Episode 25: DPS board election campaign reflections, and other current issues

Transcript

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 0:08

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Board Hawk podcast Today. It is just Alan and I, it's the first time in quite a while that we're recording without a special guest either a candidate or somebody who is close to the races and what's happening on the Denver School Board. As Alan and I were preparing for this week's episode, we were reflecting on some of the things we've recently seen, whether. On social media, what candidates are posting on videos. I attended a debate last night, which I'll talk about, and Alan and I both had the pleasure and privilege to moderate the 10 collective impact forum that took place a couple of weeks ago and heard from candidates there. So what we wanna do on today's episode is talk about what has surprised us this election cycle. What are some of the things that we're not surprised? We continue to see year after year, cycle after cycle. And then a couple of other miscellaneous things. And at the very end, if you stick with us through the end you'll get our predictions for who we think has the best shot at winning this thing. So it should be a fun episode, and we're excited to dive in. What do you think, Alan?

Alan Gottlieb: 1:16

Yeah, going back to the 10 Collective impact is that, I'm sorry, I forgot the name already. But debate last week is, I think of it just as 10, but it's obviously their they're c4, 4 0 1 C4 arm we pointed this out at the debate, and I think we might have even mentioned it on an earlier podcast, but extremely disappointing that not only did none of the three incumbent or any of the either of the incumbents who would've been part of this debate show up because this was for at large and district three, which is central Denver. So n neither of the accu incumbents showed up, nor did any of the. Candidates endorsed by the DCTA, which is a little strange because those folks have come on our podcast, have done really well. We've had productive conversations with them. So I don't know what it is about 10 and that's such a poison pill that they wouldn't show up. So as a result, we had three board member three candidates who, had a chance to really introduce themselves to the crowd. Alex GaN was there, Karen Blank was there, and to Maya Jackson and, they got, people got to hear from them in great depth because there weren't other candidates trying to share the stage. But I just think it's a sad commentary on this state of political discourse locally and of course nationally that people who won't even come talk to people they think might not agree with them. Yeah. And that's really not a way to win voters or be representative of the public. So again, shame on all of those candidates who didn't show up.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 2:36

I agree. And, this person isn't an incumbent and is also, wa was also not endorsed by the DCTA, but that's Deborah Sims Fard and she actually just two days ago announced that she's dropped out, or Chalkbeat reported, I should say, that she dropped out of the race for the, at large seat. I know she had been having some issues getting to debates and I think there were some health issues as well. So wishing her all the best and it's not easy running for these seats. But applaud her for at least trying and showing up in places where she was able to, yeah. I,

Alan Gottlieb: 3:04

one thing that I thought we should, the thing we, I thought we should start with, and I thought you could talk about to start at least, is there was an article in Chalkbeat last week about Mariana del Ro who was running against Sochi Gaitan for District two Southwest Denver seat. There was a some of her employers Com employees complaining about her being a tough boss, basically. And while the story wasn't. In and of itself, I think unfair story. I think to just drop it in the middle of a campaign when there's so many other issues. It's just a little puzzling to me. And is there a story about Sochi coming next? There's plenty of stuff there to talk about that could be critical as well. As we pointed out in our last. Podcast episode. So it just seemed like a strange isolated since, since, honestly, Chalkbeat isn't covering the election very closely. It just seems strange to me. But anyway yeah I'd love to hear your take on it.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 3:53

I have lots of thoughts on this one. So in, in full transparency, Mariana as a friend, she's somebody that I support as in my individual capacity. And it's just really disheartening to see. So often what I see in my line of work, and that's, in the political space, in the nonprofit space and you probably see it in every industry honestly, is the double standard that women, particularly women of color, are held to. I was chatting with a few folks and wonder, think about all of the men who are running, who have been supervisors of a large group of people like Mariana. So you have Alex Magana in the race. You have John Youngquist, who is a current board member. You have who, I'm sorry, I'm forgetting who else who, who's running these races? Who have been either CMO leaders, principals have managed large teams, and I can guarantee you each of them have had disgruntled employees. I've had disgruntled employees like. To be a supervisor of people, to be a people manager. I would be shocked if you don't have ruffle some feathers at some point along the way. And what I know about Mariana is she is a fierce advocate for working families of Southwest Denver for immigrant communities. Being Latina herself, she is one of the most inclusive people I know. And it's just, it really saddens me when I see our own communities rip each other apart and and I think that there's things happening here that I don't wanna share too much because it's I probably have a lot more information than the average person. So I don't want to break any confidentiality of other people I've spoken to about this, but. There's more than it meets the eye. I would have people start questioning who owns the domain of some of the organizing that has been done on the website. Who has access to the login? Wait, I'm not sure

Alan Gottlieb: 5:51

what you mean by that. So I just wanna back you up. Oh so there, what website are you talking

