Episode 21: A conversation with DCTA President Rob Gould

Transcript

Alan Gottlieb: 0:08

We are really pleased today to have Rob Gould is our guest, who is the president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. Rob's a special education teacher with more than 23 years of experience. Who's been the president of DCTA since 2021 before becoming DCTA President Rob served as union's lead negotiator during significant labor actions, including the 2018 Denver teacher strike. And I just wanted to say upfront that I've been a, sometimes pretty strong critic of the DCTA or some of his positions. So Rob, I really appreciate your willingness to come on, which is more than I can say for certain incumbent school board members who won't even respond to emails. So thank you for that. Really appreciate it and welcome to the podcast.

Rob Gould: 0:46

Thank you so much. And Alan, I will agree with you on one thing. You haven't always been nice to us. That's true.

Multiple: 0:53

Okay.

Alan Gottlieb: 0:54

No, I'm gonna do my best today, but I'll do my best. And again, it's like I so strongly believe in like talking across differences instead of just like being pissed off at each other and not talking. So this is great. I'm happy you're gonna do this. Absolutely.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 1:05

Thank

Alan Gottlieb: 1:06

What we're doing here, what we really wanna do is to have to dig deep with both you and Denver Families for Public Schools and Denver Families Action to get a sense of just the endorsement process and how you and connected entities fund the candidates you endorse and pro and provide other kinds of logistical support. I just think for voters, we're, I think it's really been this way for a long time, right? It was defer before it was Denver families. It was the counterbalance to the D CT on the more reformed side if you wanna use old fashioned language. But it's been that way for a while and I just think voters have an interest in kind of understanding how these things work because the reality of the situation is if you don't have the endorsement or one or the other, it's a real long shot for you to get elected these days because of the logistical and financial support necessary to mount a campaign of that size. I basically just wanted to start with endorsements. What's the process you guys use for deciding who you're going to endorse? So

Rob Gould: 1:58

we have what's called, so we have our membership, right? We have nearly 4,000 members. And of that membership, we have a subgroup that is we people that are elected and also appointed. And those people are they're teachers and they're social workers or psychologists. They're people they're in the bargaining unit. They're part of DCTA, they're all members of DCTA. They we do the election part. So we have a, an elected member from each of our sectors, and then we try to appoint members to that to help balance out, right? For example, we wanna make sure we have somebody from elementary and somebody from middle school and somebody from high school and even ECE and and special education, math, social studies. So we try to have this. We take who's been elected and then we try to fill in some of those spots. So we have a great cross representation from the membership, and of represent, representing here's this group that is going to make these decisions and determinations for it. So roughly how many people are on that

Alan Gottlieb: 3:02

endorsement group?

Rob Gould: 3:03

So it's eight, and then and then there's, I sit as the chair. I don't, one of the things that people. May or may not know is, I, since I'm the president, I don't really get a say in much. I have, I always, I joke because I have 4,000 members that tell me what to do all the time. And the same thing when I'm on the fund. I actually I'm there to facilitate and help and support, but I don't actually vote unless there's a, if we need to do a tie or something. But generally we make decisions by consensus and that's really what we've, been able to do the last few years.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 3:35

Thanks, Rob. Okay, thanks. And what do you see that most of the candidates that file to run, do end up going through the DCTA endorsement process?

Rob Gould: 3:43

Yeah, exactly. They do. They do. And one of the things is, what we do as the election season starts and everything, we start seeing candidates line up and the hardest thing for us is getting all of the educators to be able to. Meet in one place.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 3:58

I'm sure.

Rob Gould: 3:58

That's the hardest piece'cause people coming from all around town and and just the burdens that we have, the challenges of being an educator in this day and age, but especially in Denver, there's, it's getting away and doing some of that stuff. So we try to find a time that works and when we do, then we look on tracer, we figure out, okay, is there, who's declared? And we only send invites out to people that have actually declared. So that's where the first process starts. And as people do that, then we like we try to do this process early in the year but then not everybody, gets into the race at the, at different times. And so we'll try to reach out and say, Hey, can you come for an interview? And we do send, so the first thing we do is we send out an invi, an invitation and a questionnaire. And then, give people time to fill out that questionnaire and then they send it back. And then our educators review that, and then they, we sit through, we do an interview process from that.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 4:57

Thanks so much. And then in the interview process I would imagine that most organizations that are endorsing candidates, there's values alignment with the organization's values and ideally with the candidate. For you all. Is there, are there any like red lines that you feel very strongly about? If a candidate supports this type of thing? It's just an automatic No. I can see a world where right vouchers would be like, under no circumstance will I don't see either side to support a candidate and support vouchers, but that's just an example. But for you all where is that line? Do they exist? At all.

