how kids do on tests, not how much growth they make on tests over time. And so in that way, it's more reflective of the student demographics. The poverty of a family or race or other things. So it's much more tied to that. The state one, Denver actually created a school performance framework that. Wasn't connected to that. I know a lot of people said it was, but when I was at a plus, we did an analysis to see how much it was tied to student demographics, and we found that there wasn't a relationship in the same way there was to the state one. So now the district is going to use the states. Measure, which is tied to student demographics to make decisions around what resources to put into schools, and also when, if they're not improving, to close them, which is it's just, it's bizarro world both in terms of their lack of understanding or amnesia and their misuse of. I shouldn't say they're going to be using a tool. It's just not a great tool for doing what they need to do.'cause you want to know how a school's making improvement. And a lot of the schools, a number of the schools in Denver are serving mostly low income kids. And so you can't really differentiate between one school making improvement and another school that's maybe flat or declining Often on the state framework, it's harder to distinguish it than it was on the Denvers. Yeah, and I

Alan Gottlieb: 7:21

did a little bit of research just to highlight one of your points just there Van past statements by candidates and, scott Esman in particular said that, if you show me a student's test score I can just predict basically what socioeconomic status theirs is, and that's why test scores are useless. And he said that, it was rooted in oppressive systems and doing this, and yet, he now seems supportive of this new framework that overemphasizes that compared to what he helped do away with before.

Van Schoales: 7:49

Yeah. I'm confused. I don't, hopefully you'll get. Scott on the show to talk about some of these things.'cause it doesn't make any sense from either an education perspective or an understanding of how of tests and how they, what they show or can be used. I would say if you're just looking at the status, how kids do, how the percentage of kids that, or how a kid does on a. With a scale score on a standardized test. Yes, it's often reflective, but again the Denver's metrics, their school performance framework was more based on growth. So we can use test scores to see how much kids are making progress relative to the state standard. The other thing I just. I wanted to mention, since we're talking about this, is I think it's easy to forget the crisis that Denver is in terms of where kids are. Recently the school district bragged about how well they did on Tuda, which was the national assessment for using NAP scores. And yeah, the district was doing well, but the reason why the district was doing well is'cause it turns out that Denver has a lot more white upper income kids than Chicago or Los Angeles, or a bunch of other districts. So anybody that knows anything about creating an average, all you gotta do is have fewer low income kids. But in fact, when you look at the NA scores, they're called tuda for school districts. Denver's low income kids. Are doing worse or the same as Alabama or Mississippi. They're doing worse than Dallas. Low-income kids in Florida are doing twice as well as Denver kids are low-income kids, so it's complete and total, excuse me, fucking bullshit. That Amber is doing well by low income kids.

Alan Gottlieb: 9:50

And yet they put out press releases. We've talked about this on the podcast a couple of times. They put out press releases and spun and boasted in board meetings about how great they were on tda. So yeah, thank

Van Schoales: 9:59

you. Only one in five kids is at proficiency for fourth grade math, one in five. It's unbelievable.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 10:08

It's something that I am shocked at how little we talk about this very issue. If you are a white. Affluent child in DPS, you are doing very well. If you are a white family in DPS, that is the middle to upper income that many of our Denver families are here. You're sending your kid to a great district'cause they're doing really well by your child. If you are a low income family of color. The likelihood is your child is not being served well by the district and your child is not seeing the same level of growth and academic performance. Yeah. No.