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 5:54

about? Yeah. With, within the story they referenced that there's a website that was created by former employees and, and the website has testimonials from people and it's designed fairly well. And what I've heard before is, there's people who have worked there who are like super grateful to be employed, especially when like they don't have computer skills. And granted there's people that have all different kinds of backgrounds. So that's not to say that any of the employees like can't start a website, especially with AI nowadays, but. I, I would just wanna know hey, who owns, who purchased the domain and whose credit card purchased the domain? Who has the login to the Instagram page? Who's doing all of the translation of the testimonials? And who has things to gain from trying to see this organization and this leader fail? So I, again, I don't wanna share too much. Because I actually don't think a lot of it has to do with anything to do with the race. I think the story itself actually is what concerns me more, that this is the coverage that we see in these cycles about women. I, I remember when Diana Romero Campbell ran, she and I ran in the same cycle. She was the executive director of a nonprofit here in town, an education nonprofit serving kids in afterschool programs and wraparound services. And there was a disgruntled former employee who was like, out on social media, was like Al always commenting on like what a bad boss she was. And I don't know, some people were trying to run with it. I don't know that it actually got a whole piece. I can't remember. But I think it, it's two things. It's one. People who work for women of color are more what I see are more willing to be vocal about their opposition to women of color regardless of their race or gender as employees. And then two, when there are things that women of color are criticized for, we make a mountain out of a mole hill. I have yet to hear in this instance like what egregious thing has actually happened. And I think if you were to call Melanie Asmar, she would have a hard time telling you what egregious thing. He's the

Alan Gottlieb: 8:01

Chalkbeat reporter who wrote this story.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 8:02

Yes. Thank you. Yep. The reporter who wrote the story, what egregious thing she was able to prove happened and it puts Mariana in such a shitty position because she can't refute anything'cause she would be violating the privacy her of her employees. And opening herself up to a lawsuit. If she were to go on the record and say actually, here's exactly what happened in this very specific and private personnel matter.

Alan Gottlieb: 8:25

So I wanna back up as a reporter here for a second and push you a little bit, and you may not be able to answer me, but it's it sounds like you have either information or allegations and if they're allegations that are unprovable, you probably don't wanna say'em exactly, but like about who owns this domain and everything. Or can you at least give a general hint rather than just leaving everybody hanging?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 8:41

I, I think there are well-intentioned white men in the world who do really good work and they need to know when to step aside and back away and let women lead is what I will say. And I'm a proud graduate of the University of Denver, and I think there are a lot of really great people who went to the University of Denver with me, who have gone on to found really incredible organizations that serve Latino families.

Alan Gottlieb: 9:08

Okay. That's way too cryptic for me, but I, yep.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 9:12

I would look to former leaders of the organization and what they have to gain is what I will say.

Alan Gottlieb: 9:19

Mariana's organization.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 9:20

Yes. Who no longer live here, who are not part of the community themselves. But I've talked about this before. I think there's a lot of white savior complex in, in Denver, and I think there's a lot of internal, I, I haven't talked about this on the podcast, but. There, unfortunately, I often see within black and brown communities internalized oppression that takes place. And I think a little bit of this is what I'm observing is happening here and we think about who are the puppet masters behind the scenes.

Alan Gottlieb: 9:48

Okay. Interesting. We'll see what impact, if any, it has on

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 9:51

Yep. On the

Alan Gottlieb: 9:51

election. Another thing, and we're stepping indirectly aside for a minute from the election, but I think it's relevant to the election, is that we talked about on the last podcast, we ran down a list of the things that the three incumbents running for reelection. Michelle Kaleba, Scott Esserman. And so she got down And some of the things that they've done and haven't done as board, members and one of the things we mentioned was a white mother named Kristen Fry, who was accused by Hashem Coates, who's a political campaign manager in some cases and very active politically. He accused her of calling her, of calling him the n word at his school board public. Public comment session and also, assaulting her. And the video show she did not assault him, didn't even touch him. And nobody could hear what she said to him. But she claims she basically told him to be respectful of speakers and would never use that word anyway. DPS tried to get she sued because Marrero as superintendent, Alex Marrero and some board members. Publicly pilled her, at a televised board meeting for her despicable actions, which they had no evidence she actually committed. And were

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 11:01

later disproven. And were later disproven.

Alan Gottlieb: 11:03

Yeah. At least the physical, the assault part. But anyway she sued, and I guess she just posted today on Facebook, on the PSEG Facebook page that a district court judge basically tossed out DPS as a attempt to get the ca the case dismissed. And, wrote the following, the judge plaintiff adequately plaintiff being Kristen adequately alleged that the district defendants conspired to violate her first amendment rights by retaliating against her for her public speech as explained above as to whether this right was clearly established at the time of the defendant's misconduct. There can be no doubt that it was clearly established that the First Amendment includes the right to be free from adverse action by government officials for speaking about a matter of public concern. Important to point out that all three of the incumbents running for reelection were definitely in the middle of this. Including the, as well as the superintendent. We're gonna try and get Kristen on the show. I don't know if she'll come on or not, because she's still in the middle of this legal action, but to hear it from her firsthand. But just an interesting development the week before the ballots drop,

