Education

The March 2 resignation of Manual High School principal Nick Dawkins and his subsequent assertion that he “was targeted by those that called me a nigger and vowed to bring harm to me” after reports of a confederate flag at a Manual-Weld Central High School football game last September was preceded by a Denver Public Schools investigation into an alleged hostile work environment, as he has acknowledged. According to multiple sources, staff concerns about Dawkins included inappropriate sexual and racial comments, his lack of discretion about sensitive personnel matters (including copying others on an implicit job threat to a staffer on family medical leave), and his disappearance after a meeting in which he accused DPS of compiling a secret dossier on him due in part to complaints from white women.

Pending a few bureaucratic steps, School District 27J will become the first urban school district in the state to transition to a four-day school week.

Controversial columnist and media figure Ann Coulter is scheduled to give a free talk at the University of Colorado Boulder campus on Wednesday, March 21, and campus officials will no doubt spend the time between now and then preparing for potential trouble.

On Friday, March 2, news broke that Nick Dawkins had resigned as principal of Manual High School, and the initial letter describing the reasons behind his decision was exceedingly polite, albeit with an edge of sadness. But the following day, in an essay entitled “Why I Left Denver Public Schools,” Dawkins was much more blunt, revealing that a controversy over reports of a confederate flag at a Manual-Weld Central High School football game last September was among the factors that led to his departure. “For weeks as this situation played out I was targeted by those that called me a nigger and vowed to bring harm to me,” Dawkins wrote.

The Denver General Defense Committee, a progressive group affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies, has published a fiery account of the clash between members of a white supremacist group and Antifa protesters outside a controversial event on the Colorado State University campus earlier this month. In it, the authors explicitly state that members of the CSU Police Department stood “on the side of the neo-Nazis and fascists” during the confrontation and argue that a video shared here provides evidence to that effect by way of an officer telling a protester afterward, “If you guys need something, let us know.”

On Friday, February 2, a feared confrontation between members of a white supremacist group and Antifa protesters outside a controversial event on the Colorado State University campus came to pass. Although no arrests took place, multiple reports say things got physical between the antagonists, with injuries suffered on both sides.

At 5:30 p.m. tonight, February 2, at Colorado State University, members of an anti-fascist organization are expected to come face to face with alleged neo-Nazi recruiters from the Traditionalist Worker Party, which has been identified as a hate group fueled by white supremacist views. The potential for trouble has led CSU president Tony Frank to send out a campus-wide denunciation of the TWP that makes prominent mention of a safety plan developed in the hope of preventing violence.

A small group of students staged a walk out at the magnet school off 6th and Fox streets and marched through downtown to the Denver Public School central administration building to protest potential budget cuts. If the worst does come to pass, reductions could take hold in the very department that draws students to the magnet school.

Denver Public Schools will expand a two-year-old pilot program that gives low-income students school choice enrollment priority. But without resolving transportation issues and expanding the network of campuses voluntarily participating, students may still be unable to truly choose their campus.

On January 19, 2017, the day before Donald Trump’s inauguration, we listed the ten worst American presidents of all time as chosen by members of the CU Boulder history department and interviewed Professor Thomas Zeiler, a key part of the group, about Trump’s odds of joining this roster. A year later, we checked in again with Zeiler in an effort to gauge The Donald’s progress in regard to this dubious potential achievement, and the prof says Trump has reached the peak in record time. According to Zeiler, Trump is already the lousiest chief executive ever elected in the U.S., and he sees no way for his status to rise during the remaining three years of his current term.

Colorado’s current public school funding model was created more than twenty years ago. A group of Colorado superintendents from across the state, from small rural to urban districts, are working to update it in the hopes of pouring more than $1 billion back into the public school system. Working with legislators, they will push a bill this month to “modernize” public school funding.

The state. Politicians. Educators. Activists. All stakeholders agree that Colorado schools are facing critical shortages of teachers. But the state’s most powerful teachers’ union is unsure whether lawmakers can do anything to fund the changes necessary to change the tide.

