From the archives: Force, Sabin most improved on district scorecards

From the archives:
Force, Sabin most improved on district scorecards

Story and photos by Joshua Cole
(originally published in Oct. 8, 2009, Denver Herald-Dispatch)

Just like most major sports teams, schools that are in a “rebuilding” process first show a decrease in results before a jump to prominence.

After refocusing their curriculum, staff and identity, Force and Sabin elementary schools had a large jump last year on Denver Public Schools' performance measurements. Force and Sabin were among five schools in the city to increase the most points on the district's School Performance Framework, which the district also refers to as its scorecard.

Each public school in the district is measured on its academic performance, academic growth, college and career readiness, student engagement and parent involvement. Academic performance and growth are based partly on the state assessment – CSAP – in addition to the district's own benchmarks.

Force Elementary
Photo caption: Jamie Ruiz, Alex Avila, Juan Manuel and the rest of their fifth grade classmates at Force Elementary School raise their hands to share their answers during writing class. Force Elementary, near West Florida Avenue and South Sheridan Boulevard, had one of the highest point increases on the district's scorecards.
Substitute teachers know that if a teacher has good classroom management, students will behave well even when that teacher is gone. Similarly, a successful plan should succeed even if a leader leaves.

That's what happened at Force Elementary. The school had an interim principal in the 2009-10 school year, yet teachers continued to forge ahead with the school's improvement plan. And it worked. Force improved by 20 points on the district's scorecard. The school was the highest performing school in its cluster – a group of schools that have similar demographics. Force has 92 percent free and reduced lunch.

Growth, status and school demand met district expectations, with 79 percent of points earned on growth and 55 percent of points earned for status. Overall, the school jumped up to 91 out of 133 possible points, or 68 percent.

Photo caption: Fifth graders Andrea Amador-Murillo and Dominic Bell review their drafts during a writing workshop at Force Elementary School.
“It's the fruit of a number of years of real strong data analysis,” said the school's first-year principal Lisa Mahannah, who was a central coordinator before she was hired in the spring. “When you have strong instruction, you see the results.”


Force has implemented pilot programs, including Response to Intervention and Literacy Squared. In Response to Intervention, teachers track student performance, and when a student doesn't meet certain objectives, different people at the school respond by finding out why the student is struggling and then helping create solutions.

The school earned a $5,000 scholarship from Casio for calculators, and a new computer lab was donated by Pepsi, Mahannah said.

Two parent liaisons have increased parent involvement and a connection to the school.

“One of the big pushes we see is the students accepting responsibility for their learning. We're working on bringing the community into that piece as well,” Mahannah said.

Force, which is at 1550 S. Wolff St., near West Florida Avenue and South Sheridan Boulevard, has also formed closer partnerships with the schools where its students feed into, Kepner Middle School, West Denver Prep and Abraham Lincoln High School.

Five years ago at Lincoln and when West Denver Prep started four years ago, students were immersed in a college-prep culture. Kepner, Force and other nearby schools followed, putting college as an idea early in students' lives.

“We're trying to make Force Elementary not only the best in southwest Denver but also the beacon across the district in community partnerships,” Mahannah said.

Sabin World School
Sabin jumped up 26 points on its scorecard, the second-highest jump among the district's 139 schools. Sabin jumped up to 64 out of 137 possible points, or 47 percent of possible points.

Like Force, Sabin became more closely aligned last year with its feeder schools, Henry middle school and John F. Kennedy High School. Sabin was officially designated as an International Baccalaureate World School. In the International Baccalaureate program, which both JFK and Henry have in their curriculum, a school becomes aligned with world-wide standards for not only student learning but also character.

Getting IB status took the school three years to train and hire teachers and other staff and then get teach the kids, said principal Wendy Pierce. The school started work to become IB in 2006 with planning, and the school was authorized as an official IB school in February.

Sabin is at 3050 S. Vrain St., near West Dartmouth Avenue and South Sheridan Boulevard.

“We've literally changed the past three years how we've done business here,” Pierce said. “We knew we were going to have a dip, but when the increase comes, it's going to be big. Now we're starting to really zoom. The teachers are hungry for it to be higher.”