Alan Gottlieb: 10:41

And Alexis, I just, I yeah. This is a sneak pre I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 10:44

Go ahead. But

Alan Gottlieb: 10:45

it's a sneak preview. We also we're gonna have Alex Magney on the show. We've already recorded it next week, and he was talking about, this is the guy who's been a, he's a school board candidate, but he's been A-A-D-P-S educator for 20 some plus years. And he was talking to us, and you'll hear this on the podcast, about how his kids were. Did not do well in DPS. They struggled. And, he, it took him walking into classrooms and really confronting teachers to get the kind of services that, that he needed. So yes, just to highlight your point, Alexis. Yeah.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 11:14

So I wanna talk a little bit more about the board and thinking about. What growth and accountability looks like in this new era. So we talked about tta, we talked about nap. Obviously when we start talking about status versus growth, I think we get a little bit wonky. But I'll give it credit to our listeners. I think a lot of them come from the education scene. A lot of them understand what growth and status means. However, just pulling back a little bit, when we start talking about accountability and growth, what I worried about in previous. Years of DPS leadership and sort of the fight that was education in Denver education reform versus union sort of accountability and using growth as a metric were considered that's just reformers doing what reformers do. And so accountability was this four letter word. As I look now at this current board where you have, leaders like Marlene or John and Kim who have been school leaders, they've been teachers, they've seen and experienced what accountability looks like under under Boberg, under Susanna. And then you have folks like Marlene who are coming in maybe with a little bit of a different background, not so much in education, but how they show up as the quote unquote reform candidate. I'm curious to get your perspective on what does the current reform scene look like in Denver? How are we talking about accountability? How are we talking about this dichotomy that exists between the, I hate to say it, the two sides, and I even hate the term reform because I think that just speaks to a, a. What used to exist once upon a time, and I can't think of what the better word is. Is it transformation? Is it, I don't know, but I would love to get your perspective as somebody who's seen a lot of this over the last 30 years.

Van Schoales: 12:56

Yeah. I think one of the political challenges is that each side I. Let's say status quo versus reform. A simple dichotomy. Each side bludgeons the other side with all the negative connotations of either being status quo or they don't want to change. They're fine with only one in five kids. Doing math at proficiency. And the criticism of the reformers are, hey, they don't care about teachers, they just, they're just trying to squeeze every last test score out of kids. And they're gonna make them do math six hours a day, et cetera, et cetera. I, so these things become caricatures, and I think because of the politics of every. Involved in school board elections is that people walk away from actually describing what they want to do, what their vision is for the school district, and how they want to go about doing it. And so we're back to the same old, I believe in kids and we should have a better school district. How people define what that looks like is. Really mushy. It's incredibly hard and difficult to figure that out. I couldn't tell you the folks that are critical of the school district, what they would like to see for the school district outside of better schools. I also couldn't tell you. I. What the folks that are currently running the school district, what they would like to see in terms of a different school district outside of higher performing schools. If you look at the strategic plan for Denver Public Schools, it's very mushy, it's very unclear. It uses a lot of, language that's undefined. This is very different than the previous strategic plans that were much more specific around metrics. They may have been overblown in some ways, but they were clear about a theory of change. Under portfolio management, that if we give principals authority and resources and hold them accountable, that schools will get better and we'll have a diversity of options for families to choose from and things will get better. I. The reformers who pushed that agenda from what has been a traditional command control school district, which has been operating for over a hundred years in most places around the country, urban centers, that's back, the pendulum is swung back to command control. And in some places that works well. And in other places it's really problematic. I generally believe that it doesn't work well in large, complicated systems like Denver. And the evidence has been that if it was done well, that. Kids do better under that. And that's what we've seen from the research in Denver around academic improvement. So right now, I don't know. I looked at the leading reform organization as Denver families. I looked at their strategic plan. I. There's nothing around student achievement in it. They don't have any metrics. Neither does the district and I, just putting those things up to one another. For me, that's a lens to say, I have no idea what reformers are focused on other than getting into political fights with various school board members as they relate to whatever people's particular issues of the day may be.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 16:22

