Author: ijsadmin (Page 5 of 12)

Jeffco’s 2020-2021 Remote Learning Plan is Non-Existent

May 13, 2020 / ijsadmin

Today, Jeffco staff will present their 2020-2021 Restart Plan to the Board of Education.

It is an unmitigated disaster.

It looks like it was developed with about one hour’s worth of thought.

The ‘Plan’ only addresses student learning from an extremely high level, principally the reduction of class sizes by splitting classes into smaller cohorts who will attend in-person classes one day a week.

With only 1 remaining Board of Education meeting prior to school restarting in the fall, this broad outline does not provide nearly enough detail for the Board of Education to perform their primary function of governance.

The plan does not address how facilities will be sanitized. It does not address how buses will be sanitized. It does not address meals. It does not address school entrance procedures. It does not address what scenarios would require the closing of a school. It does not address costs. It does not address how schools would function and interactions kept to a minimum. It does not address the continuation of Grab and Go meals. There are so many things to consider. And, while I’m not suggesting that the District have answers to all of the questions right now, they should be talking with the Board about what the issues are, what they are considering, potential costs and when they will have those answers. No detail whatsoever.

But the most egregious part of the restart plan is the complete lack of any mention of education. Absolutely none!

Students will still be participating in Remote Learning for 80% of the time. I would think that very few people think that the same quality of instruction is happening now as happened when students were in physical classrooms. Yet, we now see that Remote Learning will be happening for an extended period of time. Therefore, Remote Learning MUST be just as good as in-classroom learning. But there is no discussion of best practices, standards for teachers or standards for students. How will the District know if ALL teachers are doing their jobs and doing them effectively? How will the District identify, motivate and train poorly performing teachers, before kids are negatively impacted? How/when will the District know if students are learning at the same rate as they did in the pure classroom model? How will low performance/growth be changed to correct this? What are the projected impacts on achievement? When will assessments be administered?

So many questions regarding the most important consideration of all and it is not even addressed.

Now is the time to put the necessary changes in motion, not in August.

Glass and his band of merry subordinates just don’t get it.

What a disaster.

The Road to Recovery or Deflection of Accountability?

May 12, 2020 / ijsadmin

Yesterday, the Superintendent of Jeffco Schools, Jason Glass, released a blog post titled: ‘Road to Recovery – How Lawmakers Can Ease the Crisis for Schools’.

As with most things related to Glass:

1. The post is political in nature. There is literally nothing in the post about educating Jeffco’s kids. Specifically, Glass does not talk about what Jeffco Schools are or will be doing to mitigate the effects of the, in most cases, lower quality of remote learning education.

2. Glass makes a big effort to shift responsibility and accountability to the state and away from himself and change the way in which he is measured and evaluated.

I particularly find his plea to ‘Stabilize enrollment counts and projections’ to be interesting, especially in light of the fact that Jeffco’s CFO was already publicly stating that the District was projecting a loss of 350 students and $3M in revenue.

Because of this, it is to Jeffco’s advantage to ‘hold-harmless’ school Districts for student losses as Jeffco’s losses are likely to be proportionally more than other Districts. What Glass doesn’t take into consideration is the possibility that one District could gain students from a neighboring District, but still have an overall loss. Will funding still be the same as last year? Here’s an example: In both Denver and Jeffco 10% of students who attended in 2019-2020 do not return to physical government schools in August for Covid-19 related reasons. Yet, an additional 100 students from Jeffco transfer into Denver schools. Is Glass saying that Jeffco should be held harmless and receive the same state money for those 100 students? And what about Denver, will they receive no money for those proportionally more students? Or, will the state, already in a budget crisis, be paying twice for some students?

Additionally, if the state does ‘hold-harmless’ student count, will Glass do the same with individual schools within Jeffco? Will principals receive the same SBB as last year if their enrollments decline? Will Glass be willing to pay twice for students who choice change schools?

Does Glass really think that there will be ANY Districts in Colorado that see an overall enrollment increase? How many District’s will permanently lose students to homeschooling when parents realize that their kids might get a better education at home than they have gotten in the government schools? It’s nice to say that Districts with growing enrollment will gain additional funding, but it’s not quite as simplistic, or equitable, as Glass makes it seem.