Although the University of Colorado Buffaloes aren’t going to a college football bowl game in 2017-2018 thanks to a mediocre 5-7 record, nine of its fellow members in the Pac-12 conference qualified, with eight of those contests taking place on or after December 26. If the Buffs fall short again next year, though, some of its staffers will be busy anyhow, since CU Boulder has been chosen to coordinate an ambitious research project into traumatic brain injury among student athletes, including those who slam heads on the gridiron, with one of the main tools being EYE-SYNC, a cutting-edge device designed to diagnose concussions by way of eye movement.

But for most of the instructors at Colorado’s community colleges, the holidays offer not a respite but a time of great anxiety and financial strain.

At a meeting on Monday, December 4, the Douglas County School Board killed the district’s controversial voucher program, ending years of conflict. The fight has waged for years in the court system, but in the end, victory was achieved at the ballot box thanks to the electoral success of anti-voucher candidates last month.

At 2:30 p.m. Saturday, December 2, teams representing Pomona and Eaglecrest will face off at Mile High Stadium in the Class 5A championship game. But even as excitement builds for the contest, plenty of observers are wondering about something more fundamental: How much longer will good parents let their kids play high school football? This question is being asked more frequently in an age when worries about potentially fatal consequences from repeated blows to the head are growing. Now, research by a University of Colorado Boulder professor shows that 25,000 fewer boys played high school football across the country last season than the year before, continuing a trend that shows no signs of slowing.

The folks at Delta County High School, on Colorado’s Western Slope, are learning what can happen when you mess with Cidney Fisk. The teen is suing the public school and a slew of other related individuals and entities in United States District Court, alleging that her identity as an atheist and criticism of activities such as allowing a Christian group to hand out Bibles on campus resulted in a wide range of discriminatory acts, including the arbitrary lowering of her marks in a student government class.

On Saturday, October 14, in an extraordinarily blatant attempt to bury a controversial decision, the Denver District Attorney’s Office announced that it would not file criminal charges over videos of East High School cheerleaders crying out in agony while being forced into the splits position. But the prospects of the case winding up in court haven’t disappeared. Two families are working with one of Denver’s most dogged and successful civil-rights attorneys, who’s issued a statement that hints strongly at the prospect of future litigation.

Although Colorado has joined a lawsuit intended to stop the repeal of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, better known as DACA, President Donald Trump’s plan to end the program on March 5, 2018 remains in place at this writing. That leaves DACA students who were brought to this country as children in limbo and potentially vulnerable to deportation for even otherwise insignificant offenses. And according to an advocate for restorative practices, a process being used in Denver Public Schools, such risks can also extend to DACA students’ loved ones.

As we’ve reported, tempers flared at a September 22 football game between the Weld Central High School Rebels and Denver’s Manual High School Thunderbolts over claims about the display of a Confederate flag made by Manual principal Nick Dawkins, among others. Weld Central reps subsequently denied anything like this actually happened, and now, Dawkins has signed on to a letter released just shy of 9 p.m. last night, September 26, that absolves the visiting team and blames unidentified spectators for trying to bring in a flag. However, the document, on view below, doesn’t address other assertions made by Dawkins about injuries to Manual players and the alleged use of racial slurs by some members of the Rebels.

After losing $1.5 million in federal funding, the Denver-based nonprofit Colorado Youth Matter is closing its doors on December 31 — a decision that could impact our state’s teen pregnancy rates.

Days after the end of a public-comment period about proposed changes in how sexual-misconduct accusations are handled on college campuses, the Department of Education, headed by the controversial Betsy DeVos, has announced that it is retracting two Obama-era documents that provided guidance in this area. A University of Colorado Denver expert in the field tells us this development won’t immediately alter how schools deal with such matters, but it suggests that the future could bring policy changes that will be sweeping and potentially problematic.