Colorado had itself an election yesterday. The big-ticket items, to my mind, were the Denver school board, and a very complicated tax bill called Proposition HH. I was going to write about both, but ran out of time, so, here’s your round-up of the school board election.
All three ‘status quo’ candidates lost yesterday by fairly resounding margins. Chalkbeat: Voters signal they want change by electing three new members
In a year of rising gun violence in and around Denver schools, and persistent allegations of dysfunction on the school board, Denver voters signaled Tuesday that they want change by electing three new board members.
In the citywide at-large race, former East High School Principal John Youngquist beat Tattered Cover bookstores co-owner Kwame Spearman by a wide margin. Youngquist will replace the board’s most high-profile member, Vice President Auon’tai Anderson.
The candidates who lost were all backed by the teachers’ union, but this election wasn’t really about that, if you ask me. Denver generally has a pro-charter streak, so being pro-school choice/curriculum autonomy doesn’t ding a candidate much. One example issue–a recent regulation says that you cannot start classes before 8:20am for middle school students and older. Okay, that sounds fine. However, due to bus schedules, this means that a particular high-performing charter can’t start until 9:30, and has had to cut an hour of education from their curriculum. Replacing this with voluntary enrichment courses has proven quite expensive, and Colorado schools are already famously underfunded. The school board could have waived this regulation for this school, but chose not to. The parents are understandably upset.
But, mostly, this was about school safety. The current board’s policies have failed here. There were a number of school shootings in the last year. Some were clearly caused by existing policy. Specifically, it is extremely difficult to expel or suspend a student, which has led to students known to be safety risks remaining in schools. I say ‘known to be safety risks’ because they have often been accused of violent crimes, and must be searched for weapons every morning. The board removed police from schools in 2020, so these checks are performed by school staffers. This policy combination resulted in the shooting of two deans earlier this year, during a weapons search–the third shooting at that school in the last school year. A principal who spoke out about this was fired. The board claims this was due to “sharing information related to confidential personnel matters”. You can decide for yourself; the voters certainly did:
In the interview, Dennis shared that he’d been notified that one of his school’s students had been charged with attempted murder. As a result, Dennis sought an extended suspension as well as a remote learning option for the student. DPS denied both requests. Denver police had also discouraged a return to in-person learning for the student.
In the termination letter, DPS said Dennis had also been fired for allegedly violating the student’s privacy by partaking in the interview. Dennis told CPR that, while he told 9News a student had been charged with attempted murder, he did not provide any information he was prohibited from sharing nor did he reveal the student’s identity or offer recognizable characteristics.
David Lane, Dennis’ lawyer, said he confirmed with Chris Vanderveen of 9News that Vanderveen was never shown confidential information.
So, every candidate associated with these policies (all incumbents up for re-election retired) was rejected by voters. The closest of these elections had a ten-point margin. Changing three members of the seven-member board won’t change which bloc controls the majority, but I do hope it makes them question some of these decisions they’re making. The board vote to fire the principal was 6-1, so that would have gone the other way.
cain
Interesting – especially the bit about being punished for not having cops at the school. Conventional wisdom in a lot of liberal forums is that you shouldn’t have cops at all they aren’t trained to deal with kids. So I’m not sure how well this is going to go.
Without knowing the background – why was staff involved instead of say a social worker or some other person who knows how to de-escalate.
Freemark
@cain:
It seems to me there is a difference between having police in schools and having an officer on hand to search a known violent risk before they can enter school grounds. Police in schools is generally bad, but this should not be that situation.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I know Denver teachers who know Youngquist. They describe him as the poster-child “yes man”, meaning when the charter school scumbags come asking/telling him something, the answer will be “yes”. All three are basically very pro-charter-school types which is why our shitty new mayor endorsed them.
As for HH, amazingly, the voters saw it for the scam that it was. The voters fell for the sales pitch getting rid of Gallagher a couple of years back despite all of us saying it would lead to this. Our glibertarian, techbro governor was for it which is all one needed to know to vote against it.