It is nice to see Glass admit that state funding for student losses is mitigated by the state funding formula.

School enrollment rises and falls each year across the state and money sent to districts adjusts accordingly (with provisions to soften the loss of funding for districts with declining enrollment).

His CFO, Kathleen Askelson doesn’t seem to get that concept as she has repeatedly told the Board of Education that a loss of 350 students will result in a $3M loss ($8,571/per student) of revenue to the District (there are other problems with her loss claim too, as outlined here). Shouldn’t the BoE be able to trust the District’s CFO? Does Jeffco need a new one? That’s a big swing of money, when Districts are checking sofa cushions, to make misrepresentations like that.

Testing – to put it bluntly – Glass doesn’t like it. He has stated it several times in the past. And, there’s no reason why he should. Since he has been Superintendent in Jeffco schools’ academic growth and achievement scores are down. He just doesn’t want to be measured and made accountable for the pathetic Jeffco Generations Academic Performance Indicator goals he is nowhere close to achieving.

What better opportunity than a pandemic crisis to change the conversation and implement measurement systems that aren’t comparative and have the distinct possibility of not measuring anything:

While … the challenges presented by COVID-19 are disruptive, they also present opportunities for meaningful change and innovation. On assessments and accountability, the legislature should direct school districts to develop locally-designed accountability systems …

When you’re failing at your primary job of educating kids, why not just change the measurement system so that people can’t really see how badly you’re doing.

I’m sorry, but I’m not buying that and neither should Polis, the legislature or parents. We can’t let the fox guard the hen house.

There’s no doubt that Covid-19 is going to have a big impact on K-12 education for an extended period of time and Glass has made some valid points. It will not be an easy time. Systems, processes and people will need to change and adapt. Leaders will need to emerge. However, I would have preferred that Glass talk about how he intends to stop and reverse the Covid-19 slide with curriculum, standardized/best practice teaching methodologies and evaluation of teachers’ instruction practices than just one more politically slanted, shifting responsibility and avoiding accountability blog post.

Glass and Jeffco Board are Failing in their Fiduciary Responsibilities to Taxpayers

May 9, 2020 / ijsadmin

5B Bond projects to date are grossly over budget.

This past Thursday, May 7, 2020, Tim Reed, Executive Director Facilities and Construction at Jeffco Schools, told the Board of Education that as of April 30, 2020 $57M in contingency remained for the District’s 6-year Capital Improvement Program (CIP).

Given that the Contingency presented to taxpayers prior to the 2018 5B vote was $86M, $57M sounds like a reasonable amount to be remaining.

However, it was only after Director Susan Miller asked a question did Tim tell the Board that the $57M included additional Construction Contingency of $11.5M that the Board would later vote on that evening for overages in the Alameda project. This would effectively reduce the amount of remaining contingency to $46M. In addition, it seems that the additional Construction also comes with even more Soft Costs (thanks to another question by Director Miller), usually in the range of 20%. This would necessitate the use of ANOTHER $2.25M in Contingency, further reducing the available amount to under $44M.

While this is troubling, a mere 18 months into a 6 year program, there was even more troubling news in Tim’s slide. That news was that Tim and Jeffco have added the $50M in bond premium and $11M in bond interest to the Program’s Contingency, raising total Program Contingency to a whopping $147M.

It is shocking to me that Jeffco has seemingly burnt through over $100M in Contingency in only 18 months, when the total Program Contingency was presented to taxpayers as $86M.

And only Susan Miller is concerned and asks questions about this.

Brad Rupert asked Tim Reed if he agreed with the statement that it appeared that over half of the Contingency remained and Tim agreed. That statement is ONLY true if you base it on the original $86M.

Ron Mitchell flat out stated that he trusts Tim Reed, obviously too old and tired to, or maybe incapable of, performing the math to show that $100M in Contingency has already been spent.

And through all of this Jason Glass just sat silently. His non-existent leadership on full display.

Who is going to provide oversight to this spending and overages? A contingency budget is money set aside to cover unexpected costs during the construction process. Who is going to ask why nearly every project has unexpected costs and why those unexpected costs are so high? Who is going to ask why there should be an expectation that this trend will change with future projects? Who is going to ask why there should be an expectation that there will be enough money to deliver on ALL of the promises made to individual schools and taxpayers?