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 12:03

I, I actually ran into Hashem at the debate last night. It was Channel four Educate Denver Chalkbeat and Regis University. They held the televised debate at there and chatted, very briefly with Hashem. And he and I obviously disagree on a lot of things. We surprisingly have agreed on candidates before. We were both supportive of Kelly Buff, for example, for for the mayor's race. But what I have found interesting is often I see hashem in ae. And sometimes Meen Holmes who are supportive of the three actually I don't know if they're supportive of Sochi. They're certainly supportive of Tamaya and, or I'm sorry, of Scott Esserman and Michelle Quale Baum. They are often in the front row of these debates. And honestly put like kudos to them. It's a really brilliant political move because I think one, they are seeking to show support of their, of their candidates. But then two, like to intimidate their opponents. So I actually took a playbook out of that when they weren't in the room for the last debate, which was the southwest Denver district too. And so I actually was like, oh, let me go over there and sit so that Maria and I can see a friendly face in the audience. And, I wasn't like making mean faces at Sochi, but I was extra loud and enthusiastic for Mariana. And I said it before, like I, I disagree with some of these folks that I just named, but kudos for them for showing up and especially when you're not getting paid to do these things I'm not getting paid to, to support these candidates or advise their campaigns or to, or talk to them. But I think it's important to show up and I think you're seeing a lot of that beyond just like the traditional. Organizations that we've talked about that are putting a lot of money into these races what I am worried about is the political discourse that is not actually helpful. And so one of the things I wanna talk about that, that surprised me coming outta the debate yesterday I've had the opportunity to connect with Scott Erman on a few occasions. Over the last couple months and I think we've come to a mutual agree to disagree. We are respectful to each other. I still will call him out on this podcast and I told him I will continue to, so I won't call just you out. But he actually said something. I agreed with I don't know if it was Melanie or the other woman who was moderating the debate, but. They asked all, almost all the candidates a question of what are your views on charter schools? And it, I think it was meant to be like, do you support charter schools? Do you oppose charter schools? Are where do you sit on this binary? And Scott basically said, I actually think that's like a bad question. And it's not a helpful question. And I couldn't agree more because. Every candidate that I heard speak to this issue said something along the lines of, charter schools are part of our family of schools now. It wasn't necessarily like whether you like it or not, it was just a part of the family of schools. And Monica hunter actually also surprised me. She said, and she continues to say this as one of her talking points. And she's

Alan Gottlieb: 14:56

A-D-C-T-A endorsed candidate? Yeah.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 14:57

BCTA endorsed candidate running in district. Four. She, I've heard her say this a couple of times on the in her stem speech and on the trail is I will never fault a family for what kind of school they choose. And, she talks about how she's, she has a blended family and five kids and or six kids I think, and one of them goes to a private school. And but so she says that, but then also just like f fully goes hard on this whole like dark money. Private or dark money billionaires playing into the race thing, and I honestly don't know how much the average voter cares. About that piece. And I'll just, now I'm gonna go on a quick tangent and then we can come back. Alan, sorry I'm taking so much time here. Actually no, I'm not sorry because we're recording this on Latina equal payday and too often Latinas and women make themselves small. So I'm not sorry for taking up space. I'm gonna take up the space. Alan

Alan Gottlieb: 15:52

I'm deeply offended as a white man that you're taking up all my time.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 15:56

And where was I? Oh so speaking of the, this narrative that I think so often the union, especially the union candidates are trying to play like I'm not backed by billionaires. It's let's just be real for a second. It's not like these billionaires are, are coming in and expecting you to show up as a certain way, like they're supporting these organizations and the organizations are having to take a political risk on you. So the way I think about it is that I'm a Daniel s Fund scholar. For those of you who don't know, Daniel S Fund is a really big foundation here in Colorado and in the Rocky Mountain region. It's a board full of Republicans. Their leadership is always Republican. Bill Daniel was a prominent Republican. And I think about, but he was a

Alan Gottlieb: 16:39

Republican back before Republicans were totally insane. Oh, wait,

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 16:42

True. And I don't know how insane the Republicans are on the board. Shout out to Luke Raglan over there, who's one of the reasonable ones who's one of their senior staff. Oh, yeah.

