Episode 27: Former DPS board President Theresa Peña on upcoming election and the state of the school district

Transcript

Alan Gottlieb: 0:07

Hi everybody and welcome back to the Board HO podcast. We're happy to have on with us today, a former Denver School board president and a friend of both. Myself and Alexis Theresa Pena. Theresa was on, was, going way back. Theresa was actually named as one of the plaintiffs along with her brother Craig in the Keys case, which brought on busing in the desegregation of Denver Public Schools way back in the 1970s. She was on the Denver School Board from 2003 to 2011 and was president for four of those years. So she has a really long, broad perspective on the state of DPS. Functioning versus non-functioning boards and administrations. And so we thought it would just be great right before the election to have her on to talk about the election, about the board, about the district, the state of the district, and with some historical perspective. So Theresa, it's really great to have you on. Thanks for coming on.

Theresa Peña: 0:57

We're gonna talk about one of my favorite topics, and that's Denver Public School, so I appreciate the opportunity.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 1:03

This will be a fun one. Thanks Theresa. As Alan mentioned, we wanna talk about a couple of things. The election, the current board, the current administration. So let's start with the election. You have obviously been on the board, you have run for office yourself and won those two terms. You've seen this from the candidate side, from, being on kitchen cabinets of board members of candidates. I would just love to start with you giving your perspective of. What are your thoughts on this moment and this current race and how it maybe compares or contrasts from what you've seen in previous years?

Theresa Peña: 1:39

So I would say, Alexis, that I think that this board. Has failed on their campaign promises to focus on student achievement and community engagement. And so when I look at what the work of the board is supposed to do, one, they hire and evaluate and collaborate with the superintendent and in a healthy. Governance environment. The superintendent is really the eighth member of the governance function with the board members. But then that individual then goes and leads to operations. And I would also say then that the other primary function is to ensure that students are success, successfully read, reading, writing and doing math at grade level. And when I look at those two functions, I would give this board an F. They have failed miserably. And when I think of what successful. Previous boards in Denver and superintendents have done, they have made a primary focus on student achievement, so very student centered. That does not mean they exclude things like safety or social, emotional, mental health. All of that plays into that. Even hunger, right? If a student. Can't go to school if they don't feel safe or if they're not fed. All those play into it. But this board has really focused, I think, on a lot of adult issues, not kid issues. I think unlike previous boards, they lack a plan to address any of their issues. So they have basically delegated in their policy governance. They've basically delegated all their power to the superintendent. And interestingly enough, Alex has actually codified that in his contract, which no other superintendent has ever done, which I think is interesting because Alex is a clever guy. He's a little bit, too clever sometimes, but I think he was really smart in taking that governance policy that Scott Baldman rushed through a month before the elections in 2021. And so they've really. Given all their power and authority to the superintendent, I think they're, they have no plan to address the financial challenges. And Chuck Carpenter is a person who's the CFO now. He and I worked together when I worked in food services. Chuck is a really good guy. And it was, on the front page of the Denver Post, there's a statement that says DPS is spacing, financial catastrophe. Who isn't paying attention to it? And again. This board and superintendent like this is not a surprise. When people were running two years ago and I was working with candidates, I said, then your number one issue is going to have to address low enrollment and school closures. And instead, what this board has done is passed policies to slow down school closures and not address the declining enrollment. So everybody acted like this was new news, when in fact it's been new news for the last five years. So there's no excuse for any of the board members right now to act like this is a big surprise. And finally I would say there, there's just no, no real plan to address school closures, and it's the most painful thing a board member will do. I remember meeting with Sochi shortly after she had, been elected to school board president and she said the reason she ran is that under no circumstance, under her tenure, would they close schools in DPS. And guess what? They've closed schools in DPS. You have to, but how you do it counts. And I will fully acknowledge that when I was on the board and we had to start doing that under my first superintendent work. We didn't do it. I think we got a little bit better at it. I know in working when I was on Educate Denver, we were working with Faith Bridge and Brian Ashbacher, a former outstanding BPS employee, and he's been doing this work nationally and there are models on how to do this well and with the community. And again, this board, instead of coming up with a model, has basically kicked the can down the road and said, we're just not gonna do school closures for five years, with one exception that if there's a financial challenge, if there's a financial challenge, then we will reopen it. And if

Alan Gottlieb: 5:42

there's, and if there's and that if they have to close schools, they're not gonna use the performance of the school as one of the criterion. How crazy is that?