Gung Hay Fat Choy! at Force

Gung Hay Fat Choy!
Force kindergarteners ring in new year

Story and photos by Joshua Cole
(originally published in Feb. 11, 2010, Denver Herald-Dispatch)

Photo caption: Kindergarten student Estevan Renteri and the dragon (Melissa Valverde-McKibben) lead a parade of kindergarten students through the gym at Force Elementary School, Feb. 5. About 40 kindergarten students celebrated the Asian New Year with a parade through the school to ward off spirits.
Photo caption: Claudia Hauschild leads second grade students through classrooms. Wearing colored masks, the class joined the kindergarten classes' Asian New Year's parade through Force Elementary School.
School can be a scary place, with homework, tests and other uncertainties looming. Following Chinese tradition, at Force Elementary School on Feb. 5, about 40 kindergarteners tried to stem the tide of fearfulness. Wearing straw hats and silk vests, the kindergarteners paraded through the school to ward off evil spirits.

Banging cymbals, shaking tambourines, waving hand bells and striking other bells and wooden objects together, the 4- and 5-year-olds marched through classrooms chanting “Gung Hai Fat Choy” – best wishes and congratulations for a prosperous new year.

Feb. 14 marks the start of the Year of the Tiger, and the children at Force Elementary got an early start.

Kindergarten teacher Melissa Valverde-McKibben, dressed as a black dragon with a green tail and popped-out wooden eyes, lunged through classrooms leading the procession through reading classes, math classes, art classes and physical education. Claudia Hauschild's second grade class joined the parade, the students covering their faces with paper masks on a stick that they had colored in class.

Their dance through the school on a Friday afternoon was the culmination of a three-week introduction to Asian culture. During the last part of January, students had listened to Chinese songs, colored masks and made their own dragons. Leading up to the parade, students in the school had cleaned the classrooms, a symbolic house cleaning to sweep out the old and welcome in the new year.

Following the parade, the kindergarteners ate fried rice – using wooden chop sticks instead of plastic forks. After gobbling up the chicken and egg pieces, some students snatched one or two pieces of rice between the two chop sticks before teachers allowed them to finish the brown grains by using forks.

“I like eating with the chop sticks” better than the forks, said kindergarten student Ruth Maciel. “They look like straws, but they're not.”

Maciel said her celebration wasn't finished at school.

“I'm going to do this again at my house,” she said. “I'm going to get all of my brothers to come to the house and play drums.”

See Related: Force Elementary School scorecard, from the archives

Brooke McKinney shakes a tambourine. Paraders chanted “Gung Hai Fat Choy” and made noise with myriad instruments to welcome in the new year.
Natalie Escobedo, Edwin Martinez-Torres, and Joshua Garcia in the middle of a classroom.
Daisy Bahena-Sanchez, Mailyn Lemus and Melissa Canul-Sanchez in the middle of the parade line.
Kevin Bonilla-Valenzula sticks his tongue out in hopes of eating a thin piece of chicken he had picked up with chop sticks. Following the parade, students practiced eating with Asian tools instead of forks, although they were later allowed to use plastic utensils.

U.S. Dept. of Ed. assistant secretary visits Goldrick

U.S. Dept. of Ed. assistant secretary visits Goldrick
Southwest school national exemplar for bilingual education

Story and photos by Joshua Cole
(originally published in Feb. 11, 2010, Denver Herald-Dispatch)

What is the sound of a second grade learning to read?

Would you guess a room quiet except for the regular pfft of a turning page, an occasional moan or grunt or sigh induced by moving into a more comfortable sitting or lying position, the constant hum and inconsistent pangs from a heater or air conditioner, or the mumble from moving lips across a passage?

If you would guess that, you might be wrong. At Goldrick Elementary School, the sounds of second graders learning to read is much different and much louder.

But it isn't chaotic. At Goldrick Elementary School – which had high growth and high status on the district's School Performance Framework – second graders learning to read sounded like this in one classroom, Feb. 3:
• gasps from students at the front of the room, raising their hands, eager to answer a teacher's question about vocabulary
• scritch-scratch of students on the opposite side of the room writing suggested strategies to pay attention to as they're reading, such as focusing on keeping flow consistent, pausing at punctuation and adding emphasis where needed
• the shuffling of papers, folders and notebooks being stacked and unstacked around desks in the middle of the room. While holding books in front of them, students check and recheck a standing notebook with the reading strategies and a folder with vocabulary words. Meanwhile, under all of these papers, another sheet lists books that a student has read, which is moved in front of another notebook for students to write their reactions to what they just read.
• And, at all the different stations, many children are talking to each other, explaining how their strategies are effective, examples of vocabulary and good books to share. These conversations are in both English and Spanish.