Alan Gottlieb: 16:49

Luke's a great guy.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 16:50

Yeah. And and Hannah Scan, who I really deeply admire who was former superintendent, state superintendent of New Mexico. Anyway, if they're listening, hello. Thank you for my scholarship and thank you for letting me graduate debt free. But, I think about some of the people who got the Daniels Fund, who have gone on to be like radical progressives. And I would include myself in that. Like they still continue to fund students without this notion of you're gonna go and be a good citizen in a good, actually, they do say that, and that's sometimes you can only go to

Alan Gottlieb: 17:20

Hillsdale College in Michigan, ex without scholarship or

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 17:23

Trinity or something else. But I, I think there are philanthropists that do good work and. I'm never gonna meet as a candidate. Read Hastings. I'm never gonna meet John Arnold. I'm going to meet the people who they are choosing to invest in locally who happen to also be people of color. And so the last thing I'll say about this, and then I'll get off my soapbox and we can talk about other things that are interesting is I. I'm so frustrated by seeing, not getting called out, how many people who are upholding the status quo and the union claiming to be progressive, claiming to be good Democrats, and yet they are not reflective of the demographics of our schools. They tend to be older, they tend to be male, they tend to be pale and they tend to be stale and yet when you see where the reform movement is, you look at the charter school leadership, it's a lot of women of color. When you look at the organizations in town that are being led and doing really good work for students and teachers, it's led by people of color. So it's this really frustrating piece of we wanna talk about, this debate about reform and union, but yet when we actually talk about. DEI and equity and who is? Who is in leadership in these positions. There's this critique, and I'm just gonna say one last name and then I'll be done. Mike Deguire often posts a lot during this time of year. You guys can't see it, but Alan is rolling his eyes and shaking his head, so I'm very curious to get his take on, mike, but I remember, I think it was the last cycle, Mike posted something and it was basically something along the lines of families of color don't know any better and they are just so easily duped by the shiny flyers of these charter schools. And I, this was when I was much more active on Twitter. RIP Twitter and I just roasted the guy. And then I think Vernon came in and Vernon often doesn't like attack people personally. Vernon came in and Nicholas from 10, I think Clarence made a comment and like, all of these people of color were just like, how dare you? And of course, Mike, was getting dragged through Twitter by all these people of color for his racist comment. He edited the post, no one holds him accountable to that stuff. And that's the kind of shit I hear all the time from white leaders in this space. And like I, Monica was on the Brother Jeff Show recently, and she basically said, I'm no one's puppet. It is not surprising to me that black folks are. Calling Monica a puppet. And I think that's actually very wrong. They shouldn't be doing that. I disagree.'cause I've had the chance to meet with Monica. She's a lovely person. I'm super impressed with how she's showing up. But it's no wonder then that people are calling for tokenism or being puppeted around because you see so few people of color actually represented in the union. Okay, I'm done. That was a very long tirade. Thanks, Alan. That's all right.

Alan Gottlieb: 20:20

I've done my share of those on this podcast. This isn't really that far off of what you were just talking about in some ways, but one of the criticisms that I've heard out there that I don't totally disagree with is if you didn't know, if you went to a forum knowing absolutely nothing about who these candidates were, who they were, by whom they were endorsed, et cetera, et cetera, you would have a hard time telling who was endorsed. By the DCTA and who was endorsed by Denver families and who was an incumbent and who wasn't. I feel like in some ways, in fact, in other words, they all sound kind of milk toasty, basically the same. And none of them to me are like, I think they're. They're getting increasingly polished in their presentations and doing well. But I don't actually hear them saying things that are beyond more or less vague generalities that are just trying to appeal to the, and maybe that's a good strategy for electoral stuff, but it's like they sound a lot the same to me, and I'm just curious what you have to say about that.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 21:14

Yeah. I think that they're, and I like these can,

Alan Gottlieb: 21:15

I like a lot of these people and some of'em are friends of mine, so I hope I don't offend them, but it's I'm just like, this is a boring campaign because everybody sounds the same.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 21:22

It is boring. And I like boring in that we haven't seen the ugliness and the racism quite yet. There's a little bit of that I am, I'm seeing in Mariana's race, but I'm just waiting for the racist flyers to come out and I'm sure we'll have some things to say about that. I hope they don't come out. But I'm not gonna hold my breath. So I think each of them is trying to have their own brand and leaning into their values. I think because we are a blue city, in a blue state, in a blue school district, and I can't tell you the last time we we, elected a registered Republican to the to the school board. We tend to have more democratic left-leaning values as a result. We are going to have similar beliefs when we are doing the lightning rounds of a lot of these debates. Do you support private school vouchers? No one has ever supported private school vouchers in this case. Like I no one. Do you support armed police officers in school? I think most people have said no. Which is an interesting one'cause that's a little bit different, with the SRO versus the Denver public safety team. So we can talk about that in a little bit. Do you support what was the question? Do you support standardized testing as either the way to evaluate teachers, or, the second question is, do you, will you use academic performance to close schools? The questions themselves are not good because. I would interpret that as a candidate of I wouldn't only do that, so of course I'm gonna vote no. But do I think it's one of the things? Yes. So you're not getting into the nuance of these debates a lot, and we're not asking those tough questions, which is why I'm so sad that the candidates didn't show up to the 10 the 10 forum, because we were gonna ask those hard questions. And we asked

Alan Gottlieb: 23:04

one that I thought was an important question about Modelo, which was, yeah, basically what, which was if the performance of students and the achievement gaps and the performance of the district and if the way the district is serving students doesn't improve, would you be willing to. Fired the superintendent. Essentially was the question. And all three of the candidates that attended this forum said pretty clearly that they would be Yeah. Think. And but there's aren't enough questions like that being asked in these Exactly. In these forums. I think