Theresa Peña: 5:50

I, we can look at Jeffco. I think Jeffco has done a successful job. I don't know that I would do it the same way, but there are models of success and this board, instead of learning from others, I think has really closed ranks and really hunkered down. And hidden behind the superintendent or hidden behind Kerry and they're not doing the work they were elected to do. Yeah, I'm still left with, they all give an f

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 6:12

so you, you give them all enough. And three of the board members are running for reelection. The fourth seat that is open which is currently held by Carrie Olson, she is term limited. What do you think about the campaigns of the three incumbents? That's Sochi, GA Tan, Scott Esserman, and Michelle Qba.

Theresa Peña: 6:31

In reading in reading their literature and in listening to them on the campaign trail, what they have touted is a few things. They have touted things like increased graduation rates and increased growth rates. And while both of those are true, but they are not acknowledging is the significant differences amongst racial, ethnic, and economic groups. So when I look at the data I looked at 2025 CMAs, for example, and white students in reading. 75% are at grade level. If you're a black student in Denver, you're at 27%. If you're a Latino student, it's 25%, a 50% achievement gap. They don't say those things, and in fact. Alex, they have scrubbed all that data, so you have to look on multiple different sites to even find that data. So while they have touted increased growth. What I just quoted are static the status indicators, which is one indicator of health and success. It's not the only one, but it's an important one. The same problems exist in math and are even worse if you're low income or the worst is if you are multi-language learners. So somebody like Sochi and the superintendent will go around saying. What I heard Sochi saying is I'm a Mexican immigrant, so is our superintendent. And so we have this affinity for our multilingual learners and our immigrant kids. And what I'd say about that. Just because you have a shared identity doesn't mean you have a shared interest. And in fact, I would argue that the, they have no shared interest because they haven't seen the movement. And so this growth that Scott and Sochi and, who's the other one? Michelle. Oh, Michelle. Michelle will claim I think when you start peeling apart that onion, the data does not bear fruit that they have done a good job of really focusing on the students who need them the most. And somebody like Scott, who likes to present himself as a white ally, I would say, wow, if you're my white. Please don't do me anymore favors. If you're a white student in dps, I think you're incredible. Like I, if I had white kids, I would totally send it to dps. We're blowing it off the charts. But if I have a low income Latino or African American student, I would say, there's that old saying all skin folk ain't kinfolk. I would say Michelle Sochi. Marlene, you are not my kinfolk.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 9:00

Dang, Theresa. I love it.

Theresa Peña: 9:04

And even the graduation rates while they have improved, again, for white students we're like at 89%, that's great, but if you're a Latino or African American student, it's below 80%. There's again, a significant difference. And what's more important to me than graduation is are we graduating students that could read, write, and do math at grade level? When I was serving on the community college board, the remediation rate for Denver students was abysmal. And I would again just point and say, this is a failure of the system. It's not a failure. Teachers, it is most definitely not a failure of students and families. It's a failure of a system that just colludes to hold students back. And when you have a board and a superintendent who are not using data to make informed decisions, the only ones harmed are our children.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 9:52

I think that's exactly right and something that Alan and I have been talking about on the podcast is, Alan's had a really hard time with everybody touting the green schools. We're a green, we have all these green schools, this is great, but we're a green district. That's a big thing. Green district. Yes. But how I have seen that then, come out in the, on the campaign trail is they are touting the incumbents or touting the green schools. And who I've been actually very impressed with is Mariana has been actually like, she has the printed receipts and she's you're saying these schools are green and Yep, here are the green schools. And yet she's actually able to show pulling from the data, like which schools of those green schools, what the, reading grade levels are for those students, and in some cases, it's like less than 20% of the students in the school are reading at grade level, but the school is still green. So it, it just, it's