Rob Gould: 5:32

Yeah, absolutely. So I think part of the, like where does it come from? It comes from conversations with our membership. We have a strategic plan that is built from. That, that our rep council reviews and they look at and what are we trying to, what do we need to accomplish? Those things that we're focused on are, obviously how do we make the best learning environments for kids, number one. Number two, how are we supporting those learning environments through the contract and the work we do. And then, we think about the community partnerships and the other, all the aspects that touches education. And from that, a lot of our members, they know, you know what it is.'cause we have members, since we have members throughout the entire city and they teach in every single different piece of it, of, every different, every different subject and every different discipline, we every comes from a cross section of everything. So we have a good idea of what's going on in Denver Public schools, and we have an understanding of what kids need and how to do that. We have yearly, we have conversations with our members where we actually go out to buildings, have those conversations, bring those ideas back and. We hear about what those concerns are in terms of like your question with like red lines and things. I think there's been a lot of concerns from our educators around, what are the, who's funding candidates, who is, who are who's backing candidates. I think it's not necessarily, I wouldn't call a red line, but it's this piece of one of the, questions we ask is, who supports you? And we do. And so I don't think it's, that's not something that would disqualify a person. But it is a concern that educators have. When we, after we go through the interview process, we sit and we deliberate and we look at the answers and we say, what did you think of this? How did what did you of the candidates answer to that? And as we go through that process and we deliberate, then we, people, okay, this seems to align with where we're. Where we're thinking. And what will be best for I mean I, our students and our educators in the work they do, we often say, we talk about the, the working condition for teachers and they're learning conditions of kids. And so how do we make sure and support both of those things?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 7:49

So Rob, I'm just curious, what type of supporters would. Be a concern for you should a candidate, have support from that person or that entity. So one like of the folks that you've already endorsed, if one of those existing candidates were to get the support of. I don't know, is it a C four organization? Is it private individuals? If Michael Bloomberg came in and supported one of the, one of the candidates as like a well-known national ed reformer would that be. A something that would say, Nope, we're no longer endorsing this candidate. Or we're going to pull the endorsement. Like how does can you help me understand this a little bit more?

Rob Gould: 8:32

I think it's more about the values of the candidate as we talk through, right? So I think the questions that we ask are questions around what do you, what do you, questions we ask about what do you see the Denver Public Schools needs, number one, right? Or what do you, what are those things that you what changes do you think are necessary? Dps how would you support our our educators of color? How would you support our bipoc educators? What, where are you? There's a number of questions we go through and we ask and we get those answers and then we, look at those answers and try to dissect. I think some of it depends on the level of knowledge of dps. Sometimes but then also sometimes it's, there's in, for some cases there are track records where we've seen how people have, either governed and or led. And I think that's a lot of those things. Those, the. A lot of those things go into it, but it's mainly around the, the questions that are asked and how people respond to those and whether or not they really align with our values as educators.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 9:36

So then a follow up to that is, one thing I've heard said is that the DCTA. Wouldn't endorse a candidate if that candidate were also endorsed by Denver families, for example. And one example of this is, in the last cycle, John Youngquist seemed like a great candidate that DCTA would have possibly supported. And Denver family also decided to, or Denver families endorsed John. And I think a lot of us were surprised that John didn't get the endorsement of both when that was a possible candidate that could have gotten both. And I don't want you to have to necessarily answer the specifics of that one candidate, that one school board member, but I am curious about this perception that DCTA would not endorse a candidate that also got the endorsement of Denver families. Is that true or is there any truth to that?

Rob Gould: 10:28

I think part of it is our educators. Are concerned about where, whether or not, I'll be honest, like educators are concerned about whether or not a candidate is going to, if they do get money from some of these outside organizations, right? For example, these we've seen over the years the kind of damage that can really be done in Denver public schools. And I go back when I'm referring to, as I'm referring to those years between. 2005 and 2019. Those years when there was a lot of damage done to Denver Public Schools. And being an educator on the inside. This is, by the way, this is my 28th year as an educator in Denver. I can't believe it either. Great. But yeah. And but we've seen a lot of different entities that have come in. These, that, that are, that reform organizations, whatever you wanna refer to them as. And they are backed by billionaires and corporations. That's where their money comes from. And when you think about, and I think everybody in, in, not just the Denver area, but I think everybody in the United States is really starting to become aware of, this money that's coming into these systems. What is it doing to the systems? How is it how is it supporting or how is it breaking down? And most of these, I think our educators are concerned about whether or not people will align themselves with these groups that are promoting charter school growth and, and promoting privatization of public education. And that's, we wanna make sure that our students, that we have a great school in every single neighborhood, and we wanna make sure that students have what they need and we wanna make sure teachers have what they need. And, we're concerned about the dollars that come with that.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 12:15

Thanks Rob.

Alan Gottlieb: 12:16

I guess go back to Alexis's question about red lines, Rob. So if a candidate you were interviewing said. I support high quality. Schools that provide a family with a choice of models and if whether that's a charter school or an innovation school or an innovation zone, I would support that if it could prove demons, demonstrate that it was doing, that it was providing good education. Is that a red line for you guys that like if you say you support charters, you're out, or are there circumstances under which the DCTA would consider endorsing a candidate who had at least a somewhat favorable attitude toward charter schools, innovation schools, or innovation zones?