Major Major Major Major
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
It was definitely misleading, but I’m surprised by your comment. It would have half-eliminated TABOR in the long run, and helped with school funding, aren’t liberals supposed to be in favor of that? The sneaky part wasn’t that it very slightly cut property taxes, the sneaky part was that it would neuter TABOR, giving the general fund a much-needed shot in the arm for liberal priorities, or even things like fixing roads. The entire state party was for it, yeah? Opposition was Republicans and Republican-aligned dark money. Voters rejected it because it would have meant a smaller refund–because the money would stay in the general fund.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Major Major Major Major:
Here’s how it works: Triple your property taxes, rebate 1/3 of that back, and then decrease the amount you’d get back as a TABOR refund. You can see how this adds up, right? Yes we need to fund our schools, but why the contortion and lack of transparency? This is what happens when you leave the gliberatarians to their own devices.
They were scared shitless about trying to outright abolish TABOR. If that had been the actual initiative, I would have voted for it but most people don’t think an outright TABOR abolishment would pass, thus, this piece of crap.
trollhattan
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I soooooo want to be in charge of campaign graphics for something called “Proposition HH.”
Major Major Major Major
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Politicians, including school board members, who value big-picture things like this, would do well not to step on their own dicks, which is what this election was about to the voters.
Major Major Major Major
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Please tell me which part of this does not reflect liberal priorities. As for the sneaky way of going about it, I also do not see anything “glibertarian” about that, it’s called politics.
Alison Rose
@trollhattan: I’m glad I’m not the only one whose mind went right there every time I saw the name.
Brachiator
The school situation in Denver sounds crazy. But it is weird that a segment of the public wants safer schools, but also believe that dangerous adults should be able to have all the guns they want.
Josie
As a parent, I would have been appalled that my child was attending school with a person who had to be searched for a weapon every day. Is this common in schools now?
Sure Lurkalot
I’m a Denverite, old and childless (so no real skin in the game) and while I understand the underlying issues were not charter schools, the charter school adherents were not my preferred candidates. As a taxpayer who has reasonable apprehensions that my taxes will be diverted from public to private schools, Colorado could do a lot more to fund education in general and public schools in particular. But I do understand that school shootings and violence were the drivers of this school board election. After events like Uvalde, I’m skeptical that cops change the outcome of many of these incidents.
Alison Rose
Oh FFS:
UncleEbeneezer
@cain: A quick Google of the demographics of DPS shows 70+% White and Latinx and only 13% Black students. So I’m not surprised that police in schools would be a popular policy. In my experience the Black community is the only one that really strongly takes issue with police in schools (due to widespread knowledge about the school-to-prison pipeline), with a smattering of White and Latinx support from Liberals/Progressives, in those respective communities. Though I can’t find any solid polling on the issue to confirm.
Major Major Major Major
@Alison Rose: I read an article that obviously autocorrected one of the instances to Preparation HH, lol.
Major Major Major Major
@Josie: My understanding is that Obama-era regulations around improving expulsion metrics for minority students has led to policies like this as an attempt to juke the stats. That which is measured, will be gamed.
Alison Rose
@Major Major Major Major: “Preparation HH – When your ass is literally on fire and one H simply won’t do”
trollhattan
@Alison Rose: :-)
GDMTA (demented minds in my case).Baud
@Alison Rose:
Hunter should claim executive privilege.
trollhattan
@Alison Rose:
Have they subpoenaed Neilia Biden yet? I mean, you can’t be too thorough when you’re in charge of the House.
Martin
So, I think last nights elections tell us why the polling isn’t working.
I’ve said plenty of times that polling this far out is pointless, and that remains true. We know people need to be connected to consequences to be able to evaluate their views accurately. My views on guns are going to be different when one is pointed at me vs when it’s a hypothetical. Right now Trump v Biden is a hypothetical.
But the part of polling that tends to be overlooked is the likely voter model. Taking a poll results and weighting the cross-tabs is pretty straightforward. Sampling is harder, ensuring you have a suitable cross-section. But the hardest is the model of *who* will vote – how the eligible voter pool changes to become the likely voter pool, and then making sure you’re sampling the likely voters and not the eligible but not likely ones.
The challenge is that decisions like Dobbs change the likely voter pool. A decision like that turns some eligible voters into likely voters. It’s fundamental change to *why* people vote. And it takes a number of elections before the models can catch up with the new reality. I would argue that Trump himself changed the likely voter model, and that Trumps conviction, should there be one before the election, will change it again, but not how people think. I don’t think any Trump LVs will stay home if he’s convicted, but I think there are a lot of unlikely voters that will decide that having a felon in the race is urgent enough to vote. ‘Felon’ does a lot of work to break the ‘both sides’ laziness of voters.