Dan I wanna. Follow up a little bit on what you said about this command control. I think under Boberg, under Bennett a, a little less under Susanna, you had. Of, a majority reform, more sort of traditional reform. And the command control from my perspective, was very much in the superintendent, the chief of staff, and the political machine that got them elected. So you know, whether that was d for once upon a time, whether that was independent expenditures, you had. Candidates that were vetted, that were very much in line, and you had exceptions, right? Like where and when those exceptions happened there was a response in a very strong way that they were ostracized or hung out to dry and probably very lonely, but for the most part, with few exceptions you had this command center of the superintendent, the chief of staff, and then the external factors. That I. Just an observation, were predominantly affluent white individuals. What I find fascinating in this moment is the organizations that now exist that are, oh and I would say with the charter school community too. And the charter leaders were predominantly white men. Look at all the charter founders, that existed with the existing. They were white men. Now what is they're charter leaders of the CMOs predominantly women of color. Denver families and 10 being led by people of color. Clarence Burton, is the executive director or CEO of Denver families. He's, he is a black man. Nicholas Hernandez from 10 is a Latino man. And. What I find really fascinating is the players that are existing in this space, and I'll even include myself as that, reflect more of the students we are trying to serve. And I think that there's something really special and powerful to that. I think we haven't yet as a community figured out. What is the command center? What is the theory of change? If you ask 10 in Denver families, I bet they have a theory of change for their organizations and how they lead those organizations. But I don't see what the theory of change is for reform in 2025 through 2030, for example. And I'm actually really excited to see, and I've talked about this on the podcast before. How do leaders show up in this space? When we are, I would argue more accountable to our community. As opposed to just being accountable to students because we grew up in these communities because we're reflective of these communities, right? I have to turn around and talk to the, my neighbors. I have to turn around and talk to my friends who send their kids to DPS. I don't live in Boulder like Tom Boasburg did, or Right. I don't send my kids to private schools the way that some of these folks did. So I don't necessarily have a question. I just. I think we're in a really special moment and I'm really curious to see what leaders show up in this space, both from the political side of it, but also within DPS once. And I'm hopeful DPS will get back to a point where accountability and growth do matter and I foresee that if this board flips we'll likely see a new superintendent. I'm fascinated to see what kind of superintendent is put in that position, who the chief of staff is, and do we seed power back to that. Leadership back to the superintendent and the chief of staff, or do we put power back in the community and the nonprofits that are holding the district accountable? So just reflection. Feel free to chime in or respond. Yeah, so

Van Schoales: 19:46

I think one of the great things about now versus. Then let's say 20 years ago is that, you're right. I think that a number of organizations are more reflective of folks from the community, folks of color women. I think my concerns around the current ecosystem is mostly having to do with not having a vision for what the school district should look like. And I would say that there are some folks that do have a clear vision and have been clear around it. It just, there's a much smaller number of those people than there used to be, and there's a much smaller number of organizations. 10, for instance, has been pretty clear about what they'd like to see happen. I have a hard time. Describing what others would do. I would say the other thing that's different is yes, DR was incredibly powerful. Full disclosure, I was involved in DR et cetera. But I would also say that there were a variety of different groups. Padres ADOS Mock

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 20:56

Stand was really active

Van Schoales: 20:57

Colorado. They were very community-based groups and there was an enormous amount of disagreement around how to get the district to where it needed to be. And yet there was a great deal of agreement around what should happen at the district level Now. You don't, there aren't those discussions. Maybe I'm not involved in those discussions, but I don't have a sense of that picking up from conversations with other folks that are more engaged in the district. Is it a good idea that principals should get paid more than instructional superintendents or should they get paid less, which is a more important job in the district? How should dis, should school leaders follow what the curriculum is for the district or should they have flexibility to make those decisions on round staff? There's a whole bunch of those sorts of things. I also would say that there were times at which the school board election, if we get into the elections part of it now, they're you either are choosing the TCTA, the teacher's union or. You are getting support from Denver families and those are the sort of the two lanes for the most part. Maybe in the next election there'll be another way to do that, but I think it's pretty hard to run currently at a citywide election without having support from either of those organizations. I agree. Almost impossible. And so they have a monopoly on those things. So you have to play the game, which side are you on? And if neither of those sides has much of an agenda in terms of what the district is supposed to look like, I think that makes it all the more confusing for both.

