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.
Friday, September 22, was a rough day for Denver Public Schools. First, a number of East High School students joined assorted parents at a protest prompted by the de facto ouster of principal Andy Mendelsberg and assistant principal/athletic director Lisa Porter in regard to their handling of videos showing cheer team members being forced into splits. Then, that evening, claims about a Confederate flag at a football game between the Weld Central High School Rebels and the Manual High School Thunderbolts resulted in charges of racism and alleged in-game injuries to three Manual players that may have been related to bad blood stirred by the controversy.
In May, Colorado submitted its state plan to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to the federal government for review and approval. In August, the U.S. Department of Education responded, requesting that Colorado do more to move students towards grade-level proficiency.
Controversial Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has called for sweeping changes in how sexual assault accusations are handled on college campuses. Now, against the backdrop of numerous lawsuits filed against universities in Colorado on behalf of men accused in such cases, who maintain that the process treats them unfairly, a group of officials, including many affiliated with colleges in the state, have combined forces to argue in favor a more thoughtful approach to the issue.
Over the years, Colorado colleges in general, and public colleges in particular, have performed weakly in national rankings. Unfortunately, the same scenario has played out in a new study of the best community colleges in the state. Nine Colorado institutions were analyzed among 728 nationwide, with only one school from here landing in the top half of the rankings and the lowest-rated facility finishing only fifteen slots away from dead last. And the latter’s location is mighty close to home.
Colorado’s 238 charter schools were also required to disclose to the State Board of Education which curriculum standards they choose not to adopt.
