Some students low on learning during strike

Although Denver Public Schools spent more than $136,000 on lesson plans for the first two days of the current strike, some students — particularly those in the city’s high schools — say they’re not doing much learning while their teachers are out picketing.

One student told The Denver Post she watched a movie in her college and careers class. Another shared a video of the crossword puzzle his substitute teacher handed out. And yet another described being given an SAT-prep work sheet — even though she already had taken the test.

DPS Superintendent Susana Cordova painted a positive picture of classroom learning during the strike in an email to parents Monday, saying schools she had visited “were having what felt like a

fairly typical school day, with kids in classrooms and instruction taking place, and others felt less like a typical day with more large-group activities.”

By Tuesday morning, though, she offered a starker assessment as she met with union leaders to resume contract negotiations.

“Our students are not receiving the kind of instruction right now we all believe is in their best interest,” Cordova said Tuesday, the second day of Denver’s first teachers strike in 25 years.

On Monday, as the walkout got underway, East High School senior Talia Kurtz said a substitute teacher played the Pixar superhero movie “The Incredibles” in her “College and Career” class.

In the weeks leading up to the strike, DPS spokesman Will Jones even had addressed the idea of substitutes relying on in-class movies — something that happened during Denver’s 1994 strike.

“We are developing highquality lesson plans that are both grade- and subject-specific that will be available for guest teachers to use with students,” Jones told The Post. “They will not be watching movies all day.”

Lainee Jentz, a junior at the Denver School of the Arts, said she decided not to return to school after seeing how teaching was handled Monday. “If I’m not going there to learn or do anything like that, (my parents and I) didn’t see a point in me going,” she said.

Students at the Denver School of the Arts were kept in designated areas and worked on their own, she said, but eventually, some just left. She estimates her group of 100 dwindled to 40 by lunch on Monday.

Jentz described the atmosphere at her school as more organized than the chaos seen Monday at East High, where students were filmed dancing and blasting music in the halls. She shared images of posters that her classmates hung around the school — one complained of students being escorted to the bathrooms.

Two students who joined the strikers at North High School on Tuesday were from Skinner Middle School. They weren’t doing anything in school, so they decided to opt out on the second day, according to seventh-graders Celie Blair and Mia Fitzsimmons.

“It was horrible,” 12-yearold Celie said of her experience at school during the strike. “Everyone thought it was gonna be fun.”

The students were all placed together in an auditorium and given work sheets — but they didn’t have desks, said their classmate, Helen Goldberg.

Tanner Hemmingsen said he and his fellow seniors at George Washington High School were given free time to work, and he, at least, appreciated that. But when it came to electives, the situation became more complicated.

“This weekend our speech-and-debate team is traveling to the California Invitational Speech and Debate Tournament,” Hemmingsen said in an email. “We have a highly competitive team of about 120 people. Since there’s been no teachers, senior students including myself have had to run class, take attendance and help underclassmen in speech.”

He added that it’s stressful not having access to teachers and coaches before the big event.

“I support them in their strike, but I wish the strike could have been avoided in the first place,” Hemmingsen said.

Still, Hemmingsen applauds administrators “because they have been handling it well with what they’ve got, but it’s so, so far from ideal.”

Ariana Maes, a sophomore at John F. Kennedy High School, said on Monday, students brought their TVs and Xboxes to school — though she said they were asked to remove them and leave.

Junior Albert Ursetta said substitutes at John F. Kennedy High gave students crossword puzzles, word searches and board games to keep them occupied. The students didn’t necessarily have to complete them, according to Ursetta.

“They have no supervision of the class,” he said.

Aaliyah Montes, a senior at Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design, described students being asked to complete work sheets designed to prepare them for the SAT tests — though at this point in the year, they already had taken the SAT. When students pointed that out, she said the substitute teacher became defensive.