Deep dissatisfaction with Denver’s education officials signals that voters are ready for change when they elect three new members of the city’s school board this November, pollsters who dug into survey data inferred on Friday. 

“One of the more striking data points in the entire survey was the breadth and intensity of dissatisfaction with the current DPS school board,” Kevin Ingham, a Democratic pollster with Aspect Strategic, said. 

Ingham and Republican pollster Brent Buchanan of Cygnal delved into the findings of a poll from the Colorado Polling Institute, which measured likely voters’ attitude toward the Denver Public Schools board, the city’s new administration and issues that matter most to them.

Unsurprisingly, the safety of students tops the concerns for parents, the poll confirmed.

The survey offered the clearest support yet for district officials’ decision to bring back school resource officers to campuses following a shooting that injured two school deans in March. The day after the shooting, board members huddled into a room and, under intense pressure from the public to respond to the spate of violence plaguing Denver schools, crafted the policy – behind closed doors – to reverse their stance kicking cops out of campuses. 

All told, nearly 63% of respondents support the move to return school resource offices to schools, the poll showed. Among parents, that support climbs to 73%. Among White, African American and Latino populations, support stands at 62%, 52% and 68%, respectively.

The level of support is replicated among partisan groups: 59% of Democrats, 61% of independent voters and 88% of Republicans.

While support for the cops’ return is strong among the demographic groups, Buchanan said the dividing factor is people’s educational attainment level. In particular, the higher the educational level is, the less likely a person is supportive of the cops’ return.

That factor, in fact, also pops up as a reliable predictor of where people stand on social issues.

Buchanan said that, in the last 20 years, educational attainment has become the No. 1 factor on ideology, partisan and polarization.

Yet even as respondents favored the Denver Public Schools’ about-face – the district kicked out officers from schools amid protests in 2020 – they universally dislike the board.

Indeed, 54% of voters view the board negatively and only 21% regard the officials in positive light. Among parents, the board’s image sinks to a net negative 35, according to the poll. 

Ingham said what makes the result so striking is that voters across partisan, generational, racial and geographic lines all registered dissatisfaction with the education board. 

“The board is viewed negatively pretty much across the entire political and demographic spectrum,” Ingham said, noting that two-thirds of parents regard the board unfavorably.

Three out of the board’s seven seats are up for grabs in November this year, including an at-large seat. Board members Scott Baldermann and Charmaine Lindsay – both elected as union-backed candidates – are running for reelection. Board Vice President Auon’tai M. Anderson, who decided against seeking reelection, is instead eyeing a legislative seat.

“So, when you have an election happening against the backdrop of pent-up dissatisfaction like this, that usually indicates what we call a change environment,” Ingham said. “But even while voters are signaling a desire for something new and a new direction, they haven’t quite figured out who represents that vision for them yet.”

The pollsters noted that 87% of voters who are likely to vote in 2023 are yet undecided, with the four candidates running for the district’s at-large seat registering a combined score of only 13%.

The large number of undecided voters isn’t unusual, given the election still several months away, the pollsters noted.

“It is truly, completely wide open,” Ingraham said.

So, while the overwhelmingly majority of likely voters haven’t decided who to support yet, what they want the candidates to focus on is unequivocal, the pollsters said.

Their top priorities are recruiting and retaining teachers – and the safety of students in schools.   

Only half of likely voters in Denver believe students are safe while attending the city’s public schools, according to the poll.

Among parents, a slight majority – 51% – do not believe kids are safe at school. 

Interestingly, about two-thirds of those polled say they feel safe in Denver, which points to a “pretty large delta” between perceived safety in Denver, broadly speaking, and the safety of students that go to the city’s schools specifically, pollsters noted.

Conducted jointly by Democratic polling firm Aspect Strategic and Republican pollster Cygnal, the poll surveyed 414 likely 2024 general election voters in Denver on Aug. 17 and 18 using live calls and text-to-web questionnaires. Its margin of error is plus-or-minus 4.72%.

Reporter Ernest Luning contributed to this report.