Four prominent Denver parents have weighed in on the Denver Public Schools Board of Education election in a recent editorial. They point their disapproving fingers at Scott Baldermann, District 1 DPS board member, and Charmaine Lindsay, District 5 member, even though these directors keep plugging away at DPS’ issues without creating the drama some on the board produce as honey for the media bears.

Heather Lamm, a former executive with the prominent charter syndicate Denver Schools of Science and Technology (DSST), is leading this charge with her assertions board members are “out of touch with their constituents” and they “will not be held accountable for either harm or expense.” That is a bravura statement.

Given the many hundreds of hours Baldermann and Lindsay have committed to the district, and given the very difficult issues the board has confronted, Lamm’s claims are insulting and disingenuous. Though she clearly has a beef with the board’s handling of the tragic shooting of two East High administrators and the subsequent suicide of the shooter, she also has a beef with the board’s decisions on innovation zones, teacher rights and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association that represents most Denver teachers. These teachers have not endorsed Lamm’s preferred slate of Kimberlee Sia, Marlene de la Rosa and John Youngquist. That fact should give voters pause as these teachers work with Denver’s children every day. Maybe they know something Lamm et al prefer not to think about or disclose.

The East High shooting brings two competing problems to the fore. Lamm, former DPS Board chair Theresa Pena, former at-large DPS candidate Paul Ballenger and Stephen Katsaros support previous DPS boards’ policies that inserted school resource officers (SROs) into high schools. This action resulted in significantly higher percentages of Black and Hispanic children than White children disciplined with suspension and expulsion.

These DPS critics cite a recent report engaged by DPS and authored by current at-large DPS candidate John Youngquist that quotes various DPS staffers who object to current disciplinary policies. Some school staffers state too many students with disciplinary and behavior problems are let off the hook when they should be expelled. DPS data reported to the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) contradicts these statements. DPS students are expelled, with Black and Hispanic children leading the numbers by a large margin.

These facts trouble Black and Hispanic families when disciplinary policy decisions arise. Auon’tai Anderson brought up these facts at the closed-door, five-hour hearing on disciplinary policy after the East High shooting. Anderson is a disruptive, contentious and argumentative director, but his comments about the disciplinary data are accurate. He is also not running for a second term.

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One reason the current board changed disciplinary policy was the perception confirmed by data that minority students did receive inordinate scrutiny and discipline from SROs in schools. SROs were originally trained on how to work with students based on the Denver Police agreement with DPS. As the program continued over time, this training stopped. The above results were predictable.

School discipline is not a one-sided issue where bad kids need to get kicked out of schools. It’s a multi-dimensional challenge with many moving parts that Lamm, Pena and cohorts don’t address, but the board must.

As noted above, school safety isn’t the only beef Lamm and Pena have with the DPS Board. Baldermann led the initiative to restore teachers’ due-process rights to some DPS Innovation Zone schools.

OMG! The right of teachers to rejoin the DCTA is anathema to Lamm, who said in an interview with Colorado Politics that “anyone who really understands (the school choice and charter school controversy) knows that this is about catering to teachers unions. Part of me wishes we could all just come out and say that.” Lamm did say that, and further argued the district’s neighborhood school model “disadvantaged children of color and low-income children for years.”

That statement is a target with a bull’s eye on it. Let’s take 2018 DPS data as reported to the Colorado Department of Education from Denver schools. The charter movement in Denver had been chugging along since 2003, roughly. Denver’s lauded “portfolio” program was in place and should have been reaching its performance peak with well-established charter schools leading the way. Based on Lamm’s statements, “disadvantaged children of color and low-income children” should have been reaping the large rewards of “school choice.”

For the vast majority of low-income students of color, however, their choices took them to charter schools that were at least as segregated as DPS’s neighborhood schools, and in many cases were more segregated. These schools never delivered the extraordinary results that choice-believers such as Lamm and Pena promised and continue to promise. But DSST in particular did receive millions of dollars from billionaires Bill Gates and John Malone, the cable magnate, among others, to stoke DSST funding above the per-student dollars allotted from property taxes and state funds. Lamm wants transparency from DPS on disciplinary and financial issues, but DSST refuses to disclose how much extra money it receives per student in its abundant coffers. That lack of transparency comes with its charter.

Even so, DSST schools, with their many media and foundation blessings, don’t consistently deliver. In 2018, DSST Cole Middle School was about 92% minority with the vast majority of students on Free and Reduced Lunch. Almost 85% of the middle schoolers didn’t reach proficiency in math and 55% missed in English Language Arts. Today the numbers are worse, with fewer than 10% proficient in math and only 10% to 14% proficient in English Language Arts.

These numbers are not surprising. They confirm current charter strategies for bringing low-income students of color up to the student performance of wealthy White children is not going to happen. The vaunted non-union teacher cadre of charter schools, often young college graduates in the Teach for America programs, hasn’t moved the low-income oppression needle.

Sia, the candidate opposing Scott Baldermann, is the former chief executive of the well-known Kipp charter schools. Kipp’s recruitment efforts snared 88% minority students in 2018 at Kipp Northeast Elementary and 96% minority population at Kipp Sunshine Peak. If highly segregated DPS schools is Kipp’s goal, they exceeded that mark at the peak of the portfolio management system. DPS is now forced to close some neighborhood schools that Lamm believed in her 2019 interview were not serving children even though they are much loved by their current students and parents who fight hard for their preservation.

If segregating students into their minority silos is your objective, failing to acknowledge the inherent challenges of dealing with severe disciplinary issues is okay, and sneering at teachers who want some rights is your thing, then vote out Baldermann and Lindsay. But if you want your schools governed by elected officials who believe in democratic oversight and who keep their heads down and their hopes up, your choices are clear.

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