Photo caption: Students at Goldrick Elementary School welcome to the lobby, on Feb. 3, Dr. Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Education. The assistant secretary visited the school while in Denver for a bilingual education conference. Students from left: Parween Arbeen, Alejandro Lopez, Nadia Williams, Roubatou Alassani and Miguel Barrios.
Another thing that students, teachers and other observers heard Feb. 3 was praise from the U.S. Department of Education. While visiting Denver for a bilingual conference, Assistant Secretary Dr. Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana talked with Denver Public Schools central administrators, Goldrick's leaders and students so that the assistant secretary could observe and learn about schools that are successful with mostly poor and non-English children.

“The biggest challenge is how we clone this school across the nation,” Melendez said. “How do you find principals, teachers and parents committed to high standards? Using assessments the way they need to be used? Ensuring that every student is taught, that they learn?”

Denver Public School Superintendent Tom Boasberg recommended Goldrick for the assistant secretary to observe due to the school's success with non-English speakers. Two-thirds of the 600 students at Goldrick are designated English Language Learners, and more than 90 percent qualify for free and reduced lunch – a federal measure of poverty. Last year, the percentage of students who scored proficient or above on the state test for reading was 73 percent while writing was 60 percent. The percentage of kids scoring so well had nearly doubled, with an increase of 32 percentage points in reading and 25 in writing. This was for students taking the test in Spanish.

“We are looking for promising practices across the country, and that's why we are at Goldrick and visiting this district. DPS is doing an excellent job with its English language learners. And Goldrick is a model of that success,” Melendez said. “I have visited similar demographics, and by all accounts this school could have been low-performing, but in contrast it is very successful. Its great teachers and leaders ensure their students are fully engaged and are learning.”

Despite high improvement among Spanish-speaking students, Goldrick Principal Maria Uribe said that her regular English-speaking students have improved at a much lower rate. English scores jumped up only six percentage points.

“My English language learners are doing fantastic work, but I need to work on my English speakers,” Uribe said during an hour-long presentation of how Goldrick is organized.

Photo caption: Dr. Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana (fourth from left), assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, observes a group of second-grade students at a vocabulary station with their teacher at Goldrick Elementary School. The assistant secretary visited the school because of its success with Spanish learners. Students on the ground, from left, Abigail Dominguez, Amy Luna, Cristian Iturbe and Pilar Salazar.
Students impressed Melendez from the moment she stepped into the school. With boys dressed in pressed pants and buttoned-down shirts with ties hanging straight under their necks, and girls in full-length dresses of bright colors, 10 students handed Melendez a rose and said hello to her in a native language. Standing in front of a poster that students school had made welcoming Dr. Melendez – the accent correctly above the second “e” in her last name, unlike another school Melendez noted she once visited – Parween Arbeen, 10 with glittering, small mirrors on her dress and head covering, said hello in Farsi, the language of her family's native Afghanistan. Roubatou Alassani said hello in Ana, the language of Togo. Miguel Barrios 6, just barely three feet tall and dressed in a dark gray shirt and a black vest, was last to shuffle to meet Melendez, handing her a clock and saying, “Buenos Dias.”

Students' eagerness to learn gave Melendez an even bigger smile as she toured the school. In second grade literacy classes, students rotated among various stations. Grouped in small, homogeneously skilled sections, students can move at their own paces, can get more individualized attention when they need it, and can work and practice independently while other students are learning something that is either too far ahead of them or something they already know.

“I saw effective teachers in the classroom working with students, really focusing around their craft and making their craft better,” Melendez said. “I saw a principal who was the catalyst for change who was committed to students that are successful. I saw a school that by many counts could have been a low-performing school. This school is successful, and they don't allow themselves to have any excuses.”

In fifth grade math and science classes, students were given freedom to come up with solutions in small groups rather than having the teacher give specific directions. In science lab, fifth graders were given a battery, a copper wire, a nail and paper clips and had to figure out how to make an electromagnet and write their results. In math class, groups had to figure out why racers at the Olympics – such as in running or skating – start at different points of the track when they're in different lanes. In the math classes, on a paper that spread across four desks, some groups drew a circle and labeled it with numbers to represent a circular track, while other groups started writing equations.

“In asking the students what they were doing, they all could tell me exactly what they were doing, what they were going to learn, what they were learning and how they were going to show what they were learning,” Melendez said. “The teachers were fully engaged with the students. I saw every student engaged.”