Who is going to take their fiduciary responsibility seriously? Glass? Don’t count on it. The Board of Education? Susan Miller is asking the right questions. Brad Rupert is asking questions, but they leave too much wiggle room for Tim Reed. Susan Harmon and Brad Rupert are just District fan boys who never question anything the District does or says, so don’t count on them.

The District and taxpayers have already suffered from this fiscal mismanagement (What to do with $50M in bond premium). It’s time to put an end to the reckless and harmful spending propagated by Glass and Reed to ensure that ALL projects can be completed on time with the initially planned scope and the money taxpayers provided.

The Jeffco Schools CFO is either Incompetent or Trying to Hide Something

April 10, 2020 / ijsadmin

It is simply not true when the Jeffco CFO tells the Board that an anticipated loss of 350 students will result in a loss of $3M in revenue or $8,571 per student.

This statement is predicated on 2 assumptions:

1. That all revenue the District receives is based on student count

2. That a loss of students results in an immediate loss of revenue

Neither of those two assumptions is true.

1. Only state revenue to the District is based on student count. Local property tax and ownership tax receipts to the District are NOT based on student count. The District will get the same amount of revenue no matter the student count from local property taxes and ownership taxes. Only approximately $380M of funding comes from the state which means the state funds only $4,700 per student. Therefore, the only revenue loss would be a maximum of $1.7M, NOT $3M.

2. However, Colorado mitigates the loss of revenue due to loss of students by basing District funding on the 5 year average of student count if student count declines. Therefore, when a District loses students, the real first year loss of state funding is only 1/5 of the actual student loss count. In this case 70 students or approximately $350,000, in the first year – 2020-2021. That’s a far cry from $3M that Askelson is telling the Board.

Finally, Askelson’s gloom and doom presentation also only shows one side of the Accounting ledger. Her presentation is based on the assumption that a loss of revenue results in absolutely ZERO reduction in costs. Again, this is a false assumption. Individual schools are ‘paid’ by the District on a per student basis via SBB funding. At approximately $5,500 per student for SBB (page 24 of Budget) and a loss of 350 students, the District’s expenses are reduced by approximately $1.9M.

In conclusion, instead of a $3M loss of revenue, Jeffco, in Year 1, only loses approx. $350,000 in state revenue but also has a corresponding cost reduction of $1.9M, for a net positive impact of $1.5M. Taking into account that Askelson told the Board they would be losing $3M the difference is $4.5M, or more than enough to prevent a furlough day, or prevent the closing of schools.

Brag Tweet Once You Have Something to Brag About – Jeffco

April 5, 2020 / ijsadmin

On April 2, 2020, Tammy Schiff, the Chief Communications Officer of Jeffco Schools, brag Tweeted that Jeffco Schools was serving 13.000 meals a day to kids. In the context of the Tweet, that sounds like a large number, something to be proud of.

However, there’s much more to the story.

First of all, those 13,000 meals consisted of breakfast and lunch for 2 days, in essence 4 meals per person. That means that Jeffco schools was only serving about 3,300 students a day.

Yet, Jeffco has approximately 25,000 Free and Reduced Lunch students in the District. That means Jeffco is really only serving about 12% of the eligible FRL population.

I don’t think that is something to be especially proud of.

I think that Jeffco can do better in getting meals into the hands of the kids who need them.

Here’s a suggestion: Make the meals easier to get for kids and families who might have transportation problems. Ramp up meal production, either at the current facilities or by opening more. Then use District buses, and currently being paid idle drivers, to take meals to each school complex in the District for distribution. And, if this hasn’t happened already, ensure that each kid’s parents are personally contacted to make them aware of this.

Once the District implements this, then Tammy will be able to Tweet that every kid’s parents were personally contacted, meals are more widely available and in all likelihood, she’ll have an even bigger number to talk about.

Set an example for other Districts to follow.

Note: After initially writing this, Denver Public Schools implemented something similar. Denver now has 60 distribution points, many mobile from buses. Jeffco has a mere 12.

What to do with Jeffco’s $50M 5B Bond Windfall?