Theresa Peña: 10:42

a very low bar. Alexis, I would say it's a very low bar, and I know that this board and superintendent had scrapped the school performance framework that was started when I was still on the school board. It was never intended to be a static document. It was always intended to get better and instead of making it better, they just threw it out, which I think is the mo of both the superintendent and the current incumbents, is that anything associated with. Basically prior to 2019, it's just throw the baby out with the bath water. And the only folks who've been harmed in that have been our teachers and our students again. I thought a lot about the work that we did when I was on the board and it was framed as a reform agenda, and I would reframe it as an educate agenda. And the five things that we did that I think were so important is we facilitated a choice so that all families had an opportunity to go where they wanted their kids to go. We wanted to empower educators. We wanted school accountability, which was the school performance framework. We wanted money to follow the students. And we wanted schools to be the center of the decision making. And I think, going back to your original question, Alexis, all the current incumbents have run and are running on throwing that out, getting rid of all of that, and. The disappointment to me is not a personal one, but there, UCD did some really good research on that educate agenda that happened when I was on the board and then continued under other leaders and other superintendents, and actually we were closing the achievement gap. All students were improving. It wasn't as dramatic as we needed it to be. But one of the things that struck, stuck with me when I went back and read that research is that in reading. On average. So all students across the district, 90,000 on average, their reading scores increased anywhere from six to 27 months. And if you think about a school, an academic school, year's, nine months, that's almost one year to three years improvement. There were dramatic gains that were going on. So it's curious to me that this board and superintendent would just wanna. Totally dismantled that work when it had such great success. And ironically, under their leadership DPS is not even back to pre COVID levels for where our students were in 2020. So we are five years out. Alex has been superintendent for four years. This is his problem to solve and it's gotten worse, not better.

Alan Gottlieb: 13:16

And the gaps are as big as they've ever been. You did this just now, Theresa, but it was something I was thinking about when you were talking, which is I went on this rant on the podcast a time or two ago just based on, I actually had Bert Hubbard, the old Rocky Mountain news data guy, go back and look at like scores going all the way back to up. Iowa te the BA basic skills under the Irv Moskowitz, and those tests are not comparable and I'm very careful to say that you, they aren't. But the gaps have always been big. The gaps have always been really significant between low income kids and kids of color and more affluent and white kids. And even in the days you're talking about it, Bennett and Boasberg, and when you were on the board, they were still very large. And then now they've gotten bigger again, arguably, again, it was a totally different test, but they looked smaller from that research during the era of busing, which I think is really interesting. But I, maybe you can talk me down off the ledge with the improvements that were in Parker Baxter study that you just referenced and everything. But it makes me despair about urban public education in general. That the gaps remain so big no matter how hard the work is and how much how much success you have incrementally closing'em. They still remain just gigantic. And is urban is the system just so broken. Not just in Denver, but in every urban district that it's not fixable. But if you could just can you talk me down off the ledge about that? It's just can it ever be closed to the point where low income kids of color are on a level with affluent white kids? And it's not because the affluent white kids have been pulled down, but because the others have been lifted up.

