American schoolchildren don’t know Alaska from their elbow. That’s the news today from the NAEP, dubbed “The Nation’s Report Card:” Fewer than one-third of students tested proficient in geography in 2010. Education gurus blame a shrinking curriculum — but that could change in Colorado…
Ed Salem, who recently resigned as principal of North High School, has been hired as a teacher at a new school in central Denver aimed at helping struggling students graduate. Salem’s decision to leave North came just before the district asked state officials to investigate the school’s credit recovery program,…
Robert Walters has been quiet, at least publicly, since he was arrested last year for murdering his girlfriend and then hiring someone to kill his wife, to whom prosecutors say he confessed the crime. But the opposite was true before he was arrested. As explained in this week’s cover story,…
Robert Walters, the subject of this week’s cover story, “Dead End,” was persistent, prosecutors say. After one man declined Walters’s request to kill his wife, he turned to Rodrick Williams, a career criminal who accepted the job but then ratted Walters out to the police. So who was the first…
Who is the man prosecutors say Robert Walters, accused of murdering his girlfriend, hired to kill his wife in order to keep her from telling his secrets on the witness stand? As explained in this week’s cover story, “Dead End,” his name is Rodrick Williams, and he’s a forty-year-old career…
Charged with murdering his girlfriend, Robert Walters decided to take his fate into his own hands. Figuring that the only real witness the cops had was his wife, who told police that Walters confessed everything to her, prosecutors say Walters hatched a plan to get rid of her, too –…
Louis Hampers, the former Children’s Hospital ER doctor charged with writing 654 phony prescriptions (in addition to harassing women he met on adult websites), won’t be doctoring or online dating any time soon. He pleaded guilty today to fourteen counts of prescription drug fraud, each of which carries potential prison…
Fees to use the city’s recreation centers will increase dramatically on September 1, thanks to a bill passed last night by Denver’s city council. Instead of paying a flat fee to use all 27 rec centers, users will now buy a pass for one of three tiers: neighborhood (small centers),…
Soon after he was arrested and charged with murdering his girlfriend, Robert Walters asked for help. But the Iraq war veteran, then 23, didn’t turn to the military, his lawyers, his parents, or even his friends. Instead, prosecutors allege, he sought out a man whose reputation matched the task he…
Three seats are up for grabs on the Denver Public Schools Board of Education this November — and the list of candidates vying for them is growing. As of today, seven candidates have announced that they’re running, including incumbent Arturo Jimenez, who represents northwest Denver. The election is an important…
Should a school notify parents when a teacher is arrested — a teacher such as Courtney Bowles, who was busted for getting naked with a student; Alex Tinsley, who police say asked a student if she wanted to join the Mile High Club; or Travis Masse, who police say had…
One could argue that e-mail, Evite and Facebook have killed the art of hand-crafting kick-ass posters to advertise your housewarming party or backyard barbecue. But if that’s true, nobody bothered to tell the city of Denver — which has gone on tempting the children of city employees to kick ass…
Colorado is good at winning. If there’s a ranking of the best states for getting drunk, using condoms or being manly, you can bet Colorado’s near the top. In fact, this year alone, we’ve won at dating, being smart and making the most fraud complaints in the nation! And today,…
This month, four Denver Zoo staff members will travel to Vietnam to help two endangered species: Asian elephants — up to twelve of which will one day live in the zoo’s new Asian Tropics exhibit — and Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys, an extraordinarily endangered species of monkey that zoo conservation biologist…
Two students from Denver’s George Washington High School are the best policy debaters in the National Forensic League, a super-competitive league whose champs usually hail from wealthy private prep schools. Sam Clark and Miles Owens, who graduated from GW this spring, are the first debaters from Colorado to win a…
In 2010, there were 16,114 same-sex couples living in Colorado, according to the U.S. Census. That’s an increase from 2000, when 10,045 same-sex couples told Uncle Sam about their relationships. Now, the California-based sexual orientation think tank The Williams Institute has taken the 2010 data from several states — including…
This quote, from a 9News story about a twelve-year-old who had a moth stuck inside his ear, will now haunt my dreams: “We tried drowning it in water. Didn’t work. We tried irrigating it out of my ear, it didn’t work.” So the doctors, says reporter Corey Rose, pulled it…
Update: We asked for your crazy parking ticket stories, Denver, and you delivered! But alas, only one story can win a $25 Smart Card — and that story was penned by Harvey, whose meter-maid ex-wife liberally exercised her ticket-writing powers, post-divorce. See below for Harvey’s full story — and read…
This morning, Denver Mayor Bill Vidal stood next to soon-to-be seventh-grader Nasrin Mahamud in a dusty patch of vacant lot next to Nasrin’s apartment building in East Colfax. Before a crowd of well-wishers in suit pants and name tags, the two drove ceremonial shovels into the dirt, breaking ground on…
A week from today, Colorado is cutting — pun intended — Medicaid funding for circumcisions. According to the Associated Press, the state will join seventeen others in making the cost-saving move, which will likely please circumcision opponents, such as Paul Russo, the subject of a 1996 Westword story called “Boys…
It started with a vacant lot. But where others saw a scrubby, rectangular piece of land strewn with rocks and broken glass, the refugees living in the adjacent apartments saw a soccer field and a gathering place and spot to grow vegetables. On Monday, the city Parks and Recreation Department,…
A Wall Street investment fund manager has an ambitious plan to double Denver’s parkland — along with the parkland in other cities such as Atlanta and Cleveland. Called Red Fields to Green Fields, the project would use loans from the nation’s banking system to buy distressed properties such as shuttered…