March 20, 2020 / ijsadmin

When Jeffco went to the financial market to sell bonds for its Capital Improvement Program, interest rates were low. Due to the way the bond was structured, this allowed Jeffco to obtain $50M in unexpected funding, or bond premium, for essentially the same costs.

But what to do with that extra $50M?

In its 5B bond campaign Jeffco leadership stated (falsely) that the District had $1.3 billion in deferred maintenance needs. So why not use that $50M to address some of those needs that the $546M of 5B money couldn’t?
Replace several of the schools that were slated for replacement in the 2016 failed Bond proposal such as Kyffin, Green Gables, Fletcher Miller or Parr.
Ensure there is equity. Once 5B projects are completed there will still be several schools that have obvious FCI values much higher than other schools. For example, Vivian will have a FCI of over 44% while Stober, Colorow, Muhlholm and Lumberg will all have FCIs above 22%, well above the average FCI for District schools. Why not use some of the bond premium to actually provide the equity that Jeffco is always so quick to talk about?
Reduce the amount of Capital Transfer from the General Fund that will be needed each year. The Capital Improvement Program is predicated on receiving $23M per year from the General Fund. It looks like there is already a shortfall this year of $2.1M. So, as a minimum, use the $50M bond premium to reduce the pressure on the General Fund. Spread out over the remaining 5 years of the Capital Improvement Project that would mean a reduction of $10M from the General Fund each year.

This $50M is an OPPORTUNITY to use taxpayers’ money to over deliver and make some additional enhancements to Jeffco.

To do anything less will be fiscal mismanagement, demonstrating that Jeffco is not capable of adequately managing the money taxpayers trusted it with. It will also make it more difficult to get Bonds passed in the future.

Do not use this $50M as added contingency for a program that already has $86M or 15% contingency built into it!

Board Governance, Fiduciary Responsibility, Transparency and 5B Accountability

March 2, 2020 / ijsadmin

At the end of January, Tim Reed gave a rosy assessment during his Capital Improvement Program overview.

Unfortunately, things may not be as rosy as he wants everyone to believe.

Tim Reed did not tell the Board of Education, that based on the District’s project estimates presented to voters in 2018 that there are currently at least 5 schools over budget. And, this is just using costs from Board approved contracts.

These overages will be much higher when prorating District wide contracts for IT and Security, allocating Track upgrade costs and any contracts under $500,000 that are not readily publicly available. In addition, it is highly unlikely that these will be the last costs at these schools.

A mere sixteen months after 5B approval, this is not a good track record.

These 5 schools include:

Three Creeks
- Flipbook Estimate – $4,697,000
- Contracts Awarded – $5,044,317 + Track(from $19.5M contract), IT and Security Upgrades
Wilmott
- Flipbook Estimate – $3,894,141
- Contracts Awarded – $6,694,585 + IT and Security Upgrades
Columbine HS
- Flipbook Estimate – $14,129,966
- Contracts Awarded – $15,548,043 + Track(from $18M contract), IT and Security Upgrades
Arvada HS
- Flipbook Estimate – $14,765,828
- Contracts Awarded – $15,548,043 + Track(from $19.5M contract), IT and Security Upgrades
Conifer HS
- Flipbook Estimate – $9,820,651
- Contracts Awarded – $9,782,705 + Track(from $19.5M contract), IT and Security Upgrades

With $86M in Contingency, $50M in Bond Premium and a few $M saved from cheating Charter schools from their fair share, some overage MAY be alright. But, does the Board KNOW that it is alright? Will there be enough money left to deliver on the promises to the schools which will not be getting work done until the end based on this current rate of overages and use of contingency funds?

And what about the now known extras that were not identified in the Flipbook? Extras such as $7M for the North Transportation Hub, or $4.225M for Trailblazer Stadium or even $750,000 for Project Management (that’s over $11M so far). What else is out there? That eats into the Contingency and Premium pretty quickly.

Doesn’t the Board have a Governance and Fiduciary Responsibility to ensure that everything that was promised to taxpayers is delivered?

I would think that the Board can’t deliver on that promise unless it begins looking at contracts as part of the big picture, starting at how they fit within the Flipbook budget of each school. Then the Board needs to understand how each school fits within the Bond’s total budget. Continuing to approve contracts piecemeal, one at a time, does not give anyone an idea of how spending fits within the overall Bond budget. This is how surprises happen and money runs out.