Rob Gould: 12:56

So I think the wh where we would start in that sense'cause from what I've seen is we asked more information about that. Tell us more about that. Where do we're trying to get to the actual belief system of those individuals that are talking about, and so we want to know more information, we know, wanna know where they go. I think a great example is one of the, one of our endorsed candidates is found Monica Hunter. She is actually a mom and of several students in Denver public schools and she has a students in traditional schools. She has students in innovation, and she has a student in a charter and a private. So I think there's this, the it's talking with her what, what does that mean to you? And I think one of the things that she often says is, you know this, being a parent of a black and brown student, she says, there's, in where we live, there's not a lot of choices for that, right? So while we have this idea of choice, the only choice we have that in our neighborhood school is a charter school right down the street. Right? And and we've chosen that because of the, where we are and what we do. And so it's not about looking at, is this, is my student. Making a choice of charter or not charter. It's about, what are we doing to make sure that students have what they need. It. I think there's concern around, especially in this right now where we are, like 2010 to, to 2019, right? There was a massive expansion of charter schools in Denver. That was, the reform policy. There was this idea that we can just, slow schools and open up something better. And in some cases that was true. In some cases it wasn't. I think in, in, in some of those policies, while they seemed like they were good ideas at the time, they were horrible. I've seen, being in, in classrooms and being in schools. I've seen some of those policies, whether it be like co-locating schools or, the, you're fighting for the same students. I was in a school once where we had a more or less an innovation school in a traditional school, and here it is. We wanted to do something that the new school was doing and we weren't even allowed to do that. By whom? What's that? Who, who wouldn't allow you to do it? The, so the people that wouldn't allow to do it were the, it was the, like the area superintendent and the, we went to the principal said, Hey, we want to do these things. We wanna, they have this great idea. I think at the time it was something like we wanted to have like our first period or our advisement period was like, we want to talk about certain things. Have more of like social emotional learning time. And they're like the New Lake's doing that. This was at Lake Middle School, the New Lake's doing that. We really can't do that. And we've asked if we can do that. And they've said no. And to me, I was like, what is going on with these, what is wrong with people? That we are, we're competing. And if it's a good idea, we should do it no matter where it's, yeah. Whether it's charter or innovation or traditional. And so that's where some of this, these bureaucracies and, other things that were in place back then just didn't make sense. And I think a lot of our educators have seen that over the years and they're just like, we don't wanna go back there. Additionally, I think like right now, we're in this really interesting place in time where we see the federal government and what Donald Trump is doing. Donald Trump is taking a wrecking ball to public education and just and tearing it apart. A lot of these corporations and these reform groups were doing similar stuff, but they were doing it very quietly and they were doing it under, we're all, we're all Democrats. It's good for kids. It's but no, these are similar things they were doing back then. And Donald Trump's doing it right now, overtly, and here we are. I think everybody's waking up to the fact that we don't want to go back to those places. So I think. When it comes to that, when it comes to supporting a candidate, really trying to understand, and I do think that, yeah, there's concern about whether or not are you, who are you taking money from and why?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 16:54

I know one of

Rob Gould: 16:55

the questions that you wanted to ask was, where does our come funding come from?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 16:58

Correct.

Rob Gould: 17:00

And this is the thing I'm most proud of being part of the union, is our funding solely comes from our members. It comes from individual and it's voluntary donations. It's, you don't have to donate. And so it's only coming from our members and it's coming from the DCTA fund is one entity, one piece, and that's solely done by membership. There's the CEA fund, which is the statewide, and that's where that's solely from membership. There are no other entities that are contributing to the funding sources. And so the people that when we talk to candidates and we say, Hey, when you get into office, we really want you to listen to educators because they have a voice and they know what's going on. And that's our one expectation. Listen our expectation is you do everything that you know, that's not, our expectation is not, do you know, whatever the union tells you to do, it's listen to educators because those are the people that are actually putting their money, they're hard earned money into these

Alan Gottlieb: 18:00

to supporting these candidates. We jumped ahead in terms of the funding question, but, so you're saying all the money for DCTA action, for any the NEA or the CEA fund, it's all from members, in other words, teachers or educators in either Denver or large, larger scale Colorado. What about, do you get any kind of money from the National Education Association or national money of any kind or support from there?

