Sorry, not sorry
The teacher strike is intensely stressful for parents, teacher, students and families. The dollar cost might be $400,000 per day, but the emotional toll is considerably more. I’m truly worried about the damage being done.
I keep thinking of my disappointment with former Superintendent Tom Boasberg’s legacy: closed schools; a massive rift between communities and DPS; a top-heavy, administrationheavy organization; teachers poorly paid and unhappy to the point of striking. History will judge him harshly, I’m afraid.
Yet with all his efforts, I still see schools struggling. Teacher turnover at our school, McAuliffe at Manual, is massive. And we just learned that our beloved principal is leaving. Our school is doing well, and yet it’s clear that administrators and teachers are stressed to the point of leaving their kids. I can’t blame them.
I’m now thinking about the new Superintendent Susana Cordova’s legacy. What will that look like? How will her administration display its values and commitments? I hope DPS is able to heal the rifts that Boasberg created. We’re all counting on them.
As a parent and resident of Denver, I strongly disagree with your editorial. If the current bonus system has not significantly improved student performance, addressed socio-economic parity and retained teachers, why would a new version of the same thing magically solve the problem.
What Susana Cordova, her staff and all of us need to ask ourselves is could we support ourselves and our families with the pay structure teachers have been offered? Would we accept this offer? If DPS cannot address sustainability of teaching in its district, we will lose more teachers and the quality of the system will erode.
Regardless of my personal feelings over DPS teachers’ decision to strike, they have every right to do so.
The remaining teaching staff and substitutes, however, should not request or encourage my elementary school child to stand the picket line with teachers who are neither liable nor currently responsible for the safety my child, nor should striking teachers reward students for standing the line without my knowledge.
Neither should the substitute teachers chastise students for not wearing red in support of the strike. All of these happened at my child’s school Monday. For an association that states they went on strike to put “children first,” these actions do not inspire me.
Once again, a politician apologized with the words “I didn’t mean to offend you.” In my opinion, that is an extremely weak apology.
Not meaning to offend is very different than actually apologizing for one’s behavior or one’s words. Taking responsibility for saying or doing something inappropriate or that we feel bad about, means actually saying something like “I was wrong. I should never have said that. I acted rudely and without thinking. I apologize.”
To put it simply, saying something like “You’re ugly — sorry, but I didn’t mean to offend you” is actually not an apology. Think about it. Send letters of 250 words or fewer to openforum@denverpost.com or 5990 Washington St., Denver, CO, 80216. Please include full name, city and phone number. Contact information is for our purposes only; we will not share it with anyone else. You can reach us by telephone at 303-954-1201.