Melendez's goal is now to get other schools to be just as engaged to be successful.

Related post: Goldrick music

Cowboy Up! Buckaroos

Gust Elementary School's Western Program

Story by Joshua Cole
(originally published in Feb. 4, 2010, Denver Herald-Dispatch)

Jasmin Mai gallops out on a paper horse during the Grand Entry for the Gust Elementary School Western Program, Jan. 28. Dressed in cowboy hats, bandanas and other Western garb, children in Early Childhood Education classes danced and sang to Western songs. The performance is the culmination of their month-long lessons about frontier and cowboy life while the National Western Stock Show is in town.
Yahir Escobar and Anthony Escarcega dance a line dance “Step Right Up.”Victor Manuel waves a streamer to represent trick roping.Charlotte Salazar claps her hands, shakes her head and shuffles her feet as part of the “Chicken Dance.”Jatzari Adame and Anna Aguilar high step to the center of circle during “Yippee Yippee Yee.” Monserrat Esparza waves a good-bye, or a “Happy Trails.”
See related: Gust Elementary School's holiday performance, December 2009

Lincoln, feeders win grant for college-readiness program

Story by Joshua Cole
(originally published in Feb. 4, 2010, Denver Herald-Dispatch)
(From the Archives about Charles M. Schenck (CMS) Community School)

In Denver, schools have open enrollment, so parents and children can choose which schools they want to go to, including outside their neighborhood. This means that neighbors, friends and former classmates might go to different schools, especially when they transition from elementary to middle school or middle school to high school. This also means that some schools can't predict exactly what their students will need as they move ahead through the school stages because each school is different.

Abraham Lincoln High School Principal Antonio Esquibel wants to change that. He wants students and families to plan on attending Lincoln and then going off to college – and start planning to attend Lincoln and then college when they start elementary school.

Antonio Esquibel, principal, Abraham Lincoln High School
Vertical integration – when different grade levels work together – is pushed on a general level and practiced inside individual school levels. But it's rare among different levels of schools and even rarer among multiple levels.

Esquibel wants to make it happen.

And he's got money to do it and make it a formal process.

The “Lincoln Collaborative” – comprising Lincoln High School, Kepner Middle School, CMS Community School (formerly Schenck) and Godsman Elementary – was approved by Denver Public Schools to get a $375,000 grant for the next two years to work on this project.

If the schools show that the grant is working, the district will release another $550,000 of the grant, a total of about $925,000 for five years.

“This grant will allow us to focus our efforts in a lot of different areas,” Esquibel said. “It's all about getting our kids ready for college in a more systemic way. The district allows for some of this to happen. This grant gives us flexibility for us to do it the way we want to do it.”

Money will pay for extra training for teachers, for teachers and other administrators to meet, and for communication and marketing to families.

There are about 3,600 students, from pre-school through high school, enrolled at the four schools this school year, according to the executive summary.

“If I'm a parent and I have a 4-year-old and I go to CMS, I can ask, 'What can you tell me about my 4-year-old by the time he gets out of Denver Public Schools?' We can show that now in a more calculated way,” said Kepner Principal Frank Gonzales. “We feel we came up with some answers. We can tell parents, 'If you leave your child with us and they continue from fifth grade, they will have all of these skills ready by middle school. When they leave middle school, they will be prepared for high school.'”

By 2014, when the full grant would run out, Lincoln's goal is to increase the percent of students graduating from high school from 68 to 80 percent and to reduce the percent of students who need remediation when they get to college from 78 to 30 percent.

Pat Hurrieta, principal, Godsman Elementary School

The focus for these schools is due to the district's recent general failing in preparing Hispanic students for post-high school educational success. Across the district only 39 percent of eligible Hispanic students went to college from 2002-07 – compared with 71 percent of white students – and half of the Hispanic students dropped out of college within six years, according to the executive summary.

“We're all sending the same message: If you come to our schools, we're going to prepare you for college,” Esquibel said. “If parents enroll their kids in these schools, we're going to make it a priority to prepare them for college.”

Each school would have a group that would meet every other week composed of the principal, an assistant principal, 8-12 teachers, 2-3 other staff members, parents and students. A cohort of representatives from all schools plan to meet about monthly.

“As elementary schools, we pretty much stick to our elementary school. This will provide for an additional push for communication with other levels,” said Pat Hurrieta, Godsman principal.