All decent Project Managers track projects’ budgets. In this case, it could be as simple as tracking the following and have staff report on this to the Board with every contract approval request:

Original Flipbook Estimate
Contracts Awarded to Date
Estimate of Remaining Work
Total Variance from Original Estimate

It would seem that some of the Board’s primary functions are Governance and Fiduciary Responsibility. Without looking at each contract as part of the overall budget, the Board is failing, especially since so many school projects are already over budget.

In addition, the Board has repeatedly stated their goal of public transparency. By allowing staff to continue to merely give rosy 5B assessments without including project budget tracking numbers will mean that the Board is failing in that aspect too,

It’s time for the Board to exercise their Governance and Fiduciary Responsibilities and require District staff to fully disclose budget numbers in a manner that provides accountability to the very specific and detailed public promises made in the District’s 5B Flipbook.

Jason Glass and Civil Discourse

February 14, 2020 / ijsadmin

Jason Glass’s recent blog post on Civility and Civil Discourse and his actions clearly demonstrate that he doesn’t like criticism – AT ALL!

First, he shuts down his Jeffco Generations Facebook group which provided a forum for discussion about all things Jeffco schools related. Then he publishes a blog which stated his “rules of engagement” on civic issues.

Yet, once again, his actions speak louder than the words he writes.

It’s nice of him to talk about civil discourse, except when he doesn’t follow his own “rules of engagement”. With a history of blocking Twitter accounts, suppressing Public Comment at Board of Education meetings and not publishing letters to the Board of Education, all of which are Protected Speech under the 1^st Amendment, he has shown that he isn’t interested in civil discourse at all.

In addition, on numerous occasions, Glass CHOSE to not engage in IMPORTANT conversations on his now shutdown Jeffco Generations Facebook group. Glass decided that he just didn’t want to be involved in civil discourse on topics such as Jeffco schools reading proficiency, 5B Bond questions and District 1^st Amendment violations. And when the questions and discussions got too uncomfortable, he just shut it down.

If Glass truly wants to shut down criticism and critics he needs to do just a few simple things:

Deliver on his promises. Setting Academic Performance Indicators in Jeffco Generations and not trending toward those goals is not inspiring and justifiably leaves him open to criticism and critique. Meeting the stated objectives leaves critics nothing to criticize.
Be fully transparent. Tell the whole story – All of the time. Don’t just tell part of the story as happened with 5B. Don’t allow staff to tell the Board of Ed that poor performances during Spring 2019 testing were expected. Fully own up to the short comings. Until that happens any and all criticism is justified.
Finally, show some respect to the people with whom he disagrees. Condescendingly and disrespectfully calling people “trolls” clearly demonstrates he truly doesn’t want civil discourse if it exposes his short comings.

Yes, actions do speak louder than words.

Glass has spoken loud and clear. If he doesn’t agree with you he will shut you down by any means available. He has shown time and time again that he has no qualms about publicly shaming and labeling his critics and that he will shut down any available avenues for that criticism, even if that means violating individuals’ 1^st Amendment rights.

Civil Discourse in Jeffco? Only if Jason Glass agrees with you.

Glass’s Yearly Evaluation – A Pat on the Back Instead of a Kick in the Ass!

November 29, 2019 / ijsadmin

With falling academic achievement and atrocious growth rates substantially below state averages, it was interesting, and troubling, to read the Board’s recent yearly evaluation of Jason Glass.

Most troubling was the Board’s evaluation on what I consider to be the most important metric of the evaluation: Standard 5 Instruction. The narrative of this standard states: ‘Your rating on this standard reflects the disappointing drop in the district’s growth data on CMAS.’ Glass was given an Overall Rating on this standard as ‘Professional’.