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 23:34

It's a symptom of not having a higher level of. Civic engagement in these races or people paying attention. And I think I've mentioned this to you before, Alan, I don't know if it was on the podcast or off the podcast, but I'm a huge Aaron Sorkin fan. I watch all of his shows, all of his movies. And so he did the West Wing and then the newsroom. And I remember one episode of the newsroom the, they were basically trying to. Hold a presidential debate that was actually asking the hard questions, actually asking the follow up challenging things when they were factually inaccurate. And I didn't see any of that. Like the candidates each got one rebuttal on this last one, but I think that was the only one. You're not seeing the moderators or the reporters like do real deep investigative journalism on these candidates. I will say I'm super impressed with Nico Bro's reporting recently. And I hope to see more of what she has to write. Take, we need more people paying attention.

Alan Gottlieb: 24:31

So I want to here's an issue that I'm curious about. That I think should come up at some point and probably won't, and this is gonna take a minute, so I just wanna just. Point of privilege to take a minute to talk about this. I don't know what I'm gonna do with this, like on Board Hawk website if I'm gonna do anything with it or not, but I went I reached out along with Brian Weber, who used to be the Rocky Mountain News and is a friend. We reached out to former Rocky Mountain News in Denver, post data analyst, Bert Hubbard, who's long since retired, but was a great data reporter, and the person who was responsible for. All of the really good investigative data based reporting at the Rocky until it folded. And then for a few years at the Post before he retired I said to Bert, you've got like receipts, you've got. Test score data going way, way back. He also has worked with me and many other people on the standing in the gap PBS documentary about school integration and busing. It really was the history of court ordered busing in Denver and I said to Byrd, is there any way to look at the data and see have these gaps always been this bad? It's very important to point out, and the reason I'm talking about this in more general terms is because nobody who knows statistics and I don't count myself among them, would say that any of this analysis is statistically valid. Exactly. Because the test the Iowa test of basic skills that was used in the eighties and nineties. Is a very different kind of test in every way from what came later, like c, SAP and tcap, and now CMAs. So you can't really compare apples to apples. But what I asked Bert was if we just pull back a little bit, look at the forest and out the trees, can we see from all of these different tests like what gaps have looked like over this long period of time? I'm talking, going back. I'm looking, I'm just gonna look at this spreadsheet he sent me. He went all the way back. He found stuff going all the way back to 1986. Wow. So that's a long time ago. And he also cautioned, I don't know how valid, because he also didn't have every grade level for every year. So I'm just giving you all these caveats. But there's two things that really jumped out at me. From this data, and again, understanding that this is not something that you would publish in kind of any kind of academically validated research report.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 26:43

Parker Baxter, if you're listening, Parker, you should take this. I've talked to Parker about

Alan Gottlieb: 26:47

this.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 26:47

Oh, okay. I've talked

Alan Gottlieb: 26:48

to him about it. But anyway it's the gaps have always been there. They've always been huge. They haven't shrunk. To with anything like a reasonable level ever. But the but, and so back, going back as far as we had data, which was 40 years. These achievement gaps between low-income kids of color, who are mostly and more affluent kids who are mostly white, have been huge in Denver and probably everywhere else. But the thing that's really jumps out, and again, I know these tests are very different, and this may be drawing a wrong conclusion, but one of the things that really jumps out to me is that the gaps appear to have been smaller. And again, it was a very different test than was when during busing, which would suggest that integration. School integration works and that once busing ended the gaps got bigger. Now I think there's a lot of data out there from really valid reports, including some that I commissioned from the Civil Rights Project back when I was at the P Town Foundation that shows that busing yes, does work and it, that it does shrink achievement gaps and really improve the prospects for low income kids of color. But anyway, I just thought that was fascinating and why has nobody, so I think I might've. I've gone on this rant once before on this podcast, but it raises really fundamentally difficult, painful questions for me about whether urban education can succeed.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 28:03

Yep.

Alan Gottlieb: 28:05

Be or if, and this is where it's gonna get controversial.'cause I'm not a voucher person either, trust me, but. I'm gonna have to say this. If what you, the only conclusion you can draw is that really excellent schools and really brilliant teachers of which there are many, can improve the life prospects of even a handful of individual kids. Then that makes, does that make the whole thing worth it? Even if the system as a whole is failing large number of kids? And if that's the case, then does that make a case for you need to just get the kids. Who need it the most, the education, wherever that is. And if that winds up being a private school with a scholarship that's funded by taxpayers, so be it. I'm just gonna throw that question out there. Because if you can't fix the whole system, and the whole system is failing a lot of kids, then. Then helping the prospects of some kids is more important than not helping the prospects of any, it just raises thorny questions for me. And again, I'm not a voucher person. Because I think it's a distraction and it's a problem. But what if public education in urban areas can't work for all people? Because public education's only one part of the problem.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 29:12