Theresa Peña: 14:40

Yeah. So I'm gonna answer that two ways, Alan. I'm an optimistic by nature. I know you and I have known each other a long time and you are a pragmatist. I'm an optimist, so I do have hope that we really can change. The bureaucracy of large public school systems. But I just wanna do a quick aside here. You address, my kids were actually in DPS when they were still doing the Iowa testing, so I know I'm very familiar. And then I went through C, c, whatever. Anyhow, all those

Alan Gottlieb: 15:09

csap C I've been through all that, blah, blah,

Theresa Peña: 15:11

blah. But what I would like to say about that, I did hear Sochi recently say that she and Alex had, had started the RASA report. She and Alex did not start the Rasa report. Actually I was a member of the Latino Education Coalition. My brother and father were original founders of that in the 1990s. Long story short, the LAC took this proposal to the superintendent. And said, look, let's do an ALMA report to coincide with the Bailey report so we have more Latino students and African American students. Let's do a similar report because both are important to raise the success of our Latino and African American students. So we did that. Alex spot it. He eventually accepted the recommendations. We had a team that we wanted to do it. He fought it, he eventually accepted it, but we got the district to engage. Sochi didn't engage at all, so I don't know why she gets credit for it. She didn't do anything related to that. The LEC did, and honestly, the superintendent accepted it. Those findings have been out. They weren't new information. To your question, Ellen, are, is there hope there? There's not, is really hard to do. The initiatives that can change outcomes for students are pretty straightforward. They're hard to execute well, but when executed well are very successful. So I'd like to answer your question directly. Now. I recently read an article that Roland Friar, who is an African American professor at Harvard, had done, and he quoted a case study. And here's the quote that really stuck with me, and this is why I think there is a hope for DPS and other large. K 12 systems, but not under our current leadership. And his quote was, we know how to make schools effective. What's lacking is leadership committed to doing so? So we'll start with the lack of leadership. I do not believe that this superintendent and the current board. Have the abilities to do this work. But the five things that he found in looking at charter schools in New York and traditional schools in Houston, where they actually did turn around student outcomes in two to three years, they did five things. They had more instruction time, they had high expectations for teachers, students, and families. They had frequent teacher feedback. Data driven instruction and high dosage tutoring. The first four things we did in Denver over a 15 year period, and we saw the changes, and I'll never forget when JAO had been our chief academic officer under. Bennett, when he left, after two and a half, three years, he said, Theresa, we are never going to go back to a period. We are cycling up and down with Csap because we had been in that cycle like a little bit up and a little bit down, but net gain was basically, we stayed at the same starting point under Bennett, continuing under Boberg and continuing under Susan Cordova. We did see. The steady incremental games, but they were making a difference and they were foundational changes. They just weren't like associated with that year's test scores. There were real significant changes and the way the scope of F framework worked is it wasn't just. Looking at the test scores, both growth and status, they're also looking at some of the other social emotional factors and satisfaction by parents and students. That was making a significant difference. If we had probably done everything in a much more hyper intensive manner, we would've probably had bigger gains over a shorter period of time. All that has been undone. School board.

Alan Gottlieb: 18:46

Yeah. And I wanted to ask you about that because starting in 2019, with the election of the first wave of people who became eventually the seven member union, super majority, as Aon Anderson called it, they basically came in saying the Bennett Boasberg regimes were oppressive, racist regimes that were destroying the futures of low income kids of color. And we are going to completely put a stop to all of this horse shit that they've been doing. And go back to the, I guess the one best system or I don't know what it was. How do you even. Explain that way of looking at things that carry the day and actually got those people elected. How do you explain that?

