Preferential treatment does not lead to equity. Denver’s innovation management school zones argue that equity is one of their most important principles. Yet they want preferential treatment to get their way with the Denver Public School (DPS) board.

SB22-197, Innovation Schools and Alternative Governance, focuses mainly on DPS but it will have impacts across the state. Basically, the bill tosses the authority of elected school boards to manage the public purse and education policy out the window. Elected school boards will be replaced by unelected boards operating Innovation Management School Zones. These people will have complete control over your taxpayer dollars.

This is how preferential treatment happens. SB22-197 is on a fast-track through the legislature. It was just introduced and jammed through the state Senate ahead of other priorities such as worker rights, wildfire management, mental and behavioral health appropriations, protection of endangered wildlife, improved air quality, and, for Pete’s sake, full funding of public schools. Why the big hurry?

Two Democratic state Senators from northeast Denver are sponsoring the bill: Chris Hansen and James Coleman. They are in a big hustle. Hansen’s children attend Northeast Denver Innovation Zone (NDIZ) schools, as he stated at the Senate Education Committee hearing. He didn’t mention that his spouse, Ulcca Hansen, is an unelected board member of the NDIZ management entity.

Ulcca Hansen joins Anne Rowe and Rachele Espiritu, both former members of the DPS school board, on the unelected NDIZ board. They want authority to stymie the duly- and currently-elected DPS Board before the legislative session ends in May. It’s the state legislature and former DPS board members against the current DPS board, elected local school boards across the state, local control of education policy and management, and local public school accountability.

This will be the DNIZ authority of Ulcca Hansen, Anne Rowe, and Rachele Espiritu who was defeated for her board spot in 2017 by Jen Bacon. If SB22-197 passes and there is a difference between the zone management people and the DPS school board, the NDIZ board members will call on a third-party arbitrator to negotiate the conflict. DPS will no doubt have to pay for both sides of the negotiation, which can easily run into many thousands of dollars.

The arbitration decision is the end of the oversight trail for the elected Denver School Board. It will have to live with the arbitrator’s decision whether it’s appropriate for the district as a whole or not. No other non-charter public schools in Denver or in the state have that kind of preference.

This forced divestiture of school board authority to an unelected cadre of board members that oversee non-district and district staff is an unprecedented usurpation of the responsibilities and accountability of elected officials.

Plus, school districts get to pay for it. Three zones currently exist in Denver. The zone managers charge per pupil management fees. Luminary Learning Network assesses $170-per-student, NDIZ assesses $100-per-student, and Beacon schools charge 1.5% of the school budgets.

The schools also pay for services to DPS out of per-pupil fees. Some of the schools opt out of DPS supported services to save money. That doesn’t mean they don’t receive those services, according to the recently completed ‘DPS Innovation Pause & Reflect’ report. Often the zones will call in with a problem and DPS administration will provide support without charging for the service. That’s preferential treatment a couple of times over.

Here’s a real world example of how bad the SB22-197 legislation is. DPS received word of issues with the NDIZ management agreement with Lyra and Empower Schools in Boston, the management entities. Sure enough, there were problems. The district issued a “notice of concern” that resulted in the resignation of the executive director and some board members. Two schools exited the zone with large majorities of the schools’ faculty in agreement.

Under SB22-197, such an outcome is dubious. The NDIZ board, including the Senator’s spouse and two former DPS board members, would take the case to arbitration. The district would have to live with the arbitrator’s decision and pay for it.

With SB22-197, DPS and any other district with innovation zones will be forced to put its precious taxpayer-per-student funding into schools over which they have no oversight authority. This state of affairs is undemocratic and defeats the public school ideal that has made America a prosperous, thriving nation.

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.