I’m not sure we had enough large races being polled last night to help clean up the LV models any more, so these polling surprises are likely to continue.
Pollsters can adjust the model from evidence – wait to see how the LV model fails and feed that data back in to shape the next LV model, or they can do it intuitively – basically put their thumb on the scale. The gold standard polls tend to the former as they are often academic exercises and/or used to help with calling elections early. The internal polls tend to do the latter, as they are entirely pragmatic. If you believe the ‘meta’ is in your favor, you can bias the poll before the evidence arrives to help shape how you are messaging, and who you message to. The former are statistical exercises, the latter are political science ones.
Sure Lurkalot
@Major Major Major Major: I agree about HH. True, it was a backside attempt to gut TABOR whose true mission is gutting government services with the pretext of saving tax payers money.
Seems that Americans of all stripes fall for the line that government can’t do anything right or good and what it does do isn’t needed. When people pay more for the same services to private concerns or just do without, the message gains clarity. See also paying 17-18% of GDP on privatized health care, about twice as much as single payer or not for profit systems in other countries.
Alison Rose
@trollhattan: Comer ordered a Ouija board from Amazon last night.
Martin
@Alison Rose: Nah. They’re shifting from trying to find evidence to fishing for a perjury charge.
Suzanne
@Josie:
Yes.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Good stuff when your butt hurts.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Even professional pollsters agree with this. Here’s a bit from an old 538 column.
But polling is a business and media companies employ pollsters and want to distract the public with meaningless numerical data.
Josie
@Suzanne:
Then it is no wonder people are looking at private schools and/or home schooling.
Martin
@Brachiator: The most interesting to me is the USC/Dornsife Understanding America poll.
Unlike other polls, they poll the exact same people over and over. So for this poll, the sample may not be perfectly representative and as such doesn’t serve as a predictive poll as others seek to do, but it measures how peoples views shift from one position to another.
It’s most useful as a meta-poll as it more definitive in terms of measuring changes to sentiment but because of the fixed respondent pool can’t adapt to a change to LV.
Much as I hate praising USC, I think they’re doing something really interesting there.
Suzanne
@Josie: I have to agree with you. I love the idea of public schools, but it is undeniable that they have many hazards.
Spawn the Younger was having trouble with a girl at her school, a former friend who has turned into a bully. Spawn is scared of her and this girl has pulled her hair and just been generally intimidating. I have asked the school staff to keep this girl away from my daughter, but they can’t. The girl has bragged about having a boyfriend who has a gun. Probably a liar, but also…. who knows? She brought a vape to school. Got her belongings searched for a few days, but they stopped. They’re twelve.
mvr
@Martin: Except Hunter will just take the 5th as he has every right to. So they are looking for that since they aren’t dumb enough not to know that is what they’ll get. He’s charged with crimes after all.
As for the President’s brother they won’t find out anything useful to them. But then they’ve called witnesses who wind up undermining their allegations before.
cain
@Suzanne:
Definitely should be reported to the school.
Public schools are definitely hard. My wife comes home exhausted dealing with the myriad of thing that are happening in the school that as assistant principal she has to deal with.
I have no idea what trauma that girl has experienced that caused to do bullying.
cain
@Alison Rose:
As soon as that asshole Gym Jordan shows up for his subpoena – so shall they show up for theirs. Let GOP respect the rules and laws first.
Regardless, there is nothing here in the public interest at all. They should tell him to fuck off.
Lobo
There a lot of things that can be true at the same time. The charter candidates won unfortunately. Public School support should now be a standard line for Democrats like abortion. Charters do not perform, on average, better than public schools. (Yes, there are always outliers.) When schools are adequately funded and social needs met students learn. See DOD schools. It can also be true that disciplinary policies and “safety” more negatively impact minorities. There were issues related to minorities with the principal who was fired. He was right in some ways and wrong in others.
The truth is that Colorado Schools are horribly underfunded. The schools did not have the resources to properly address challenging students and other issues. The lack of funding sets up everyone to fail. Everyone is looking for that one weird trick that solves “education” without having to pay for it. Charters are not it, safety resources are not it, standardized testing is not it, etc.
