"Insurance? You don't need any stinkin' insurance."
We call this feature "Denver Blogs" for a reason. Check out these blogs from Denver.
The Colorado Independent's Kate Redding reports that the insurance lobby is promising to fight any legislation "that would force insurers to offer individual plans that would cover maternity care." Celibate good times, come on!
David Driscoll-Carignan at Mile High Hockey previews the Avs-Calgary Flames matchup. Up for grabs: The Northwest Division lead, not to mention post-game interviews that won't require any excuses.
Protest today at KIPP Denver Collegiate High School over the sudden departure of principal Rich Barrett. Education News Colorado's Alan Gottlieb shares what colleague Nancy Mitchell learned. Consider it extra credit.
The Board of Education will hear public comment on the recommendations at meetings tonight and Thursday night from 7 to 9 p.m. The meetings will be held at the DPS building at 900 Grant Street.
The recommendations include closing Skyland Community High School -- now known as Denver Big Picture High School -- a charter school in Northeast Denver that caters to at-risk students and has been in academic hot water before. Westword wrote about it in 2007, when the Board of Education was weighing whether to renew the school's charter.
Strangely (or maybe not so strangely), the coach hasn't changed much since high school.
Here's some local bloggery to peruse.
Colin over at South Stands Denver is a little skittish about Josh McDaniels benching o-lineman Ben Hamilton in favor of another former New England Patriot. But if Joshy McD can go from high-school kicker to NFL head coach in fourteen years, he's doing something right.
Following a massive breakdown of this Monday's Broncos-Steelers contest, Mile High Report's Steve Nichols predicts: "Denver wins (fingers crossed and nervous as Hell)." Right there with you, Steve.
Alan Gottlieb at Education News Colorado says that a bad decision or two by Denver's school board could doom Colorado's chances to collect federal Race to the Top funds. The reward isn't good grades; it's cash!
Colorado Pols links to Joel Warner's report about yesterday's medical-marijuana motion by declaring that anything with the headline "The Pot Wars Have Begun" will almost certainly be promoted on the site. We won't let you down!
"Next year, kids, there could be twice as many of you."
At 4:30 p.m., Governor Bill Ritter has scheduled a news conference to talk about the rest of his budget proposal for the 2010-2011 fiscal year, following his Monday submission of digits relating to the Public Health and Environment, Agriculture and Transportation departments. And according to a piece in this morning's Denver Post, state funding for public schools could be sliced by as much as 6 percent in 2010-2011.
That number is worrisome to Henry Roman, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. After all, he says, "1.93 percent has already been set aside by all the school districts" for the 2009-2010 school year. "They were mandated by the legislature to set aside that amount of money in case the economic forecast would not show evidence of an economic recovery." If there's an additional 6 percent cut for the next year, Roman notes, "it would have a compounding effect."
Vance Fulkerson, showing off his ear-to-ear carpeting in a photo from his old Facebook page.
Oh, the can of wriggling, worm-like items the Vance Fulkerson case has opened. Fulkerson, you'll recall, is a former University of Northern Colorado drama instructor accused earlier this year of secretly filming children in his bathroom; in September, he learned of nine additional charges against him, including four felony sexual exploitation of a child allegations and five misdemeanor unlawful sexual contact beefs. Shudder.
Now, a report about UNC's handling of the Fulkerson matter (on view here and below) is out, and it goes beyond specifics about his case to look at interactions between School of Theatre Arts and Dance students and the faculty as a whole. Among the revelations: Information about student-instructor parties at which marijuana was smoked and booze was consumed (presumably by underage attendees as well as those old enough to do so legally), as well as at least a couple of other dubious student-faculty sexual relationships in years past. The result, writes the document's author, Karin Ranta-Curran, was a "blurring" of "student-faculty boundaries."
Eyeballs, meet local blogs that'll treat your pupils properly.
The Nugg Doctor's Nick Sclafani says Melo "revoked Paul Millsap's player card with a posterizing dunk" in last night's season-opening win over the Utah Jazz. Get started on that paperwork right away.
At 5 a.m. this morning, when Jefferson County officials decided to declare a snow day, there wasn't all that much of the stuff. Even in the Ken-Caryl Ranch area, near the foothills, only about an inch of it had collected on driveways. But Jefferson County Public Schools spokeswoman Lynn Setzer says the prospect of more precipitation prompted the call. "It was based on snow falling throughout the day," she says. "We didn't want to get kids at school and then have a dangerous situation getting them home. We'd rather err on the side of safety for kids, even though it can be risky."
Not risky for the kids -- risky for public relations, if the storm peters out.
A reminder, Jennifer Carter: Tape is for wrapping packages, not students.
Palmer Elementary secretary Jennifer Carter has been formally charged with two misdemeanors in relation to an incident last week, when she allegedly dealt with a misbehaving six-year-old student by taping his hands together and his mouth shut.