For the extra money to kick in, all of the schools need to show improvement in learning, attendance, enrollment, behavior and safety, graduation and college remediation.

Kristin Nelson-Steinhoff, principal, CMS Community School

“What we're really going to be doing now is elevating our conversation and include our school staff,” said Kristin Nelson-Steinhoff, CMS principal. “I'm hoping we're going to be able to branch out and connect not only our teachers but also our communities. We all are working with the same community, the same set of students. If we were all on different pages and doing different things, we wouldn't serve the community as well as we could. When those transitions aren't smooth, kids are more at risk of not succeeding and dropping out from school.”

Students are more frustrated and bored when they go through a basic lesson that's exactly what they already know or learn something completely different from a structure they were comfortable and successful with before. The principals are hopeful that won't happen.

“We can figure out how we can align our curriculum better. We can know the instruction and strategies that we use,” Equibel said. “We can set expectations: what do we expect kids to do and master at the end of fifth grade and at the end of eighth grade? When students hit those grade-level milestones, they'll be prepared for the next level.”

Gonzales and Esquibel had been talking about college preparation since Esquibel took over as head of the high school about four years ago. But elementary schools weren't directly connected until Esquibel, Gonzales and a University of Denver professor met with principals of eight other schools in the fall of 2008. That initial group worked for six months determining needs, and the “Lincoln Collaborative” spawned from it.

“The biggest benefit to the community is that our kids will hear the same language from pre-school all the way through high school,” Hurrieta said. “I don’t think that’s always been a huge push in the elementary level. We always just wanted to make sure they get through middle school successfully or get to high school.

“Now we're talking about college. Our parents don’t really hear it. If they hear it for 12 years, it will be a reality.”

From the archives: CMS Comunity School

Story and photos by Joshua Cole
(originally published in Jan. 15, 2009, Denver Herald-Dispatch. Story related to one published in the Feb. 4, 2010, Denver Herald-Dispatch)

CMS Community School brings everyone together



Photo caption: English teacher Ann Larson helps second grader Alejandra Montes, a native Spanish speaker, during literacy. CMS Community School's dual-language program encourages bilingual learners.

On its 50th anniversary, Charles M. Schenck Elementary School changed its name, and it's more than just to ensure that people don't mispronounce it.

CMS Community School's new moniker reflects the growing collaboration and cooperation among and between parents, families, children, teachers and staff.

CMS applied for and got distinction from Denver Public Schools as a Beacon Learning School, earning distinctions and grants to fund various programs that promote its unique situation, including after-school activities, parent classes and seminars, and teacher training.

Teaching children means teaching parents
Although a teacher can only control what goes on in his or her classroom, support in the hours a child is at home only helps a teacher further education goals. All parents want their children to succeed, but often times, either resources may be limited or parents may not know what to do, especially parents that don't know English. In the southwest community, many parents also grew up in a different country and culture, so their expectations of school are different.

“People are eager to help their family and their kids, and it's our job to put it out there,” said CMS Community Liaison Morgain Sanchez.

At CMS, the staff and faculty have reached out to the community on a schoolwide level—not just at parent-teacher conferences, or phone calls or letters home.

All of the parent programs are headed by Sanchez, hired in 2007-08 as the liaison.

In CMS's three-tiered approach, the school provides education for parents, with English classes at different times of the day, and seminars on children's expectations and ways that parents can help with homework. In the second tier, the building is also a place for parents to learn with other families, including seminars on legal issues, exercise, health, CPR and a 12-week class focused on women issues and mental health. Between 15 and 60 parents come to each presentation.

“I like it because it's an open door for the parents,” said Armida Solis, a parent who is learning English and volunteers twice a week. “

After reaching out to help the community, the school then gives parents a chance to give back to CMS. Some parents help in a classroom multiple times per week, and most parents do something at the school at least once per week. Parents run the weekly nacho sale, a fund raiser each Friday after school, currently gaining money for a SMART board in the music classroom. About once a month, parents spend a day organizing classrooms, paper or other materials so that teachers can spend more time on planning or other activities. Annually, the parent leadership organized the carnival.

“You have to get people in the door first,” said Principal Kristin Nelson-Steinhoff. “You have to get them comfortable. You have to create that sense of community. You have to do all of those things before you can talk about schools and kids and academics.”