For the Board to state that the drop is ‘disappointing’ is nothing but an understatement. When overall District growth rates for both ELA and Math are 3% points below state averages and barely above the growth rates for Adams 14, a District essentially taken over by the state, I would think words such as unacceptable, atrocious, horrific, pathetic and kid damaging would be more appropriate. Is the Board serious about the most important responsibility of the Superintendent? Let’s call a spade a spade here – Jason Glass is failing in his primary responsibility – ensuring kids get an excellent education in Jeffco schools. Yet, the Board gave Glass an overall rating of ‘Professional’. What does that mean? At first glance, ‘Professional’ means to me that someone is doing their job in an acceptable manner. – not great, but not bad. How, when achievement and growth are so bad, can someone be evaluated as ‘Professional’? If I was evaluating someone and they delivered results this bad, you can bet that the BEST rating they would have earned would have been ‘Needs Improvement’, but unfortunately, that’s not the case in Jeffco, with this Board, led by Ron Mitchell.

The Ethics Standard review is also questionable, particularly the rating of ‘Exceptional’ – ‘Your commitment to high ethical standards continues to be a strength of your performance … This trust is built upon your honesty, integrity, and values.’ Was there integrity and honesty in the way that Charters were cheated out of 5B (and probably 5A) monies? Absolutely not! What about the fact that over $10M in 5B funding projects was not accounted for in the highly touted FlipBook? Were projects, like Trailblazer stadium renovation, being intentionally hidden? And what about Kris Schuh’s we ‘anticipated an implementation dip’ excuse he gave to the Board in an attempt to explain falling achievement and growth scores in September? Glass didn’t challenge or attempt to correct this obviously false statement. Or, Tom McDermott, telling the Board that 2019 PARCC data is ‘similar’ to 2018 data when that data actually shows a decline or the misleading statement that Jeffco’s results are higher than the state averages when they should be higher based on different FRL populations . Or even Matt Flores telling the Board that SAT scores have been stable, when they’ve actually been falling. Deception and deceit are rampant in Jeffco and Glass gets an evaluation rating of ‘Exceptional’? The Board has been duped. They really need to open their eyes and understand what is really going on with Glass and District staff.

It’s also interesting to look at the Recommendations the Board gave to Glass. You would think that Recommendation Number 1, the top recommendation, would be related to raising achievement and growth. No, not in Jeffco. Recommendation Number 1 is: ‘Continue to improve the negotiation process with JCEA’. Are you kidding me? That’s the Number 1 recommendation, not something related to educating kids? Is this because JCEA was able to out negotiate Glass and get an additional 1% raise that the Board hadn’t budgeted for? Or is this because of all of the letters the Board got, from teachers, about the negotiations? In the end, this only shows where the current Board’s priorities are – Adults over Kids, Teachers over Students. Shameful.

Recommendations 2 and 3 had nothing to do with education either – essentially more collaboration and dealing with the impending budget crisis.

Recommendation number 4 was also interesting: ‘Identify additional ways to measure student success.’ This is essentially telling Glass that if you can’t meet the state defined measures of academic success – which he can’t – then go out and make up your own criteria. Change the narrative from something you and the District are failing at to something new that you can say you’re succeeding at. How about one of Glass’s famous surveys with leading questions administered unscientifically using Survey Monkey? Yep, that should do it – something that only the Kool-Aid drinking true believers have access to and will complete, excluding those people in the District who may not have access to computers or for those people for whom English is a Second Language and who are currently being hurt the most by District’s failures.

It’s a shame. The Board’s review of Glass seems like a pat on the back when it really should have been a kick in the ass as kids continue to be failed by Jeffco schools.

Jason Glass Never Ceases to Spin, Deceive and Deflect from His Responsibility

November 16, 2019 / ijsadmin

I found Glass’s latest Advance Jeffco blog post (https://advancejeffco.blog/2019/11/08/breaking-down-the-2019-election/) regarding the election to be a carefully crafted spin on the election and his side-stepping of accountability for the state of education in Jeffco Schools and almost an implied threat to the new Board members..

On the most important topic of the district’s instructional philosophy Glass stated: “our board going forward will need to wrestle with the choice between following through on building an educational experience emphasizing real-life experiences or an approach focused on standardized test scores.“

This is just flat-out wrong and an attempt by Glass to distance himself from any accountability whatsoever.

Why can’t the District provide an educational experience emphasizing real-life experiences and ALSO ensure that kids have mastered the fundamental educational skills they will need to succeed in the world? This is NOT an Either-Or choice as Glass would like people to believe.