Oof, Alan. That's a lot. That's heavy. Yeah. Yeah. I have lots of thoughts. I. I think where do I start? I think diverse schools, and I don't mean just race, socioeconomic class and status as well are really important. Maybe that's more

Alan Gottlieb: 29:31

important. Yeah.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 29:31

Yeah. And I think for me, when I I grew up, first generation, everything American high school, graduate, college, graduate first person to, make any kind of real money. It wasn't until I started climbing my social class that I actually was able to create more opportunities for myself because I just didn't know beyond what what my, my, my experience growing up was. So I think that there, there's oftentimes and I do this too and I have to catch myself and sometimes I'm sure I've done it on the podcast not catching myself. I think often we equate class and race and they're not always the same. I think we have, obviously low income white students here in, in DPS that are living below the poverty line and have issues. There's obviously a correlation between black and brown students being more likely to be eligible for free and reduced lunch, for example, and be low income. But having students who are going to schools with different. Socioeconomic status I think is more important so they can see how other students live and other students experience the world. And I actually, when I was running for the school board, something that I found really interesting from hearing from a couple of folks white people in particular, was. They loved their experience going to school in DPS during busing and during the integration of schools, they said, because it's such a social skill. You can talk to anybody if you go to and I won't name names, but there's one candidate in particular who I've heard this joke from and I couldn't agree more. I'm not gonna name names. This person looks so uncomfortable in rooms with black and brown people, like they don't never talked to them before. And it just cracks me up and you should be able to navigate the world with different people. Now I'm actually coming back to the education piece. I don't think the systems that have been set up since the civil rights movement since integration, were designed to serve black and brown and melanated people, or anybody who is considered a quote unquote minority. I hate the word, a minority. They're designed to uphold, power class status and privilege of those in power, which are white people. And I was having this conversation recently with somebody at a Denver Democratic Forum. Would love to have this person on deep shout out to you. I'd love to have you on the podcast if your employer allows you to deep as the DPS lobbyist and a big active person in the party and in social media. He was saying something to me at the Denver Democratic Party Central Committee meeting of that I actually went back and did some research and he's right. Like when segregation ended and you had to integrate schools, you displaced a lot of black and brown teachers. Because when you integrated schools, it was the white teachers that often kept their jobs. And so who upheld those white teachers? And I'm not gonna quote him exactly, so feel free to, to blast me on Twitter deep if I say any of this incorrectly. Who, the people who are up the organizations upholding that were the unions. And so to me, like the union has been. Upholding the system and status quo, which has harmed and not served black and brown students well. Now that being said, I have had some amazing teachers myself. My child's teachers have been incredible. They like, I've seen incredible growth and progress. I'm not talking about the individual teacher, I'm talking about the systems we uphold. And so as a progressive Democrat, what infuriates me about these debates is no other policy. Subject area. Do we say upholding The status quo is progressive healthcare reform, reproductive rights, justice, immigration reform. Those are all things Democrats stand behind proudly. But education reform is a bad word. I don't understand that.

Alan Gottlieb: 33:21

That's really interesting. We're going a little long here, but I wanted just to say a couple of things in response to what you just said. First of all, I completely agree about socioeconomic school integration being more important than racial. To me I mean I spent much of the nine years I was at the PE but foundation working on trying to do socioeconomic integration. Projects in, in, in schools in DPS, which was very difficult'cause there was resistance from a lot of places. At the risk of making myself unpopular yet again, I'm gonna call some bullshit on the whole thing about busing being so great for these white people who suddenly had to learn how to g go to school with other kids. Because most schools, at most schools, from everything I've heard, in fact, the classrooms were not very integrated. The schools were integrated. But they were like. They were interesting. There was a lot of, I can't remember the word right now, where they were track tracking, tracking streets tracking, that was the word I was looking. They were tracking a lot of kids. And it's even still that way in schools like East Eastern today. Oh yeah. So I think while yes, they may have interacted in the hallways and in sports and things, which is not insignificant, don't get me wrong. I don't think that, there was a lot, it was great for, it was great. It was a great thing for. All those affluent white kids from Hilltop and Country Club to put on their college application essays. But I'm not sure it actually like, affected in any negative or positive way their education.'cause I don't think they were in classrooms with a lot of those kids. Anyway, I, that's probably gonna piss off a lot of people who went to school during busing here and including some friends of mine. But that's just my impression.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 34:45