Startling stuff, but hardly unique. Indeed, accounts of alleged abuse or mistreatment of students at the hands of school employees are becoming more common with each passing day. Here are five reports of conduct unbecoming of anyone, many but not all of them involving students with special needs:
In the long-foundering, ever-festering war on drugs, there's just about zero truth to the idea of zero tolerance. As anyone who's studied the prison population can figure out, certain groups dealing in illegal drugs can be targeted for harsh punishment, while other groups trafficking in the same drugs are all but ignored.
And the safest place to be a dope pusher? Your local college dormitory, of course. Even if you're not very good at it. A new study by two California researchers concludes that campus drug dealers -- mostly white, affluent, and clueless -- continue to thrive despite shifting social mores and the sometimes heavy-handed enforcement efforts elsewhere.
School board races are typically nonpartisan, but not this year in Douglas County. The Republican party there has endorsed a slate of four candidates -- an unusual move the Denver Post took note of in an October 20 article that focused more on conflicts and complaints from the likes of Colorado Ethics Watch than on the reasons for the Republicans' action. But two days later, John Ransom, the volunteer chairman of the Douglas County Republican Central Committee, more than compensated with a remarkable e-mail that made it seem as if the peaceful area was under attack from one of the most insidious threats to humanity imaginable: rampant progressivism.
"I write you with disturbing news," he began. "Liberal outside special interests are trying to influence our local Douglas County elections. They have contributed thousands of dollars to their hand-picked candidates. They set up shadowy groups to send mailers to Douglas County mailboxes. They are organizing to win local elections. I am surprised as you are with their activities."
At this point, the folks at Aurora Public Schools really, really don't want to talk about an incident in which a Hinkley High student allegedly attacked a substitute teacher for taking her cell phone -- and related subjects are basically off-limits as well. Regarding the assault, media-relations specialist Paula Hans offers only an extra-general statement (on view below) focusing on a commitment to safety, etc. In addition, she does her best to shut down questions about the frequency of student violence against staffers (she doesn't recall a similar incident taking place since she came to the position in July 2007, and before that, she has no idea) or how many cell phones or other electronic items are confiscated at Hinkley or any other APS facility in a day, a week, a month, a year (if such stats are kept, she hasn't heard about them). What a gusher of information.
However, Hans does confirm that the district's discipline code gives principals wide latitude about how to deal with rules at their school pertaining to electronic devices. These guidelines treat cell phones and other gadgets like the unruliest children during the Victorian age: They shouldn't be heard or seen.
Denver Public Schools spokesman Michael Vaughn has come through with the names of more DPS facilities seeing big absences due to the flu, be it H1N1/swine flu or the seasonal variety, along with specific percentages. He'd previously mentioned Columbian Elementary School, at 2925 W. 40th Avenue: Attendance there is at 90 percent, compared to 96 percent at the same time last year. The discrepancy is higher at Knapp Elementary, 500 S. Utica Street; currently, attendance is at 87 percent, down from 96 percent last year. However, the most extreme differences offered by Vaughn relate to Fairview Elementary, 2715 W. 11th Avenue. Last week, Fairview's attendance was 76 percent; last year, it was 97 percent.
Stop home and get better, kiddies. You'll breathe easier if you do.
It seemed like a simple question: Which facilities in the Denver Public School system are experiencing the most H1N1-related absences? But in the day-plus since being asked that question by yours truly, DPS spokesman Michael Vaughn has mostly provided big picture info rather than specifics. He says he knows Columbian Elementary School, at 2925 W. 40th Avenue, has seen a significant spike of absences, since he's been working directly with the principal there, but he doesn't have any numbers. However, he's certain attendance system-wide has been down significantly -- and the timing of this dip is particularly problematic.
I am back from the front lines of the kiddie porn wars with some shocking news: The prosperous, sprawling suburbs of Douglas County conceal a steamy underbelly of underage sexual exhibitionism. Youth are being exploited right and left. Usually by each other.
Sexting -- the insidious, technologically inevitable, highly adolescent, so-trendy-even-Dateline-is-upset practice of sending nude or semi-nude photos by cell phone -- turns out to be as much of a problem in the upscale cul-de-sacs of Castle Pines as in the big city. Maybe more so, since there are probably more cell phones per capita, and hormones run amok, in the wilds of Exurbia. Who knew? And what the hell should be done about it?
The 2009 Denver Plan developed by Denver Public Schools pins a lot of blame for the district's shortcomings on teachers -- the very teachers who agreed earlier this week to lower a guaranteed cost-of-living increase in acknowledgment of revenue shortfalls.