Theresa Peña: 19:21

First of all, I would say with Aon I'm not surprised to hear, very uninformed opinions from a 21-year-old. At that point, I don't even think he was 25 and I have a couple of 20 somethings and their brains were not fully developed. And so I not surprised that he would just say nonsense. But if you say it enough times and loud enough, which is the mo of this board, it becomes true. It's not factual, right? Like the sense that these like. This board in particular seems to be very anti-charter and very pro traditional neighborhood, and what they keep forgetting to say is that families don't really make a distinction between a charter school or a traditional district, neighborhood school, but families. We'll say is I want the best place for my child that I can easily access. So the piece that's missing in DPS, and it was missing when I was on the board, it's still missing today, is you can't offer choice without transportation. It's a false narrative. But allowing families to choose. Is critical in my mind because A, as a parent, I know what's best for my kid. And I think particularly in Latino families, what we find is that there's a sense that when you send your kid to school that you trust the school as an institution. And these are experts and professionals, so they will not challenge. And so this sense that charter schools are bad and doing bad things to our. Children of color and low income kids, I find really insulting to our families, our community, because I think that they know, and again, I'm just gonna go back to the data because I'm a data geek. What the data says is that if you're a white kid, traditional neighborhood schools work for you because we live in a segregated city. So schools that reflect their neighborhood where we have more affluent. Families, they tend to be white, higher economic. Those schools are doing great. Bromwell, Corey East, they're doing great. And what we also forget to say in the next breath, not we, I don't, but this board and superintendent do, what they forget to say is that the charter schools are the only ones driving the growth. So this growth that Scott and Team White to tout, it's being driven by charter schools. And our superintendent, when he touts the graduation rate, other than schools that have a large white population, the growth in all of those statistics is being driven. Where we have successful charter schools and just like the bell curve of DPS schools of really poor performing to very high front, we have the same thing in charter schools and the accountability that we used to have in this district, that this board and soup have gotten rid of the school performance framework. Really drove accountability for outcomes for students. And they liked to create this narrative that it was bad to label schools. It was bad to label teachers. We never said teachers were the cause of this problem. We know that our teachers are underpaid, undertrained, and overworked. And what we did with Pro Comp was to try and change that outcome for our teacher, but the accountability around school performance. Critical. And as I said earlier, under our leadership, we had schools as the center of the decision making because they were closest to the kids that they knew. And that authority has this superintendent is very top down like he probably should be in the military. He likes being the boss. And everybody jumps and they ask how high when he says jump. And I just feel I don't know what kind of educator he was. It'd be interesting to go back and look at his success as a teacher and a school leader. What I do know is that until 2019, we were driving success at the school level. That has gone backwards even before COVID. And our kids have not recovered, and our teachers and our families are paying the price.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 23:02

Theresa, I agree with a lot of what you said. There's a couple of things. There's, I should say, there's one thing in particular that I'll push back on a little bit. I do think. For the three current board members running, I certainly think Sochi is anti-charter. I actually don't think in this moment in time that Scott and Michelle are anti-charter, and certainly when I've listened to Scott more so on the trail, he's very consistent like. These are all DPS schools. If you all should listen to he went on to burden's faith bridge episode and talks about that. He's that's what they tell me. They're all DPS schools. So I actually haven't seen him be necessarily anti-charter. Now, I can't remember if he ran on that when he was running, for the school board the first time around. I don't remember him being like that being a big part of his platform, being anti-charter or Michelle either. It's curious to me, especially since you mentioned the teachers that, the DCTA only endorsed Sochi in the race, and there's a lot of speculation about why that is. One of my guests, one of the things I'm hypothesizing is that Sochi from the very beginning has been very inconsistent. Like she's incredibly anti-charter. I feel like she. Exists on the board only to serve traditional public school constituents. And forgets that her constituents are also charter school parents, many of whom have very similar backgrounds of her, like an immigrant, Latina, like undocumented formerly undocumented case of Sochi. And so it, it's just curious to me that that's very much her mo and agenda. I don't see that as much from the other two. And there's other speculations that I've heard that, it's because of the safety issues and the Kurt Dennis and how people ca split their votes on that. So I'm just curious to hear from you what's your take? Why don't you think the union endorsed all three and why did they only endorse Sochi?