Let’s look at this from another perspective. Schools exist to educate students. Fundamentally, schools need to teach students to be able to read and do math (among many other things). As parents and taxpayers, how do we know if schools are doing their jobs? There has to be some form of measurement. To me, it is pretty simple, if kids are being taught what the state has determined they should be taught, then their test scores will reflect that. People can complain about tests and evaluations all they want, but isn’t that what real-life is about? Aren’t tests one of the real-life experiences that Glass is talking about? Aren’t sports competitions merely an evaluation? Aren’t corporations’ quarterly and yearly earning results really a measurement of how a corporation is doing? Don’t many people have some measurable objectives at their place of work? Is there a better way to understand the academic growth and achievement of our kids and a way to hold schools, and Superintendents, accountable than through the use of standardized tests? Can’t schools practice those tests and use those practice tests as a learning experience? I always found that I learned a lot when my test results were reviewed. And, even as Glass talks about this he himself put numerous Academic Indicators of Success, based on standardized tests, into the Jeffco Generations document he likes to talk about. Are those goals suddenly meaningless now that the indicators are trending in the wrong direction and he’s looking bad?

Glass is getting paid good money to ensure our kids get an excellent education. On a high, conceptual level it sounds great that real-life experiences should be part of the education process and that kids need more skills than just reading and math. HOWEVER, don’t kids first need those fundamentals as a foundation for Glass’s Deeper Learning? When only 50% of Jeffo’s students are reading at grade level and even fewer are at math grade level, I think that the emphasis, first and foremost, in Jeffco should be on those fundamental skills. In addition, have Glass and Jeffco defined what “real-life” experiences every student should have before graduating? Is there a measure or check-list of those? How will we as parents and taxpayers know if this effort is successful? There have to be definitions and measures of success, otherwise, it is just a bunch of meaningless words that are written on a fancy looking Powerpoint presentation.

Regarding the closure of neighborhood schools, I would like to know how many of these are K-5 schools that were put at risk of closing due to the moving of 6^th graders to Middle School? Did the Board consider this when they made that decision? Making the K-5, 6-8 model decision should have come with the implied long-term support for the small(er) K-5 schools that the Board created.

The next part of Glass’s narrative was off-putting and disturbing to me, particularly his use of the terms “factions” and “divisive partisan politics”. Is it “divisive partisan politics” when people have different philosophies on improving education? Can’t, and shouldn’t there be, real discussions on philosophies of education and how to improve our schools? It might be one thing if the measurable results in the District were great, but the truth is, they aren’t. That means that there NEEDS to be open and full-ranging discussions, particularly since the path Glass is now taking the District is unproven and has so far yielded negative results. That’s not being ‘divisive’, that’s doing what’s best for our kids!

So, the real challenges before the Board members are how they do what is best for our kids and community. How do we as parents and taxpayers measure if Glass and the Board are successful (the number of positive social media posts don’t count)? How much longer do we continue to fool ourselves, or be fooled, into thinking that Jeffco schools are great when there are so many kids who are being failed? Shouldn’t proven and science based approaches be used in our schools instead of nice “sounding” philosophies that haven’t been proven anywhere else? In the tech field, people would call the path that Glass is leading us to be on the bleeding edge – usually not a good place to be.

Glass also expounded on Jeffco 1A with the same type of over-simplification he decried about people in categorizing the Board candidates. Glass wrote that 1A “would have allowed the county to keep (and not refund) $16.1 million in revenues collected over the formulaic cap set in TABOR.” However, that was only for the first year, as in the 2^nd year that amount could have been $32M. That was only part of the deception of 1A, and it looks like Glass fell for that.

Glass continued his attempted deception of Jeffco readers with his comment regarding CC when he wrote: “As such, Jeffco Public Schools will begin making budget forecasts for next year and into the future without these incremental funds.”

Again, a misleading over-simplification. CC funds would have been variable. The amount, and even if there would be any available at all, would change yearly. You can’t really budget for that funding into the future if you don’t know if it will even be there.

It might be nice if every now and then Glass wrote about the real education issues in Jeffco instead of his continued pandering to the white, activist soccer moms whose kids can read. But, if he did that he would have to admit to his failure to make improvements and get more than 50% of Jeffco students reading above grade expectations. It’s obviously easier, and more financially rewarding, for him to talk politics than improve education.