Henry Roman, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, the union that represents DPS instructors, isn't exactly livid over the portions of the document that focus on teachers' failings. He points out that "the plan is a draft, an initial document that will let us have conversations about a lot of different topics: effective teaching, effective allocation of resources" prior to the finalization of the strategy, expected in November. Nonetheless, he makes it clear that the DCTA has some "clear disagreements" with some aspects of the plan as currently written.
Vance Fulkerson, showing off his ear-to-ear carpeting in a photo from his old Facebook page.
Former theater professor Vance Fulkerson, who's been charged with multiple sexual exploitation counts related to a video system reportedly located in his bathroom, has officially resigned from the University of Northern Colorado -- and UNC spokesman Nate Haas doesn't sound upset about that. "His resignation was effective September 25. He's no longer employed here," Haas emphasizes. And while he doesn't confirm that UNC shoved Fulkerson out the door, he comes close. In his words, "I think it's fair to say that there has been dialogue between the university and the employee."
Betcha it was along the lines of "What the hell's the matter with you?" After all, UNC's moniker is prominent in every story about Fulkerson's shenanigans, and that's hardly the sort of material likely to please parents. Nonetheless, Haas says the scandal doesn't appear to have hurt enrollment in the school as a whole or the theater program in particular.
Last night, Denver Public Schools superintendent Tom Boasberg gave his first-ever "State of the Schools" speech at North High School to a not-quite-SRO "crowd" of about 75 people -- a total that even DPS chief communications officer Michael Vaughn can't make sound impressive. "It was a decent turnout," he offers, "but we're hoping to have more parents tonight," when Boasberg revisits the same territory at Hill Middle School.
The main event at North was the unveiling of the 2009 Denver Plan, a 62-page opus (to read it, click here) that aims to improve the district's mondo-uneven student performance levels. And surprise, surprise: Teachers took a lot of the heat despite having just agreed to a lower cost-of-living hike in the middle of a contract.
Our teachers didn't get as big a raise as they expected! Ha, ha, ha!
The White House wants us to believe that the economy is on the mend, but teachers in the Denver Public School system aren't buying it. Why else would they agree to a midstream contract revision that reduces a 4.15 percent cost-of-living increase to 2.5 percent, with a 1.65 percent bump if the fiscal situation improves (which you can be damn sure it won't).
In "Strike Door Opens in Boulder Teacher Dispute," Melissa Tingley, head of the Boulder Valley Education Association union, tells Denver Post reporter Jeremy Meyer that the filing of a formal notice to strike was mainly procedural. "It's to keep all our options open," she said. "There is obviously not a strike planned."
Maybe not -- but Tingley's tone in a message to union members, which can be found on the BVEA website, isn't nearly so calming. In the document, Tingley says, "We had hoped that we would not have to take this step. We fully expected to be able to settle our contract dispute during mediation on September 17 and 18. We came to the table ready to negotiate in good faith. Unfortunately the district did not do the same. Since talks broke down again, we were forced to notify the DOL that we might have to take some job action."
Oh, great -- another modern convenience that could be speeding us toward an early grave. Who knew that a shower without Norman Bates might be just as potentially lethal as one with him?
According to a just-released study overseen by CU-Boulder prof Norman Pace, 30 percent of showerheads tested in nine cities were infested with significant amounts of Mycobacterium avium, described in a release as "a pathogen linked to pulmonary disease that most often infects people with compromised immune systems but which can occasionally infect healthy people." According to Pace, "If you are getting a face full of water when you first turn your shower on, that means you are probably getting a particularly high load of Mycobacterium avium."
Does that mean we're safe if we don't let the water spray us head on? Nope: Mist from such a shower will also be chock full o' pathogens, and breathing them in transports them deep into lungs, where they can do lots of terrible things. And cleaning the showerheads with bleach doesn't help: A showerhead scrubbed in this way actually contained three times as much Mycobacterium avium a few short months later. Switching to metal showerheads, which are less prone to build-ups of what are dubbed "slimy 'biofilms,'" may lessen the risk to some degree, but Pace doesn't make it sound like a magic solution. So I'll be swearing off all bathing from now on. Sorry, dear.
Here's a girl who's ready for just about anything.
The principal at Lafayette's Angevine Middle School has reportedly asked parents to urge their kids not to wear colored jelly bracelets to class -- and those who do will be asked to remove them. The reason: The colors are said to denote assorted sex acts, and if they break, the wearer is supposed to perform them on the lucky snapper. But what means what? The Urban Dictionary passes along plenty of contradictory information on its jelly bracelet pages. One list says a gray or silver jelly stands for "a hand job," another insists that it's "fisting," and a third argues that it's "outdoor sex." Likewise, there's disagreement about whether pink calls for a French kiss, cunninlingus or my personal favorite, "flash tits or pinus." I'm not sure if I have the latter; I plan to consult a medical text.