BTW, I voted for the imperfect HH. Yes, it was a backhanded way to address TABOR. By any means necessary. My view is that the “perfect” bill does not exist to address Tabor. My two cents.
gene108
I see ex-teacher videos on YouTube about the lack of discipline and accountability for students as one major reason they quit. The comments sections almost unanimously support the person in the video.
As a middle aged man who does not have children, I am not sure how prevalent the view expressed in the videos is in the teaching community.
May be a contributing factor in teacher resignations.
Major Major Major Major
@Lobo:
He was fired before the investigation into the time-out/whatever room and the board was very clear about their reasoning. The board has nobody but themselves to blame for not suspending (or putting on remote learning) students who are accused of attempted murder. Of course people are getting shot. And that’s a choice they’re making.
rikyrah
Interesting post.
Josie
@Major Major Major Major: Why are Colorado schools so underfunded? I would have thought there is plenty of money in that state to fund schools correctly. Even Texas manages (for the most part) to do that.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Josie:
Deep dive piece:
https://coloradoea.org/state-of-education/
We have an archaic tax system that suffers from decades-long issues relating to the now-gone Gallagher Amendment and still-around Tabor. The entire things needs to be overhauled, not shell-game piecemeal approaches like HH.
Bear in mind that CO’s blue status is a fairly recent thing and there’s a strong undercurrent of neoliberal Dems and the state’s GOP/glibertarians who’s economic policies mostly come together on things like taxes and (under) funding things like public schools.
Major Major Major Major
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
and yet you voted with the GOP on Prop HH, the bill that would neuter TABOR to fund schools 🤔
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Major Major Major Major:
A shitload of Dems did the exact same thing. The results were clear in that there was a broad, bipartisan support for voting down this piece of shit bill.
Again, put a “repeal TABOR outright” initiative on the ballot and I’ll vote for it often.
Wag
I’m a lifelong Coloradan, and have lived in Denver for the past 18 years. I have twins who are seniors at a medium sized Denver public high school. The past couple of years have been challenging, to say the least. There is a real split in the kids’ school between the high achieving students and the economically challenged students. The drop out rate among the later group is huge, with a drop in the total class size from about 450 students in 9th grade to a graduating class of 275. There are frequent fights, and there was a stabbing (with scissors) last week. I wholeheartedly support bringing the police back into the schools. Would police officers prevent another Columbine or Uvalde situation? Probably not. But having their presence on a day in day out basis will help deescalate the fights and may help to promote a more stable learning environment for all students.
As far as HH is concerned, I was supportive. Colorado’s tax system is far out of balance because of the Tax Payer Bill Of Rights (TABOR) Amendment to the state constitution which locks in a gradual reduction in the ability of the state to tax appropriately for our rapidly growing state. HH would have begun a process that could have begun to unravel the Gordian knot that hamstrings all levels of government in Colorado.
Wag
@Josie: TABOR has destroyed the ability of all levels of government in Colorado to nimbly respond to challenges in a fiscally responsible way.
Lobo
@Major Major Major Major:
No wish to get into argument. I merely said there had been issues with minorities the predate the one you mentioned. I have talked with parents. Some of those parents still liked him, but there were issues.
This is separate from the safety issue. Some populations feel safer with officers in school, other populations feel threatened. Different populations, different life experiences. Again, two things can be true at the same time. Again the under funding is exacerbating a lot of issues. Make complicated issues even harder to address.
toine
Everything about this is just “Wow!!!”
It’s like the worst game-show ever…
Host: Door #1 has something horrific behind it. Door #2 also has something horrific behind it. It’s time to choose!!!
Contestant: ummmmmm…. well… I’m sure both are better than higher taxes, so…
toine
@Major Major Major Major:
the part where the vast majority of the people you interact with daily now have good paying jobs and where your own income has gone up way more than inflation?
Major Major Major Major
@toine: huh?
Are taxing wealth and funding schools liberal priorities or not? What about unwinding TABOR, which has strangled progressive initiatives in the crib for decades? It’s ok to say you want lower taxes and fewer services, people should just say that if it’s what they mean.
And for what it’s worth, only the lower half of the income distribution has seen cumulative real gains over the last three years. The upper percentiles are flat or a little under, and that’s without factoring in the market slump (most Americans own stock).
BSR