No. I, something just as a follow up to that, it's I was reflecting on this recently. My son has the same privilege and problem I have of being a white passing individual who is also Latino, Hispanic, whatever identifier you wanna use for those people who of whom I am one. And I hear myself, I hear Sochi, I hear Mariana, I hear like other Latinos leaders in this space. All the different academic words we use to be inclusive in this language. And yet my kid and his friends, they're like 10, 11, 12 year olds. It's the same stuff I had to deal with when I was a kid in the nineties. Mom, they're saying I'm not Mexican. And I was like, oh, we're opening up this can of worms. I was like, okay, Mexican means this and Mexican American is this and. You don't have these 11 and 11-year-old boys who are all from different races, classes, ethnicities. Like my kid goes to, to I, I won, I won't say the school. He goes to A-D-S-S-T school. It's very diverse. That's large part of the reason we chose it. And, he's my friend who's Muslim he said, you don't look Mexican. You don't look this. And I'm like, Mexicans don't look at any one way, first of all, kid. And I've been ingrained that in him with such a young age. But like the influence of his peer group of that, and then having to explain, and I see this often on social media like this over complication of needing to identify yourself and how other people identify you is. Depending on the situation, I will just call myself Mexican for simplicity. Other times I'll be, no, I'm Latina, or, no, I'm Mexican American. Or whatever. But when you get down to it, kids are just gonna be kids and want to figure out a way to interact with their peers. And so it's just, it's funny to me like how adults we overcomplicate things and at the end of the day, the kids are just taking things at face value the way they always do.

Alan Gottlieb: 36:37

We have gone really long, even though it's just the two of us. So I think we, oh my gosh. What? Wrap it up. What do we wanna do about the predictions here? Oh, the

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 36:42

predictions. Okay. So I will start. Let's just run through them quickly. So at large, I think, and let me actually just pull up because I'm gonna forget who's running, which is horrible. Okay. The Denver School debates. Okay, so at large we have let, this is gonna be a test. So we have Alex Magana running, we have Amy Klein Mul. Is there anybody else in the race? Is it just not anymore?

Alan Gottlieb: 37:09

cause Deborah

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 37:09

dropped out, right? Deborah dropped out. Okay. So I think Alex, far and away I'm very confident he's gonna win. I'm already seeing yard signs of his. I've seen a couple of Amy's, I think Alan has, or Alex has done really well on the debates. Amy I think is still struggling to find her voice a little bit, so that, that's my take there. In the district for race, we have Tamaya Jackson, we have incumbent Michelle Kaleba. We have Monica Hunter. I'm forgetting Monica, does she have two last names? Monica Hunter and, no, I don't think so. Jeremy Harris. Jeremy will lose that by a large margin. He went up the debate last night basically like calling for metal detectors and you could like audibly hear the booze in the audience. And Monica came in and basically was like, refuted that and Jeremy was like why do you think that metal detectors are problematic? And she basically said they're freaking racist dude. So talking about internalized depression. Jeremy, you got some work to do. So I think he's gonna lose, I think it's gonna be a really tight race between Monica and Tamaya. I think they both have showed up really strong. They both are not afraid to go after the tough topics. They are. I think sometimes you, you forgot

Alan Gottlieb: 38:20

Michelle?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 38:21

No. Oh. I don't think Michelle's gonna win. Oh. But I'm saying Michelle, Michelle's showing up a lot in the same way she shows up on, on the, in the board or on the board. Excuse me. She says a lot of things that don't mean anything. When Monica and Tamaya speak, they say what they mean and they mean what they say and you're not having to interpret what this means. And they're coming with the facts and figures. I. It got a little bit a little bit heated in this last one with I think there was a little bit of calling each other out. More so on the Monica side. And I actually love to see that show how you are contrasting yourself with your opponents, show how you are different. And I think right, Monica's doing that a little bit better than Tamaya. I think Tamaya has a more compelling background and a more diverse background. Monica's also a teacher and I think teachers. Who run for school board races like tend to do really well and have a much more compelling narrative. So that one I think is harder to predict. So I'm not going to in that one. But I think it's gonna be one of the two of them. Monica or Tamaya. And then we have in district three care, actually, hold on, let me stop there. You give your prediction on those two and then we'll do the last two, Alan on at large and district four.

Alan Gottlieb: 39:33

The first thing I'll just say overall overarching, and this is I'm just giving predictions and not personal preferences. I, I mean I think all three incumbents are likely to lose because I think there's still a hangover from the really bad dysfunction a couple years ago, which has gotten moderately better. But I think that's gonna hurt all three of Sochi gaan, Scott Erman and Michel kba. Yeah, I tend to think Alex is probably going to prevail at large. I. In District four, I will just say some. I will just raise a question because I agree with most of what you said there, but if you look at the percentage of. The especially black male vote that Donald Trump got in the 2024 election by you have to wonder whether staking out a much more conservative position in a school board election, in a district that does have a lot of. Voters of color, whether Jeremy and I think he's got some money behind him that I don't know where it comes from. If he could just he's got some

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 40:34

glossy, he's got some glossy yard signs and he's got a lot of them.