The list below falls short of definitive, but it's one of the longest, which has got to count for something. Warning to my wife: I'm in a clear blue mood tonight.
News that President Barack Obama would deliver a speech to the nation's schoolchildren caused plenty of parents (and talk-show hosts) (and cable-TV pundits) to freak out -- so much so that the event itself couldn't help being an anticlimax. Obama's text was about as controversial as an endorsement of motherhood, and students at Foothill Elementary captured in the Boulder Daily Camera video above reacted to it with mild boredom. Now can we go back to dealing with some real issues? Please?
Could Jim Tracy win the National League manager-of-the-year award? It would've been easier if the Rockies had swept the Mets. (Inside the Rockies)
The public has as much chance of understanding the true cost of education as the Cubs are to win the Super Bowl. Or the World Series, for that matter. (Education News Colorado)
The Mile High Mamas have some weekend ideas -- because Mamas know all about Labor Day (Mile High Mamas)
"No, ma'am. I won't be trying to turn your child into a Communist...."
Last week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sent a letter to principals across the country, on view later in this post, informing them that President Barack Obama would be delivering a speech to the nation's schoolchildren on Tuesday, September 8. Duncan wrote, "The President will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning. He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens."
Shockingly controversial, right? But apparently the very thought of Obama speaking to their kids without someone nearby to tell them not to pay attention to the bad man trying to bankrupt the treasury, undermine our healthcare system and coddle terrorists determined to destroy the American way of life has caused consternation among numerous parents in Douglas County.
Susan Meek, spokeswoman for the Douglas County School District, confirms that her office received enough complaints on the subject that staffers eventually issued a communique to schools on the subject. Meek says the decision to show the speech, and to whom, will be "site-based," meaning each principal can determine his or her own policy. In the case of Staci McCormack, principal at Arrowood Elementary in Highlands Ranch, she sent an e-mail to parents earlier today (it's reproduced in its entirety below), acknowledging that she'd also heard from some parents unhappy at the prospect of their children seeing the Obama speech. To address their concerns, McCormack went on, "only a few classrooms at AWE will be offering the children an opportunity to view the President's speech" -- and anyone who doesn't want them to participate can opt out, just as they can when the topic is sex education.
The Denver Business Journal reported today that the University of Northern Colorado has received a $1.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation to lead a nationwide effort to add and keep female faculty in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. The money will fund a four-year project to correct the current shortage of women in those fields. Presumably UNC got the money because of its top-ten rating from the American Association of University Professors in numerous gender-equality fields, including percentage of female faculty and relative salary of female and male salary -- nicely played, Greeley. And with higher ed always a target when state budgets are in the kind of dire shape they are in today, any infusion of cash into the system is a welcome development. And that's especially true of one that leads to more people -- of whatever sex -- pursuing educational paths in the crucial and underrepresented tech and science sector. Go nerds!
Today, students start returning to the University of Colorado at Boulder for the fall semester, and school officials and local cops plan to greet them somewhat differently. CU's got a range of activities on the schedule, including an "Ice and Dice" party -- think indoor ice skating and a poker tournament -- slated for tonight. As for the Boulder Police Department, well, it's stepping up DUI enforcement on Friday and Saturday, just in case the latest group of Buffs would prefer sucking down some Jack to carving figure eights or playing Texas Hold 'Em. Read about both after the jump.
On Friday, the Colorado Department of Education unveiled SchoolVIEW.org, a new website that aims to make it easier than ever for parents to check on the standardized-testing achievements of a specific school and district -- and it does just that. For instance, I clicked on the "Colorado Growth Model" icon on the home page, then a select-by-name button. Next, I entered the name of Chatfield High School, which my daughters attend, and in seconds, I was provided with a simple-to-interpret scale for measuring the facility's overall rankings in math (just past a center line into the "higher growth" grid, roughly in the middle of the pack), reading (on the "lower growth" side but the "higher achivement" quadrant) and writing (also "lower growth," with the achievement not quite as high). Moreover, the "School Performance," "Learning Center" and "Community Connections" areas are a snap to navigate, too.
Of course, the larger question is whether the mania for standardized testing, symbolized by the Colorado Student Assessment Program, or CSAP, has improved education in this state or clogged it with inflexible legislative requirements that get in the way of creativity and suck up classroom time that could be used far more effectively. Unfortunately, none of the assorted numbers accessible on SchoolVIEW.org provide the answer.
Attendees of the recent MDPL writing camp work on their projects.
We don't have an outpost of author Dave Egger's 826 program in Denver, where kids can learn to dream like a writer and write like a writer and even get published like a writer. What we do have, however, is a group of people inspired by Egger's project to do something similar. They call themselves the Metro Denver Promotion of Letters, a gangly name to be sure, but the acronym (MDPL) isn't so bad and the vision is even better.
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