Theresa Peña: 24:51

I heard Rob Gould in an interview on CPR yesterday, and one of the things he said is that the reform initiatives from 2019 prior led to a real disaster for teachers and that there was a 20% I forget what we call it, but 20% turnover, nutrition. It was turnover. It wasn't attrition because the turnover is a combination of two things. 20% are either leaving the district and who knows where they're going to another district or just leaving the profession or leaving their school. What he didn't give context to, which is what I find is pretty consistent with this board, the union, the superintendent, is that they like to quote a. A statistic in isolation. So that 20% data point has been around since I was around in 2003. So there has been a big and that number's been constant. And what I would argue is that it's probably gotten worse because teacher pay has gotten worse and it's gotten a lot harder since COVID. So this whole cause and effect that the cause was the reform agenda, and the effect was this 20% turnover. Is a false data point because that data has existed well before the reform agenda, which I'm gonna call the educate agenda from now on. And it's also after COVID, there was this huge. Challenge for teachers and many left the profession. And more importantly, in DPF, we have lost ground significantly in terms of teacher pay. And we are not the highest paid district anymore. And I would argue that we're still one of the hardest districts to serve in. And so we should be paying our teachers more. And so I think that the union support for people like Sochi, Sochi has absolutely unapologetically backed the superintendent. Without any data to demonstrate he's making a significant difference for people that look like Lil Alexi or people that look like Sochi. But that's the only thing I've

Alan Gottlieb: 26:49

ever heard her say, Theresa, is that he's an Afro-Latino and therefore we have to support him, is basically what it comes down to.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 26:55

And I would say all that's, sorry, hold on. She also said like, whenever Sochi starts talking about race and like using race as a way to validate someone or discredit someone, like she gets her facts wrong a lot, so I'm sure, yes. I'm sure he's also Latino. Yes. I'm not gonna question that, but she also, I think at one point was saying I'm the first Latina superintendent. I was like, no, ma'am, you are not. Theresa Pena is here. Then she changed it to I'm the first Mexican born. Or not superintendent. I'm the first Mexican born president of the board, so it's like you have to clarify, and then I just, this has been bothering me for a while now. And I don't know if I've said this before, she went on to, I dunno if it was Chalkbeat or somewhere else and she's or no, it was the board when she basically called Kimberly CI's policy for external counsel. Racist because erin Thompson is the first black council. I'm sorry. Yeah. Terrance Carroll, our former speaker of the house, did she forget that just a couple of years ago? He was the chief counsel for DPS. Last time I checked, Terrence is also black and a man I don't take a lot of what she says about race and just like throwing people's identity around is like anything that's valid. Okay. Sorry, I'm off three more. I'm off my soapbox.

Theresa Peña: 28:04

I wanna go back to Ellen's piece. So like why is Z and supporting these people and I think that if they wanna maintain the status quo, like just don't make waves. Just give us our steps and lanes. Let us go into our room and do our craft, and shut the door without accountability. Then we'll be fine. And the only thing I would say about that is I have no problems with unions, but a union by definition does two things. They look at the pay and work conditions for adults. There is no child in that equation. And even Socis comments about her being the first whatever, or Alex being the first, whatever. Those are adult issues because I'm gonna go back to my statement. All skin folk, all kin folk ain't skin folk. And so like you can't do that. And so what? That she's the first Mexican immigrant president if you have not driven change and outcomes for the people you are elected to represent. So just holding that up to me says all you need to know about Sochi the superintendent, it's more about them and their ego than it is about serving the kids and the families and their communities. Absolutely. And

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 29:14

until

Theresa Peña: 29:14

like

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 29:14

students are doing better. I don't want you to use your Latina as the reason you are credentialed to be in your position. Like I think back to when Susanna was superintendent to when Rosemary was on the board, happy was on the board, Lisa Flores was on the board. I worked with all of those women Angela Coon. They didn't make their Latina identity. Yeah. The key thing about how they led. They, I think because were confident enough in who they were and had their lived experience and their lived experience reflected how they showed up as a leader. I think they were deeply focused on the success of Latino students, especially given the districts that they represented the north and the west side. But it was never about believe me, trust me, vote for me because of my ethnicity.