Alan Gottlieb: 22:43

Van, i'm gonna put you on the spot a little and say, what do you think, what do you, what would you like to see? What do you think the district should be, should look like and where would you like to see the changes happen? I know that's a huge question, but just, maybe some bullet points.

Van Schoales: 22:56

Yeah I'm generally biased. I come from a place where I. I started the Odyssey School and Odyssey is an expeditionary learning. It was an expeditionary learning outward bound school. Now it's an expeditionary learning school and it's not for everyone. I. But it's for some kids and I know that, a core knowledge school is great for some kids and not for everyone. And I guess I've been in education long enough and as a parent and I. I know enough to know that there isn't a perfect school or a perfect program, and sometimes kids need different schools and different programs at different times. So I believe there should be an array of options. There shouldn't just be, going to an alternative school or going to a traditional big high school. We should have other options and the, and Denver's big enough that it can afford to do that. So given that. I think it's hard to have an expert in Montessori education at the district level, but we can have good leaders that know how to do a good Montessori school or know how to do a core knowledge school or whatever it is. And I also know the power as a former principal and a following schools, how important school leaders are. And I would like to, I would like to have a district that provides more support and also autonomy for disc. Strict leaders both ways, both in terms of support, if things are working, if they're not working, if the schools aren't performing, then you know that there should be a lot more pressure on those school leaders and and that, that is largely what's called quote unquote, portfolio management. And I know that's gotten a bad name, but I think that a lot of folks, education folks within the context of, I don't know, left-leaning education folks as well as right-leaning education folks, that makes a lot of sense to some of them. And I think for folks that are used to large district machines. Like you'd see in a place like Cherry Creek or in Boulder, or now a little bit more in Denver. That's the traditional model.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 25:04

What I find really fascinating is when you have choice and a portfolio model of schools, while you have historically had the DCTA. Critical or DCTA candidate's critical of that. You've also seen many of those DCTA candidates that have then been elected and sat on the board use those tools to benefit their children. So using Choice, of course many school board candidates who are DCTA members, I would say the maj looking back and actually maybe the last 15 years from my understanding is more. At least more than half of them have leveraged choice and choiced out of their schools. And many of them have ch send their children to charter schools in including some of our current board members who are on the board send their children to the same charter school network that I'm about to send my children to. So I find it fascinating is all I'm gonna say.

Van Schoales: 25:58

No and Denver has been like a lot of school districts, there's choice for those folks that either have understandings of what the opportunities are or they have the resources for it. Yep. That's always been the case. And so I think a system that I was describing was one in which there are added incentives added structural changes that enabled those that maybe don't have those resources. To be able to exercise the same choices that I did for my daughter when she was in Denver. And owning that. The other thing that I would just say about the district that I have to give incredible high praise for. This current district there was all this, debacle around closing schools. I think they made three or four attempts at trying to close schools, and they finally decided this fall on 10 all of those families that were impacted by those school closures, they all, not only did they choose schools that were higher performing in terms of state tests. That according to some board members doesn't matter much, but it matters a lot to families. They also chose schools that they wanted to go to, so they had the choice of the whole district portfolio and they chose those schools and the district facilitated. This may have been, I don't know if this was the first time this had happened, but again. That's like the exemplar of portfolio management is that you give families options and those with the least advantage.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 27:30

Exactly. They should

Van Schoales: 27:31

have the same or greater opportunities than others. So some families jumped ahead of a line on a dis on a school that has boundaries, even if they didn't live in that boundary. And that's. Fantastic again. I give Alex Marrero on the school board high praise for this. I don't know that, they're certainly not talking about that. In the same way that Tom Bosberg, when he did, had to deal with similar things was talking about how we tried to place most of our families. I'm not sure they placed everyone in this case. I think they literally placed everyone in their first choice.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 28:07

Thanks, Sam. For me, what I get really frustrated is. We can take very radical approaches as a district and even within the reform space, we can take very bold and radical positions on how we hold the district accountable and how we lobby the district. Why wouldn't we, for example, tip the scales even further when we talk about school choice and proactively, not when your school's closing, not when you're an improvement plan, but every year, every time we have school choice in the spring. Put those children at the front of the line, put the children who are in the bottom 25 percent at the front of the line when it comes to choice instead of the current model, which everyone has equal access with. A few exceptions, if your sibling goes to the school, your parent teaches at a school or whatever, but. Until we start truly prioritizing the students who need the most support, I think we're not going to see the level of improvement that we would want. And I don't think enough of us are bold and radical enough in those approaches.