Rob Gould: 18:25

Not generally in these school board races. Generally, like the only money that we would get from NEA, that's the National Education Association. That generally comes around like supporting ballot measures and things like that. Or defeating ballot measures. Like the one that was this last round I'm getting my letters and numbers confused.'cause there was the. Hh we were trying to promote that, we got some money from to try to help with funding. This last year when they were trying to pass the, and you'll help me with the number where they were trying to pass the, it was ba basically a backdoor voucher system.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 18:58

Oh, yep. I forget the number, but yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. I know,

Rob Gould: 19:02

right?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 19:03

Yeah,

Rob Gould: 19:04

there's been a lot of numbers and letters. And that

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 19:06

one even that one even caused debate within the reform groups of Gado. Yes. Absolutely not under no circumstance. And others, to your point, was more quietly trying to support it without being too upfront about it. What you were saying earlier I appreciate the level of detail you went into. I don't agree with everything, but there are certainly parts of that where I do think it's part of this broken system where, and I'm not even talking about the education system, but the broken system that is our political system. And the fact that, you had that experience where you had an area superintendent or an administrator basically like not allowing you to. Take an innovative model and use it in a traditional school is really concerning. We just had Maya Laia on and that, that was actually something that she had talked about is, this idea of this portfolio model of schools. In theory, what it was supposed to do, or one of the things it was supposed to do was to be able to uplift those innovative models and try to replicate them and scale them. One of my critiques of the, just, the camp I'm in, I guess of reform. Is that, I think there are some, and I'll just say it, bad actors that whose goal is to expand charter schools as much as possible. And with no regard for the consequences. Where as I would argue I take a much more nuanced approach to that and I think most other people do as well. But when you have incentives or structures built in that, has people prioritizing charter schools with little accountability. I think that's a big red flag for me at least. So that's more commentary. But all that to say I disagree with some things, but other pieces I can appreciate and actually agree with what you're saying as well.

Rob Gould: 20:44

No, and I appreciate you saying that.'cause I think you're absolutely right. I wish in an ideal world, we think about how these elections are structured and the amount of money that's going into these elections. And the amount of money. Eight, some of these organizations, it's$8 million a year budget. What is your expectation for$8 million a year, number one, but then what if we took that money and we actually spit it on students? Instead of, instead of these elections and these different pieces we'd be in a much better place, I would think.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 21:12

And I say I, I would love to spend two hours on this conversation. I know we, we all have, yeah. Places you to, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna pull on that thread a little bit and I know

Audio Only - All Participants: 21:21

You get me talking. Sorry about that. I was no. What's your next thought? Where are you at?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 21:24

So actually it's building on that, it's not even a question we have, but it's something that I've had conversations about, so when I ran in 2019, we didn't have campaign contribution limits. And I actually thought that was horrible. And I strongly supported campaign contribution limits. The fact that I would get these$10,000 check. From people I didn't know was like, this is horrible and alarming Now, call me a hypocrite. That's fine. I took those checks and because I just thought that was the way to win and it, they, it costs so much to win these races right. At large. And so then we had, campaign finance at the local level with with these limits now, which I believe is 2,500. Is that correct? Per

Rob Gould: 22:01

20, 25,000.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 22:03

Oh.

Rob Gould: 22:04

Yeah, it depends on the type of group. Like you might, sorry, for

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 22:06

The candidate, it's 20. Yeah. For the candidate, right? Yeah. The candidate. But the groups like the independent expenditures or the c fours. It's 25,000. So for, for, so now we have campaign contribution limits, which is great, right? So now candidates can't just get what I receive is like$10,000 checks from, these other outside entities. So I'm supportive of that. My concern, though, is that we haven't solved this bigger systemic issue, so then the money just goes elsewhere and that's actually an area where I think we probably do agree. So the question for me is when you have so many stakeholders in this, in these political races. What is DCT a's solution to? If you could reform campaign finance, if you could reform the political system, what would the ideal state be? To have more what I would assume, people would say is a more fair election or fair political system.

Rob Gould: 23:08

Honestly I feel like part of it is also how do you make it so that. That people actually know who's contributing to what. Like to your point that you're making, I like, I agree with you, the, it would be much better if we actually knew who and what and where this money was coming from. A lot of people don't know that the independent expenditures that end up spending a lot of money, the million dollars or whatever it is that happened in the last election. That money is coming from these corporations and so these corporations and these entities. Which promote charter schools, which promote, they, they try to weaken supports for workers and they try to, there's a number of horrible things we're doing. We're talking about, the Walton Foundation, we're talking about Reed Hastings we're talking about the Dell Foundation Gates, right? All of these, these, the money goes into. City fund or other corporations and they end up coming in and they're fueling these independent expenditure accounts. It would be better if people could see that.'cause you don't have to report where that money comes from, it would be much better if people could see where that money's coming from and then they could make some informed choices around that.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 24:21

Yep. And I hope all my friends don't come after me here because I have a lot of friends in their formed community, but I actually ag agree with that a hundred percent. And, my, my day job is as a development officer, so I do a lot of fundraising and I think a lot of the organizations that are doing that want to do good work by teachers and students. Some of them are corporations, some of them are entities that want to support teacher professional development. Or wanna support student outcomes. And sometimes, or I don't fully agree with all of those organizations or their PO positions, but I would rather take that money in the light and be honest and transparent and as an organization have to be accountable to that partnership than hiding that. So again, I'm sure I'm making a lot of people who listened mad but I agree with that.