Alan Gottlieb: 40:37

But if he's differentiating himself more, and he is also the only male in that, in of the four candidates in that race, I just raised the question of could he, could those other votes get split and Yeah. And Jeremy sneak in a weird way that's, I'm not predicting that, but I'm not, I am not ruling that out as a possibility.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 40:54

Yeah. And I just think that the average voter looks at these three black women of color who are, I would say two are highly qualified. One is. Experience because she sits on the board. I think she's qualified in some ways three highly experienced women. I don't know, like it's Denver. It's, people wanna see, I think some PE time people are like, too more simplistic. It's okay, my bias is women. Women are great educators. Education ergo support the woman on the RA in the race. Maybe that's the wrong way of thinking about it. I don't know. It certainly didn't work in my race, so who knows? Who am I to say?

Alan Gottlieb: 41:33

Okay, so let's finish up with district three and then get outta here. So we've been on,

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 41:36

okay, so district three. I think Scott is a really good, okay, that's

Alan Gottlieb: 41:40

Scott Erman and Karen Blank. Scott. Scott, yeah. Scott

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 41:42

Erman, Karen Blank and DJ Torres. And DJ Torre Scott, I forget. Scott is incumbent. Yep. Scott is the incumbent. DJ is supported by DCTA and Karen is supported by Denver families. Scott I think is a really good debater. Scott is great at having some really amazing soundbites. I think he has a strong bend towards what he believes justice is, and I actually agree with a lot of what he has to say on principle. So I, I think if people are doing their homework and don't know much about what's happening and aren't looking at the research of, or aren't, look at the history of Denver Public Schools. I think Scott actually is like the strongest on the debate stage. That being said, I think similar to what you were saying about splitting the vote I think people are gonna have a harder time differentiating between Scott and dj. So I think Karen will take more of that. I will be interested to see and I don't know how you can pull this data. There's a large Jewish community in district three, both Scott and Karen or Jewish. I don't know if DJ is I'll just be curious like where. Jewish voters, particularly older voters how they show up and who they support, I don't know. Do you have thoughts, Alan? I'm sorry to tokenize you. What are, what's your opinion? Yeah.

Alan Gottlieb: 42:49

As a Jew who's like never set foot in a synagogue in Denver. Except for a funeral once. No. I don't really know. I know having conversations with people in that community, many, friends. They come from different segments of the Jewish community and different d, different kind of, more progressive, more conservative in the religious sense. Synagogues. So I, I do think that actually undercut some of the Scott's support in the Jewish community, probably having Karen and running, and that may be one of the reasons he went to district three instead of at large. But I don't know. I don't know how to read that race except I, I agree with you about the ticket splitting the, but the other thing I'll say is I think that it doesn't matter at all how people perform on the debate stage, because

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 43:29

Yeah,

Alan Gottlieb: 43:29

in the tiny turnout Absolutely. Of school board elections, the fraction of the tiny number of people who are gonna vote, who actually go to a school board forum or debate Yep. Is infinitesimal. I would, so I don't think that's. Gonna make any difference

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 43:42

at all? I think you're right. I looked at the YouTube views of the Channel four debate from last night. It was like 703 views. I would be shocked if it gets to more than a thousand views. And how many

Alan Gottlieb: 43:51

people were there last night, would you say?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 43:53

60. One of the auditoriums at Regis so I think Karen's gonna take it. I think Karen is really showing how she can fundraise, and I think if Scott were able to fundraise the way he was able to when he first found, I actually think Scott would be taking it. But Karen has really been able to fund fundraise in a strong way. So I think Karen takes that one.

Alan Gottlieb: 44:14

And the last thing I'll say about the election, then we should probably sign off is that, I don't forget district

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 44:18

too.

Alan Gottlieb: 44:20

District two, I think. I think Mariana all the way. I think

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 44:23

Mariana's gonna win. Yep. Easy.

Alan Gottlieb: 44:24

Yep. Although, and I, again, because I don't think that many people read the media accounts, and I don't, so I don't think that, if TV's picked it up or something, which I don't think they have, that could be a problem. But I don't think that story, I don't think they have. So I would bet on her. I don't know what my last point was gonna be. So

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 44:39

sorry on, I just

Alan Gottlieb: 44:40

have to let it go. That's okay. I could rewind the tape and remember, but it couldn't have been too important. But anyway, everybody needs to get out and vote. The ballots are actually dropping next week. And oh, I know what I wanted to say. I wanted to give a shout out to all the new candidates who are running not running for reelection because they, I'm, and I'm not singling out the. Incumbent for criticism here. What I'm saying is people who have never run for office before, I just think everybody I've watched. The growth in all of these candidates from like when we, the ones we interviewed from when we first interviewed. To the way they are on the stage now. And I've just seen like huge growth in their ability to communicate. Even though, as I said earlier, I feel like the messages are a little bland in a lot of cases. I feel like they've gotten way more polished in their presentation to the public, so that's good to see.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 45:29

Yep. Agreed. Thanks, Alan was fun. That's called

Alan Gottlieb: 45:31

damning with fake praise I guess. But anyway alright we will be back with another episode soon. Lots of different possibilities for who we'll have on and what we'll be talking about. But the election's coming so I imagine we'll keep talking about that and those issues.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 45:45

Need Take care everyone.

Alan Gottlieb: 45:46

Alright, bye.