Theresa Peña: 30:06

And I would share. With both of you that when I was the board president, we'd had Jerry Wco when I started, I was on the board when we hired Michael Bennett, and I was the board chair when we hired Tom Boberg and I was the board chair and we hired Tom Boberg and it was an unpopular decision with a small group of the Latino community. And so I got a little bit beaten up and I had to have a couple meetings with. Folks in the Latino community because they were angry that there had been three white men in charge of BPS. And what I shared with them is that the two that I had some influence in the decision making, hiring Michael Bennett, and then chair leading towards hiring Tom Boberg is it was left important to me. Who the leader was and more important, were they making a difference for all children, but especially our low income and children of color, because that's what our district is comprised of. And those individuals, I will stand behind all three. And Susan, even though I didn't get to work with her, I was working as an employee of the district. I feel your statement is absolutely right, Alexis, that they didn't use their identity as an excuse. For why we should trust them without data that demonstrated why they were trustworthy. But they made decisions based on their personal lived experience. And I think that for me at this point in time, it is so much not about your ethnicity or racial background and so much more about what you bring to the table and qualifications that will demonstrate that you are going to make a significant difference for the majority of kids in this district, which they haven't done.

Alan Gottlieb: 31:42

One, one thing I wanted to ask you about in this vein and looking a little forward is, it's fascinating to give this historical perspective and look at the current day. To the extent you're comfortable in talking about this, when you look at the current pool of candidates across the four seats that are up for election this next month now, and the ballots are already in people's hands. Do you see. Some candidates that you think would be more likely to start to push back in the direction of what was working before or in a new direction that will work as opposed to the really stuck in the mud and continuing to dig that hole deeper into the mud that we're in Now?

Theresa Peña: 32:18

I do, Ellen, I do think that I think that it's easy when you're on the school board to get stuck into an us versus them mentality, and we're seeing that play out. And in my work with candidates across the four seats, what I have looked for is one who is just a smart and thoughtful person. Like we need to get back to that. There used to be even well before my time on the board, they were smart professionals, seasoned, experienced individuals who had served on boards, who had done hard work, leading large complex organizations and we've lost that sense of who really. As the skillset to be successful on the board. So one smart and thoughtful. Two, somebody who's not driven by ideology. And I think, we've seen this board and superintendent really just take Trumpian tactics and just go to the corners and argue about that. And what I would say is, and I learned this from Michael Bennett. If you think of our work as a loaf of bread and the two ends are the 10% that we disagree, we agree on 80% of that, let's focus on that. And I've never forgot that in any of my work in a professional capacity. And I think what we've seen this board and soup do is go to the 10% that we disagree on. And so it gets lost in that equation are educators and kids. And what I have seen in some of these candidates is they really do wanna focus on the 80% that there's a lot of consensus around success for. And so smart and thoughtful, not driven by ideology. And I would say a level of humility which is board has not exhibited and its superintendent absolutely does not exhibit, but you have to know what you don't know. Because if you know everything, then there's nothing new to learn from other districts. Other people because you know it all. We have a superintendent who models that behavior. And what I'm looking for in a candidate is somebody who is willing to learn and have a level of humility that they don't know everything. And there are people who have been doing this work a long time and there's lots of room for improvement. You pointed out, Alan, that you know, even under when I was on the board. How we post schools wasn't done as effectively as we know it could be. But we have gotten a lot smarter and better, and Esba could bring that to the table for us. I think how we pay our educators has a big opportunity and I think under this superintendent. He has gone back to the traditional triangle, and so the boss and central office are at the top of the triangle and everybody does his bidding below. And I think this board and the potential candidates really wanna invert that triangle let's trust our educators to know how to educate our children and work with our kids and families. So I do believe.

Alan Gottlieb: 35:01

Are you willing to name some names? And I'm not saying, you can name more than one in a given race that you think meet your criteria. I'm just curious to hear you say, yeah, I think these people meet those criteria. I'm not asking you to endorse people. We shouldn't do that on a nonprofit podcast anyway. I'm just curious who you think meets that criteria.