Rob Gould: 25:08

No, I, and I think that's where our educators and everybody is really concerned about it, right? If you would, in, in the ideal word, you'd flip it where you were, able to put everything in a light DCTA and CEA, we have an independent expenditure, right? We contribute a certain amount because there's only a certain amount you can contribute to candidates. Now we get spent five to one, right? Yes. I think the frustrating thing as. As a, not just a, I was born and raised in Denver. I'm a second generation teacher in Denver. I was, I grew, I graduated from Denver Public Schools. My kids were going to Denver Public Schools for a while until they, until the choice system we weren't able to anymore. But the, the frustrating thing is we've got people that don't even live in the state of Colorado. That are contributing masses, mass amounts of money to these campaigns to get, certain groups elected and certain not. And so then you just wonder what is what are the spring jury attached to that money?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 26:08

And I will say, and Alan, I know Alan has a couple of follow-ups as well. Where I do disagree is the, some of the organizations you listed, for example, the City Fund, Walton Gates. Where I think you and I differ, and correct me if I'm wrong, I actually, knowing some of the people at those organizations in both the political context, but also in the like C3 nonprofit foundation context, I think their intentions and their outcomes are actually incredibly similar to those of the three of us on this call, which is they wanna see better student outcomes, right? It's the means to get there that we probably have different opinions on, but, until we, we completely overturn Citizens United and corporations can't be aren't treated as people, the system we're operating within. I actually would take money from those organizations because I think that for me at least, they are values aligned and that's where I do think becomes the tension where I would love to have a whole nother half day conversation with you, Rob. But we're not, we're gonna run outta time here, so I'll turn and go ahead and definitely.

Rob Gould: 27:11

Where I agree with you and where I disagree would be, yeah, I do agree with you. There are people that are want to in better public education, right? And they come to this work with that lens where I think. I differ on that, but, or I don't think we differ, to be honest. They're still, these corporations and these groups are still putting money into campaigns. For example, they were putting money into the voucher campaign, that the backdoor voucher. And they were also putting money into campaigns against funding education in the state of Colorado. Like the proposition hh prop HH from years ago, they were putting money to battle to go against that. So it's I agree with you. There are good people there. That's a fair

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 27:49

point. That's a fair point.

Rob Gould: 27:50

Yep. But then there's those that why are you we all know funding is a problem in Colorado. Why are you fighting it, right? What's the point? But anyway,

Alan Gottlieb: 27:59

We could definitely have a two hour. Episode just talking about charters and debating charters and support or lack of support. Yeah, I think you've been pretty clear on that, but I wanna charter, were started by unions. Alan, don't forget. Yeah. They were started by a FT, they were started by Albert Shanker. Albert Shanker.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 28:15

Wait, is this Rob going on the record that he supports charter schools? Is that what this is?

Alan Gottlieb: 28:19

We supported the Al Shanker types. Okay. So I wanted to get a little more specific into the current, the current election cycle just for, and I know we don't have a lot of time yet left, but I, one thing that's really interesting to me, Rob, is that DCTA in 2020, whatever the last election was, or 2021, the last cycle with these candidates these candidates you endorsed, scott Esserman, Michelle Qba, and Sochi. Gatan and Sochi just filed the other day. So I don't know where you guys are on district two, but you have clearly not endorsed either Esserman or Qba. I know some of these incumbent either didn't vote for. Some of the for innovation zones that you favored or they voted to support the arbitrator's findings denying you the cola that you thought you deserved and all that. But I'm curious about why. These people you endorsed and put a lot of effort, manpower, and money behind four years ago, you were no longer supporting. And I'd love just to hear specifically why that is.

Rob Gould: 29:18

So I think, the DCT of fund as I mentioned it's made up of our educators, right? And our educators have had experiences with with individuals. And I think they, everybody has their own, there's a track record. And I think part of where I don't want to get into the specifics of it. But I think they, many of those educators were looking for something different. In terms of your question about district two, we've not made a decision in district two. We just heard out heard about Sochi jumping in, and we will email her and offer her a interview and all those things and go through the process just like we have with everybody else. And then, and deliberate and make a decision from there. I think the, one of the things we don't, and like one of the questions we asked all of the, every candidate was around in addition to things like, what do you think is necessary to change in DPS with the systems? And we did ask them, how do you handle disagreements with other board members? How will you, how do you perceive that? And that, that matters. I think, because one of the things that we need, that I think educators and also everybody is, in, in Denver is. Come to this realization that sometimes there's a little bit too much noise up here at these other levels, and we really need to focus on what are those policies that are gonna help support students. What are those ideas that are gonna increase funding? Let's focus on our students and the workers within Denver Public Schools. We wanna make sure that we continue to attract and retain the best educators for our students.

Alan Gottlieb: 30:56

Okay. Let's focus on that. I focus on that. I wanna push you a little bit on, you said you didn't want to get into specifics, but I'd really like to push you a little bit to go into some of the specifics about what it was that made your membership decide not to reen endorse Esserman. Orbam. I know again, Sochi iss still up in the air because she just filed. Yeah,

Rob Gould: 31:15

It goes back to those to those pieces of, have we seen the type of results that we would like to see?