Photo caption: Maricrus Coria and Brenda Lopez figure out and trace geometric shapes in their first grade literacy squared classroom (Spanish speakers that learn mostly in Spanish through second grade).

Respecting language, respecting culture, respecting each other
When students first learn English in school, they get three years of sheltered learning before they're expected to be fluent enough in English to be in full English classes. Oftentimes, students become proficient readers and writers in their first language only through the third grade, while their English remains low.

“They may speak Spanish when they come out of schools, but their literacy is at a third-grade level in Spanish,” Sanchez said.

CMS is trying to build bilingual readers and writers, not only their skills but also their confidence.

“I don't want my kids to lose their culture,” said Solis, who has three children at CMS.

In CMS's dual-language program, students learn for half of the day in English and half of the day in Spanish. Students are split between two classrooms. One group is strong in Spanish, while the other is strong in English. In the morning, they learn reading, writing and math in their at-home language, and in the afternoon they switch for reading, writing and math in the other language.

For two periods of the day, half of the English-speaking students work with half of the Spanish-speaking students on either Spanish or English (the language for the shared class switches each week).

Spanish-speaking students not only learn from the teacher, but also learn and teach each other.
Sanchez's son Agustin is a native English speaker in second grade of the dual-language program.

“It's the only program where Spanish is honored,” Sanchez said. “Their Spanish is very valuable. My son is fascinated by learning Spanish, and he thinks that the Spanish speakers are geniuses, the kids that are already bilingual are unbelievable.”

Further, students learn a second language at the same rate they're learning a first language. The average English reading level for English-speaking first graders in 2008 in the dual language program at CMS was about the same for first graders at CMS in the normal English class.

In Ann Larson's second-grade afternoon literacy class, about half of the class had a hand raised, eager to share a sentence or story. Larson was teaching English for the native Spanish speakers. Saul, who had been looking at the ground, confused, anxiously raised his hand to share his breakfast. “I eat, uh, eggs (pause) for breakfast,” he got out. Ms. Larson congratulated him for sharing, and a big smile spread across his face.

“Especially the native Spanish speakers, they're talking more,” said first grade dual-language teacher Gina Torres.

Two out of four classes in kindergarten, first and second grade are dual-language classes. One other is a literacy squared class (mostly taught in Spanish for grades K-2), and the fourth classroom is taught in English. The dual-language program started only three years ago at CMS, and it is rolling through each grade until the whole school has it.

“Our vision is, our hope is to create high-level bilinguals, kids that can read and write and speak and understand both English and Spanish at high levels,” Nelson-Steinhoff said. “Those will be our future professionals.”

After the normal school hours, CMS provides dance, gym, sports as well as academic tutoring, all free.

Teachers learning and working together
CMS has also ensured that the teachers are more involved with each other and the students.

Because teachers in the dual-language program switch students in the middle of each day, they talk in the middle to make sure that they're at the same place in the curriculum and that they're not repeating anything.

In December 2007, the Colorado Department of Education audited the school, finding all strengths and weaknesses in the school. All staff members, including the custodians, helped form the action plan on the school's top goals.

Half of the teachers (20 out of 40) started last winter earning a Master's degree in bilingual education together. Instead of traveling to Boulder or to downtown Denver, each Tuesday a professor from the University of Colorado visits the school.

After declining in student population, the school has increased enrollment the last three years. Parents who move out of the neighborhood keep their children at CMS. Teachers have a high retention rate, Nelson-Steinhoff said. And parents are always roaming the school, helping teachers and children excited and happy to be in a positive, caring community.

LPS budget cuts include 100 teacher positions

Board: Sad, hard but necessary

Story by Joshua Cole
(originally published in Feb. 4, 2010, Villager)

LITTLETON — Sunken heads, sighs, moist eyes, apologies to nobody in particular.
These were the sobering sentiments on the dais at the Jan. 28 Littleton Public Schools Board of Education meeting.

The LPS Board directed central administration to arrange for about 100 teacher positions –58 classroom teachers – to be cut from the district for next year. This represents about 10 percent of the district workforce.

“For so long we've done more with less, and now we're at a point where we're going to do less with less,” said Board member Renee Howell. “There's only so long you can maintain that. It's just distasteful that we're at this level. This wasn't the top of the list of things to do. This is grovelling down at the bottom.

The district needs to cut $7.5 million from this year's budget for the 2010-11 school year. Although the Board approves the budget in May and June, principals start working on individual school budgets in February.