Theresa Peña: 35:17

So I've known Alex Magia for over 20 years. I knew him when he was first, the principal and I had followed his career over the last several years. Grant is right in my neighborhood. It was not the school that my kids went to. Alex, I think as an educator, has a deep understanding of the child, and he's done most of his work on the west side. I'm a little bit offended by his person running against him, Amy because when I've seen her, she's like the white savior. She's new to Denver. Her kids are four nine, and now all of a sudden she's an expert on Denver. She reminds me a lot of Scott Baldman quite honestly. We saw the disaster that his tenure was. So Amy reminds me of that and she, they both have a

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 35:54

tech background, Scott Baldman, and so maybe that's the connection. I dunno.

Theresa Peña: 35:58

But they're both new to Denver and I don't want to, there's a lot of good work being done outside of Denver in the K 12 environment, so we should learn from that. I don't get that sense from Amy. I think she. Is I'm the expert. So I've known Alex A. Long time, so a lot of deep trust, and he's an educator. He's walked in the shoes that we're asking our teachers to do. I would say in the far northeast, Tamaya Jackson is somebody I have recently come to know, also an educator. She is a, a mother, but all of the people actually running are parents or have been parents and I think there's some advantage that I also think there's some disadvantage and Michelle Moss and I served together and we had very different experiences as parents of people in DPS, and I think what we have to be careful of is. Your experience as a parent is not necessarily representative, the average. And so I think Alex and Tamaya are very aware of that. So it goes to the humility. I think she is has also served in both traditional schools and non-traditional schools. She's also served in a restorative justice environment, which from a safety perspective, we haven't even touched that. Yeah, and let me just say like I'm very close to one of the deans at ISSA was shot and the tragedy that we didn't learn and change anything as a result of that outcome is just beyond, like everybody should be fired after that situation where two students died and two deans were shot, and we still don't have a safety policy that. Kids and students is appalling, so they should all be fired, as far as I'm concerned, based on that alone. I would say in the Southwest, clearly I don't think Sochi has demonstrated strong leadership. She, it was a hard job to be chair. The first day that you're elected to the board, she failed and she did not have the humility. She knew everything and has not been willing to take advice or counsel from her community. She's just unapologetically there to serve as Alex's. Is the best I would say for that. So I think Mariana, who has run a she's an executive director of a nonprofit organization. She has the executive level experience, she has policy experience working at Denver Health, so she's bringing some really strong skill sets to the table. And again, Karen Blank, I've recently got to know Karen. Over the last several months. And what I really most appreciate about Karen is she wants to learn and another DPS parent and has really attempted to engage from grassroots to grass tops to understand the history of where DPS has been and where it could go. And Karen, I think really exemplifies the. Type of board member where you just, you spend the first two years just learning, getting your feet wet. It's the hardest job after superintendent. And it has this incredible, huge learning curve. And I feel like Karen and Tamaya in particular demonstrate that willingness to learn and like hunger to learn so they could do and be better and successful representing their communities and kids at the end of the day.

Alan Gottlieb: 38:59

Thanks, that, that's really helpful. Alexis, any other questions or final thoughts? We could go on all day there. This is a blast.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 39:06

Exactly. I like, I talked to Theresa probably twice a week and it's just such fun. We could keep going and we'll just have to have you on again, Theresa, and maybe at some point we can do a podcast over like wine and beers and it would be even more entertaining. But I always appreciate your commentary and thank you. You're unfiltered. So probably like for those of you who are listening, there is probably more filter here, but I really appreciate all of your your honesty

Alan Gottlieb: 39:30

and yeah, thanks for bringing up the safety stuff, even as an aside there, because that's something we obviously needed to touch on. So I'm glad you did. And yeah, the that story's far from over because of the lawsuits and everything that are going on so that, that will continue to play out. I think that will do it then for this episode. Theresa, stay on so we can chat for a minute after I stop recording here. But anyway, to all your listeners, thank you for listening and we'll be back very soon with another episode. So long.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 39:57

Thanks everyone.

Audio Only - All Participants: 39:57

I.