Alan Gottlieb: 31:22

Results in terms of student achievement or results in terms of policies. What do you mean by that?

Rob Gould: 31:28

Policies.'cause I think, the whole question about student achievement, every teacher wants their students to achieve. Be clear on that. Okay. There's no, we do believe that kids are more than test scores. So there's a lot of nuances to that piece too, right? So yeah what I was getting at was whether it's a, whether it's a policy that's developed by the board or whether it's a, an idea for funding, whether it's, we need to focus on those things, right? We need to figure out what it is that our. Students need, but what are the what do educators need in order to get that job done? Lower class size, right? Sustainable workloads. We know those things work and have we been focusing on the right things in the last few years? And I think that's where a lot of the, our educators as they look and see, that's what they're looking at. Are you getting the job done that we supported you to do.

Alan Gottlieb: 32:21

I'm still looking for a few more specifics. Were there particular votes that, that Michelle or Scott took that, that you all felt were not aligned with that and that's why you're not, you didn't re endorse them?

Rob Gould: 32:32

You mentioned, the votes around the, in innovation piece, part of it was, that had been worked through. We had we'd done that. There was. A vote that happened later in June when educators left for the summer. That changed the outcome of that again that policy. And, we're still working through, I'm sure a lot of people, to your point we could talk about innovation. What innovation's been in Denver? Has it really been innovative or has it been used for other means? And, I think there was a, there, there's been some concerns about that. I think there were also concerns about like, why aren't we talking about important things? So glad to hear that some of the board members are now starting to talk about boundaries, school boundaries, and'cause we went through this whole school closure discussion, right? We have been pushing the board to talk about boundaries since 21.

Multiple: 33:29

That's great.

Rob Gould: 33:29

And we've been saying you need to have these discussions and part of it is we don't want to close any more schools. Why aren't we, focusing on what needs to happen so that we can make sure, why aren't we focused around? And I think, and I'll just go back to this piece'cause this was more recent and this is the frustration that many of our members held. In the spring before we entered negotiations, board members were saying things like we shouldn't talk about class size ideas. We shouldn't talk about what we need to do with the budget, with those things. That's things that we should say for negotiations. During negotiations. Things changed and what we heard from board members during negotiations was, we, that really shouldn't be something we do in negotiations. That should be something we do on the board. It's, come on guys it's messed up. Somebody please just help us. We have kindergarten classrooms with 35 kids in a class. We worked really hard to try to get class size limits and, it's nuanced, right? There's so many things that have to go into that and the challenges around how do you make that happen? And we and it was just frustrating to hear these two pieces,

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 34:39

thanks Rob. I can understand that.

Rob Gould: 34:41

Yeah.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 34:42

So I have one other follow up question to that and it's not necessarily. The why you didn't indoors. But one thing that I like to do is those who listen to the podcast is speculate wildly. So I'm going to take a moment Oh, good. Okay. To do that. One thing that I don't think got enough attention from the media is the irony that. May 1st is the International Workers' Day, right? It's may day. I'm like, I'm a folks may be surprised, but I actually really strongly support labor unions and so that's like a big day for labor unions. That was also the day that the board took the vote to renew the superintendent's contract. It was for me, it, I just thought it was such a slap in the face for the fact that we were struggling to get the contract negotiated that the union was over here trying to fight for the teacher's contracts. And yet the board went right through and renewed the superintendent's contract without a performance review. When. Having worked in the district, I know the amount of evaluation and the hoops and the bureaucracy that teachers have to go through for their own performance reviews, right? You know what is the official DCTA position? And by the way for the listeners who don't know, the incumbent DCTA previously endorsed candidates voted for that. All three of them. What is my question to you is, what is the position of the DCTA around the superintendent's contract renewal?

Rob Gould: 36:20

So I think the, you actually outlined pretty much, it sounds like you've been talking to our educators. So

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 36:27

I, it made me so mad. I definitely felt validated talking to a lot of your members, but

Audio Only - All Participants: 36:33

yeah, I was just shocked that did it, like it, it didn't get more like attention. Yeah, no, honestly,

Rob Gould: 36:41

so the official position was you shouldn't be talking, you shouldn't be. You really shouldn't be focusing on the superintendent's contract until you get done with us. And it's not just us, by the way. Correct. We have, so we have 10 other units. Unions within DPS that represent amazing people, we are so severely under paying our office professionals. They just went through a very difficult dis very difficult negotiation. Where, they were told that they don't have to provide any professional development for them. They were asking for more Now in the end, horrible. They did settle, they settled, and they do have a and they did relent on, and they will support some of those professional development piece, but that shouldn't even been a question. We have our, some of our other groups the building and grounds workers, they still haven't settled their contract. They go next week. And, hopefully they'll get to that point, but it's been difficult for them because they're losing out to other, CRAs. We, it's like we have these wonderful people here that do that service. Our HVAC systems that support our plumbing, that do all of the paint and take care of our grounds. They do amazing work and we lose them all the time because they can go make money somewhere else. More money and they can actually sustain their kids. They don't have to work. Right now they're having to work two jobs. We have our paraprofessionals that are, hardworking individuals. I was a paraprofessional for some of my career. And the, they're often, left with little and to the point you made. It was frustrating that was something that came about. Now, whatever the reasons are I'm sure they have their reasons for it. But really you need to take care of the workers before you go into that route.