Van Schoales: 29:14

And actually, and there are a number of us that advocated for this over the years, and I think the district's response to this was, yeah, we agree with you, but the politics of it are that, Bromwell parents are gonna go ballistic. And so I'm like, so be it. And I would say the district already, people don't realize this but because of student based budgeting in the district, kids that are lower income or come from lower income families, they're getting significantly more, like depending on the age and everything. It's between three and 4,000 bucks a kid. The district's spending more on them.

Alan Gottlieb: 29:51

And yet that's something else that certain board members wanna do away with is student based budgeting.

Van Schoales: 29:55

Denver is the district of all districts in Colorado. It is the district that actually spends more on the kids that most help than any other school district in Colorado And are, and get shitty results. Yeah, but I'm, they would get way shitier results if they did. Okay. So maybe they need to spend more, or maybe there's not enough money. I, there's a bunch of other things but sending less isn't gonna get there. Yeah.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 30:20

My last comment on this before I turn it over to Alan and we can move on, is going back to that component of, having. Leaders of color across the district and I'll include DPS in this like DPS has a ton of black leaders in senior positions. Most of the cabinet are African American or black. And like I said earlier, most of the nonprofit and charter leaders are people of color and, or women. I think it's far easier for people like that, people of color, people who've come from, similar experiences to those of our students to look at Bromwell enslave men's white family that are crying foul and still do what's best for kids. Then affluent white leaders who have maybe similar experience to the Bromwell families to be able to say no to them. So that might be an unpopular statement, but. I do think there's something to be said that when you had a lot of the Palmer parents standing up and, crying fo Oh my, I'm gonna have to send my kids to a private school. Boo-hoo. You didn't get a lot of sympathy from leaders, whether it be in the district or advocates in a way that I think you would've seen a lot more of that sympathy in previous iterations of DPS leadership.

Alan Gottlieb: 31:31

No, I think that's true. So we're getting close to time here. This has been a great conversation, but I, so I was gonna ask you about a couple of other issues in DPS. So let's do it as a lightning round. I'm just curious to get your thoughts on a couple of things In the current state of DPS, we've talked about student achievement. Give me a, quick summary of your thoughts about the extension of Alex Murrow's contract.

Van Schoales: 31:51

Insane. I, it's, there hasn't, he hasn't had a proper evaluation. We don't even know how he's doing in terms of supporting principals. We have no data on that's not publicly available, which is unbelievable to me that this community would allow that to happen and that the school board would allow that to happen regardless of your perspective on command control, portfolio management. You want a great leader and we don't know. Don't know, he no longer gets

Alan Gottlieb: 32:22

feedback.

Van Schoales: 32:22

Yeah. And there's a lot of principles to suggest that he's less than a great leader. But I don't know.'cause we don't have a lot of data around it. And I think that's insane and I can't believe, I think it's so irresponsible for school board members to have given them that extension. But it's a long list of I think problems that this board and recent board has done as it relates to managing the school district.

Alan Gottlieb: 32:49

So my, my second, quick question as relates to that in the lightning round, and that is just about your take on the letter that Alex Merrill wrote to the board asking for Youngquist to be centered because he is trying to steal his job and he is a racist, et cetera, et cetera. What's your reaction to that whole thing and the fact that there's now gonna be an investigation into this?