The district had to cut $6 million combined the previous two years in response to declining enrollment and to the recession. In the last two years, the district made up some of the shortfalls by closing two elementary schools, slowing salary increases, eliminating 20 central administration and district-wide staff positions and increasing by 50 percent athletic fees. About 30 teacher positions were cut, or 3 percent of the district's workforce.

This year, central administrators plan to take salary cuts of 8 to 25 percent, and all employees will take 3 furlough days. But teachers, whose salaries make up 81 percent of the general fund budget, couldn't be exempt any more. Supplemental teachers were targeted – AVID and 14 positions for reading specialist and instructional coach. Extra money for International Baccalaureate at an elementary and middle school will be taken away.

But classroom teachers will take up the bulk of the cuts – 58 teacher positions.

Core classes at the high school might be between 30-35 students, while third, fourth and fifth grade classes could have 25-30 students. The district plans to keep as much kindergarten, first and second grade teachers to keep those grade levels low in classroom size, said Superintendent Scott Murphy.

“It's like an onion. Gradually we'll peel off the quality pieces of what LPS means to people, and we're going to get to a part where the tears start to flow,” Murphy said. “Or it's like choosing two doors: behind one is a lion and the other is a tiger.”

Every school will have at least a half-time reading specialist position, although most had a full-time reading specialist and some had more than a full-time reading specialist. Every elementary school will also have half of an instructional literacy coach position, according to district numbers.

“It works, but we have to take it apart anyway. It's really crummy,” Howell said.

This isn't the end of budget concerns, either.

The state legislature will adopt the state budget in late April or May, and cuts for LPS might increase, to $9 million. Plus, the district might get $500,000 less in revenue from local sales taxes.

“We're just shooting darts at this point” when the district figures out the final numbers, said Board President Bob Colwell.

Howell added: “This $7.5 million is the most positive we can get. It's only going to get worse.”
Further cuts are expected for the 2011-12 school year – $3 million or more forecast by the district – and federal stimulus funds and the state's Amendment 23 will run out as well.

“Everybody talking about the economy stabilizing, that's rhetoric right now,” Murphy said. “Even if the state stabilizes, we're all at a lower level. As schools, we lag by a year or two.”

Littleton's last mill levy increase is running out. Construction and maintenance are often included in mill levies, and the average age of LPS buildings are 50 years.

“Even if we had a normal budget, we would have needed to do a mill levy election. It's a cycle, and the cycle is ending,” Howell said.

During previous budget cuts, the Board maintained a policy of keeping cuts away from classrooms, but that wasn't possible anymore. Other values are still being maintained, including keeping funds separate. For instance, money from insurance reserves can't be used for the general fund, and federal stimulus dollars aren't funding continuing expenses, like teacher positions. The district's reserves were $13.1 million last June, but only $2.8 million isn't part of a particular program or fund, which can't cover a week of general operations, said Scott Myers, chief financial officer. Also in the reserves, the TABOR emergency fund, $3.6 million, can't pay for a financial collapse and has to be repaid in six months, Murphy said.

“We have more money tied up than other districts. We don't have extra cash lying around once you get rid of the designations,” Myers said.

The district's financial office received a Meritorious Budget Award for excellence from the Association of School Business Officials. The award was released in January.

“We do have a plan. We do have high expectations. This is a big dip in the road to getting there,” said Board member Mary Nichols. “We have systems in place. We're not trying to rearrange from one place. That's what we're talking about neighbors to the north and south doing that, and they're now in a world of hurt.”

The Board, staff and superintendent are still optimistic.

“People come to this district because of the potential for their children to do well, and they stay because of the depth of programs we offer” Murphy said. “We have top teachers. I'm an optimist – I hope not blindly so. I do believe we'll find a way.”

IB not getting bang for buck
Parents and students showed up in droves to the district's Jan. 14 meeting, attempting to persuade the Board to keep International Baccalaureate at Newton Middle School and Field Elementary School.

Parents had petitioned to get the recognized program in their school, and they begged to keep it.
On Jan. 28, Colwell told them they could keep it, but the district shouldn't keep putting extra money into it, and parents shouldn't find alternative ways to pay for staffing for next year because whatever they might do might not last.

The district also hasn't seen much difference in enrollment from the IB program at the schools to warrant special treatment.

“If other schools around them can do it with their normal funding, we should find a way to do it,” Colwell said.