Audio Only - All Participants: 38:24

Absolutely.

Rob Gould: 38:24

That's our

Alan Gottlieb: 38:25

official position.

Audio Only - All Participants: 38:26

Thanks Rob.

Alan Gottlieb: 38:28

We've gone kinda long, but I wanted to ask you just a quick follow up about that and then a final question. And the follow up is, yeah, obviously saying that you should have, they should have settled a contract before they did anything with the superintendent's contract. But what's your, and if you don't want to take the official DCTA position, I'd just like to hear it from you as somebody who's been in DPS for a really long time. How does it strike you? That they went ahead and extended his contract A, without even really doing a performance evaluation, which they would never yeah. I can't imagine that happening in any other profession or field. A and then. The the fact that they also made it harder for this board and future boards with future superintendents to get rid of a superintendent by requiring a super majority. Which means that a, it's, it sounds a little bit like it's gonna get hard to be hard to get Trump to leave the White House'cause they have so many lackies in Congress and all around him. Even though he is only allowed to serve two terms, it's the same kind of concern. It's why, how do you feel about A, the contract with no evaluation and B, it's now harder for the DPS board to fire a DPS superintendent no matter how incompetent they might be.

Rob Gould: 39:32

So I think part of that is to Alexis's point, our educators are evaluated to know. It is ridiculous the amount of documentation and everything we have to do. We have good mechanisms though. I want people to know, like one of the things that DCTA has been fighting for the last, 10 plus years, is making sure that teachers have supports they need, they have coaching, they have all those things. So while it is a burden of system DCTA has worked to make sure that, teachers have. At least some, different say in that. And I think part of the, one of the pieces in our evaluation system is we have a it's not just what the principal has it's, you can ask for what's called a peer observer. I was on the peer observer team. I would go and observe teachers and score them, evaluate them, provide them feedback and coaching. But it was this sub, different lens, right? It was that this idea that you've got, two people from different avenues are doing that. Given that I think every valuation system needs to have more than one lens, right? It needs to have a 360 review. I think that's where, feedback from educators around how the superintendent has, has been doing feedback from not just teachers, but workers within DPS, I think is essential, right? Feedback from community. On what they're perceiving. And that's where, definitely those things need to be taken into consideration. I think. I don't wanna speak for the board and I don't wanna speak for, what it is. I do think that I understand that they want to make sure that we have a, an educator of color and also thinking about what it is that our most vulnerable populations need. And I will admit that, I've worked with Dr. Morero the last few years and I've seen some really great things. I've seen some not, some things I don't disagree, I disagree with him on. But I do think that he has been focused around supporting our students of color and. Now given that I think you could do a better job of listening to workers and listening to teachers and listening to community about what, what their specific school needs.

Alan Gottlieb: 41:39

Okay, thanks Rob. Hey, last, this is the last question. We've gone a little long. Again, appreciate your time, but I'm interested in your thoughts about, obviously there's been this. For as long as I've been following, but especially in the last 15 years or so, this divide, right? There's like the reform versus the union. And I've definitely been on one side of that most of the time. But we now face this totally different era where we've got a federal government that is overtly hostile to a lot of things that no matter what you and I and others on either side of that side might disagree on. They're against everything that we believe in about almost everything. I don't know how else to describe it. So how do we get through this divide basically? You and I probably agree on 97% of stuff, right? And it's the 3% we agree, disagree, really strongly on, and we get all pissed off at each other and scream at each other about the 3%. I'm not mad at you, Alan. Let's be, I'm not mad at you either. I'm enjoying this conversation. It would a beer fun. I love to have a beer with you. It

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 42:38

would be more fun. Just have a screaming match for the podcast at some point though,

Alan Gottlieb: 42:41

right? But so how do we, like now sit down. How do you sit down with, clarence Burton from Denver Families. And how do you sit down with, people who are on very much the other side? Even more so how do you sit down with John Arnold nationally or somebody like that and just say, yeah, we disagree on stuff, but now there's serious threats to everything we believe in, and we've gotta stop this inner niacin fighting and actually band together to fight. The real threats. Threats. What's your thought about how we can make that happen?