Van Schoales: 33:06

Full disclosure, I know John very well consider him a friend. I would be incredibly surprised if there's any. Basis for any of the accusations and and I hope that John and the board in insists that there be an investigation and and that folks should be held accountable if it turns out that this isn't true, which I suspect is the case.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 33:35

I know it's a lightning response, but I wanna just chime in. I agree on the accountability if it proves not to be true. I as critical as I am of former director Ata Anderson, they did an investigation as they should have, and some of the things that he was accused of turned out not to be true. And I'm pretty shocked that the woman who came and made really drastic accusations against him. Had, there was no recourse. Like she just, I think, just continues to exist in the world doing what she does. And, that's a really hard thing to come back from. The kind of accusations he that were made against him that proved not to be true. Other things came out to be true at the end of the day, but people can't, shouldn't be able to just make shit up.

Van Schoales: 34:15

No, no question. I'm not suggesting that's okay. I, yeah. I think it was a, my guess is that it was a political move on the part of the superintendent to shut John off.

Misc: 34:26

Yeah.

Van Schoales: 34:26

But I, no, I think it's completely outrageous that sort of thing happens, but it's happened.

Misc: 34:32

Yeah. And so

Van Schoales: 34:33

I think that, all of us need to know what the reality is as best we can

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 34:39

and seek the truth.

Alan Gottlieb: 34:40

And hammer home the point that because of these allegations that were made, the district is now being forced to spend probably what will amount to tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum to look into these claims. And if they all prove to be spurious John is owed more than an apology by the superintendent. I think they should center the superintendent if that's the case.

Van Schoales: 35:02

Yeah I'm not quite sure. I think that the superintendent should be fired.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 35:07

Yes.

Van Schoales: 35:08

It's not to not seem to be the case, but there are also lots of other reasons to get rid of the superintendent. Again lots of superintendents lose their jobs for. Relatively small things all the time, and I think that's a problem too. But I have to say, I'm impressed with Alex's ability to manage this board in spite of all the challenges in the district and in spite of his incredibly low approval rating in the community. Yep.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 35:36

E even if it comes back that the allegations were proved were unfounded. I don't see this current iteration of the board. Firing him, even if John Youngquist comes out clean from this, which is really disheartening that you then have a leader who not only is paranoid and making stuff up, but that they essentially, it's signaling to them you can do whatever you want and you're gonna be protected by this board. More of a reason, I would say, to have people really pivot their efforts to the election.

Alan Gottlieb: 36:05

And the crazy thing to me is like we draw parallels. I draw parallels all the time between like this board and Marrero and Trump and Congress, but I. This board has no reason to be scared of Marrero. The reason the way Congress members have reasons to be scared of Trump,'cause he'll look primary and with some MAGA person, et cetera. What leverage does Alex Marrero actually have over these board members? That they are so willing to fall in line and be complicit in some of the crazy stuff that, that, that's going on? I don't understand it.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 36:32

Fear and retribution. If he's doing it to community members and doing it to employees, what's to stop him from doing it to his own supervisors? What's to stop him from trying to, if get dirt or call the employers or, I don't know, like drag other people through the mud.

Van Schoales: 36:51

Yeah it seems that it's a strategy of fear and intimidation as far as I can tell. I think Brandon Pryor was on the show recently and talked about this very, I thought articulately. I don't always agree with Brandon on his methods, but I think I do agree with him 95% of the time around the objectives and just not the means, and he was right. And I, I'm more disappointed in the board and the board collectively than I am in Alex Marrero. Alex more agree is Alex Morero. But this board and the previous board, and again, even if I totally disagree about portfolio management, like it's possible to have a great school district leader. Who believes in command control and does a great job. There are lots of examples of urban districts around the country over the last two decades that have had great leaders like that and but Alex doesn't seem to be one of those again, that's not his fault as much. It is the board. The board is not holding him accountable. That's their one job.

Alan Gottlieb: 37:58

Great. I think that's a great place to end it. Alexis, do you have any final thoughts or,

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 38:02

no, that was well then. Thanks Van.