Moving Denver Public Schools forward
Denver teachers and school district officials put aside their differences and hammered out a new pay structure for teachers that should make everyone proud.
The base pay for teachers in Denver Public Schools is still on the low side; a teacher fresh out of college with an undergraduate degree will take home $45,800 a year. But that vast improvement at least gives new teachers the chance to live in the city where they work.
And the district was able to retain a bonus system that we staunchly defended as a way to encourage highly qualified teachers to take positions and keep them at some of the schools where improvement is needed the most.
Negotiations also overhauled the teacher pay structure, simplifying it and giving teachers more opportunities to increase their pay without undertaking costly higher-education degrees.
The grand bargain reached in the early morning hours Thursday was enough to send teachers back to their classrooms.
Consider us a bit contrite. It’s impossible to know whether a strike was truly necessary to secure this deal for teachers — this editorial board believed the district was ready to make significant concessions days before the strike began — but there’s no denying that the result is a good one. No serious harm seems to have been done during the three-day strike, although the seasoned professionals were dearly missed in their classrooms and school buildings.
The deal that was struck makes sense.
But it’s not all smooth sailing from here.
Denver Superintendent Susana Cordova, who admitted early on that the administration she inherited this year was top-heavy and in need of trimming, will have to cut an astonishing 150 positions to find the money to raise teacher salaries. It needed to happen, but those cuts will not be easy.
While Cordova dedicates her- self to that difficult task, we hope teachers are returning to their classrooms satisfied, a bit proud of themselves and able to continue their good work for all of our futures.
Denver Public Schools is embroiled in a political battle that has pit two education philosophies against each other.
On one side of this fight are education reformers who believe in tracking student performance, admitting when it falls short of expectations, and at times using heavy-handed interventions to try and improve those outcomes.
On the other side are traditionalists who believe the heavy emphasis on testing and outcomes over the years has done more harm than good, stealing critical time from talented teachers who know best what their classrooms need.
We hope this skirmish has shown that middle ground between the two philosophies can be found.
We don’t have to abandon charter schools if, as Denver has done a fairly good job of, we can demand they educate all students on a lottery enrollment system that doesn’t discriminate for any reason.
We don’t have to stop screening for students who historically have been left behind if we can limit tests to a reasonable number and constructively use the data.
We don’t have to ignore schools where students aren’t reading on grade level if we are willing to redistribute resources to provide those kids with smaller class sizes, more instructional time, a social support system and caring and qualified adults.
Cordova who has been a teacher, a principal and now the head of Denver Public Schools said it better than we ever could: “The most important thing that we can do is work in collaboration together to capture the momentum of this both around thorny issues like school finance … but also the big problems we have in our district around outcomes for kids.” Members of The Denver Post’s editorial board are Megan Schrader, editor of the editorial pages; Lee Ann Colacioppo, editor; Justin Mock, CFO; Bill Reynolds, vice president of circulation and production; Bob Kinney, vice president of information technology; and TJ Hutchinson, systems editor.