Rob Gould: 43:16

So I think how that could happen is I do think everybody needs to take a look at what are the. What are the mechanisms within their, their policies, their organization, and I would say this about DCTA too, right? And this is one of the reasons why we've, we've worked so hard at having a better evaluation systems for teachers and better, we've been pushing for funding and different things like that, right? I think every organization needs to take a look at what, what is it that. Where's your funding coming from? Where are your, what are those strings that are tied to that? Because while, as I mentioned before, while Trump is taking this wrecking ball to public education, this stuff over here, these groups have been doing this for a number of years, and they need to stop. And they need to think for a second. Wait a minute. Maybe we need to listen to each other and maybe we need to listen to teachers a little bit more. When innovation was being pushed in Denver. It sounded like a great idea at the time, and it still can be a good idea, right? I'm not saying innovation schools are bad, I'm saying the way it was implemented in Denver was horrible. Now we've corrected for that. We've course corrected for that. Going back to the number of charter schools and the expansive charter schools, the way we used to close schools and then put in a charter school, that was horrible. That didn't help communities, that didn't help kids. We can take a look at how we're doing things differently today. And I think Denver families or whatever, and, they can, number one, admit, yes, we're being funded by these corporations that are actually doing the same work that Donald Trump's doing. And given that, what do we need to do differently to make sure we're actually supporting our kids? And I think part of that does, it's I think it's about listening to. Community. It's listening to parents, it's listening to teachers, and it's listening and not vilifying the teacher's union. Everybody says the teacher union, this teacher that the teacher's union is teachers. It is not some weird entity that's doing this is these are the actual people doing the work. They come together. And that's where I think we can move forward in a better place is really understanding. How some of these mechanisms, how some of these things, how some of these dumb ideas that we've all been living through really didn't help

Alan Gottlieb: 45:24

kids in the long run. I do have to say I, I disagree with almost everything you just said in that last answer, but but the thing that I disagree with most is you're basically saying the way we can bridge this divide is have one side come all the way over to our side because we're, we believe in what we believe in and we're not willing to move, which I don't think is productive.

Rob Gould: 45:40

And I say, lemme be clear, Alan. I think teachers are oftentimes, they are trying to figure out what their kids need and they're trying to navigate the world, right? At the end of the day, all they want to do is support their kids. They would like to not have to grade papers till midnight every night. They would like to, have to do, to be able to do something different on the weekends. The job is not sustainable. That's where I think that's what I'm saying is we need to really listen to how these policies and how these things affect the individuals that are actually trying to carry out the work. I also, goes, and once again, I'll, I, we cannot, we can't, we have to go back to funding in the state of Colorado. Of Tabor because of the, the, everything that's happened around that, the way our schools are funded, it is a sm and if we can ever come together and instead of, putting money towards this, why don't we put money towards those really trying to pass those ballot measures that are gonna fix Tabor fix some of these issues that we have around school funding.

Alan Gottlieb: 46:43

Yep. I do agree with you that it, the teaching has gotta be one of the toughest jobs there is, and that it's not sustainable for a lot of people. I don't know how I was like a preschool teacher for my first year and then again, briefly out of college, but that's the only teaching I've done. But I'm, every time I'm in a classroom or in a school for a day I'm pretty much in awe of how tough it is that teachers don't even have time to go to the bathroom a lot of the time. Yes. Yes. I'm with you on that a hundred percent. Any final thoughts, Alexis? I, I. Appreciate the time, Rob. I'd love to do this again. I'd like to have you on and debate stuff, continue to debate stuff. I think it's really productive to do this. Alexis any final thoughts?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 47:19

I just wanna say thank you Rob, so much for coming on. Saying we don't always agree, didn't always agree with everything you said here, but I do think if we can start looking at where the places we do agree, where we think we can support both teachers and students, in a healthy and productive way that makes one, the teaching profession more respected, more professionalizing. That's super important. But also making sure that we do that in a way because teachers are, the most important to, to our students'. Education, also prioritizing students. I think that we're, we have such opportunity. I also agree on the Tabor thing. If nothing, if people took nothing else away, I hope everybody who listens. Can try and focus on things that, that would make a tremendous impact to public schools and to school districts. And that's repealing taper. Yeah. I think and I would speculate that reformers would agree with that. May maybe that's the thing. Maybe that's the call to action that I would give to all of our listeners and to all of the organizations, executive directors, to the charter school leaders, to the policy think tanks is let's come together and try to repeal Tabor.

Alan Gottlieb: 48:29

That's a vote of the people. That's a tough one. Oof. I agree a hundred percent, but man that's tough. That's tough. You had me at repeal.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 48:36

Yep.

Rob Gould: 48:36

But no I just wanna tell you both, thank you so much for having me on. And I think it's important for, to have these discussions because I think, let's do this. Let's take on Tabor, let's fix that, and then let's take on healthcare, let's work on that.'Cause I think that affects not just fix the families, but our, of our kids, it affects all of our workers in DPS. Not just teachers, but all those other, our our educational support professionals and let's try to make this, Denver the place we know it is right. It's this great shining jewel in the middle of the country. And we do great things here and we can continue to do more great things.

Alan Gottlieb: 49:12

Okay. Thank you so much for your time, Rob. We will definitely have you on again and we will be back with another podcast episode soon. Thanks everybody.

Audio Only - All Participants: 49:20

Bye.

Alan Gottlieb: 49:23

All right. Appreciate you both. Thank you.