Denver’s feckless and rudderless school board isn’t the only one in the metro area that has turned its back on student achievement. Just to the north, in Commerce City, the Adams 14 School District board has been neglecting its students’ academic progress for over a decade.

It got so bad that, in an unprecedented action last month, the state had to move in and take charge. The Colorado State Board of Education – an elected, bipartisan panel – essentially assumed control of Adams 14 and ordered its reorganization. The board took that bold but essential step after years of issuing warnings and ordering incremental measures that yielded little progress. The state’s action was a welcome development.

As state board Chair Angelika Schroeder, a Democrat from Boulder, wrote recently in a local newspaper commentary, “The Adams County School District 14 has been performing poorly for years – so poorly, for so long, that it is fundamentally failing the children and families it is supposed to serve.”

“Year after year, the district has fallen short of steps to improve its academic performance. And with each passing year, the district’s 6,600 students – many from lower-income households that struggle as it is for educational opportunities – have paid the price,” Schroeder wrote. “They have been shortchanged.”

This week, the superintendents of a number of other metro-area school districts sent the state board a letter about the issue. Not to express relief the kids in Adams 14 finally might get some help. But – incredibly – to denounce the state’s decision to step in.

As reported by Colorado Public Radio, the supers who signed on included Denver Public Schools chief Alex Marrero as well as his counterparts in the Aurora, Cherry Creek and other area districts.

Why would they object to the state rescuing Adams 14’s long-abandoned students? Especially after the district had every chance to clean up its act?

A passage in the letter sheds light: “We believe collectively in locally elected school boards of education and their Colorado constitutional right to the local control of the instruction of their students.”

Got it. They’re protecting their turf – the kids’ best interests be damned.

Through all the years of abysmal performance by Adams 14 schools – thwarting countless kids and their aspirations – did any of these six-figure-a-year bureaucrats ever lift a finger in protest over how the district was an academic sinkhole?

Encroaching on their power, however, is another matter. For that, they’re ready to rumble.

It’s not like the state had much of a choice but to act as it did. As Schroeder pointed out in her published commentary, state law requires the board to step in if a school or district posts more than five years in a row of low ratings. Adams 14 has done so for nine years.

“The district’s inability to dramatically improve left no alternative,” she wrote. “After nearly a decade of working with the district to rectify its systemic failures, the state board ran out of options.”

Schroeder and the board are to be commended. If anything, they should have acted sooner.

As for the meddling superintendents, their letter betrayed their true priorities.

Meanwhile, Marrero might want to start looking over his shoulder. His own local school board in DPS – which is ratcheting back reforms like accountability and school choice – is on course to let Denver students idle and languish as Adams 14’s have. What if the state board takes notice?

Maybe that’s what Marrero is really worried about.

Denver Gazette editorial board