Category: Jeffco Public Schools (Page 7 of 7)

Glass Deceives & Misrepresents with claims of District’s $1.3B in Deferred Maintenance

September 3, 2018 / ijsadmin

Before I start, I think it is important to say that I agree that there are significant capital needs in Jeffco.

However, I don’t like to be misled, or deceived with regard to the scope of those needs.

Recently, I’ve heard numerous Jeffco Schools related people, including Jason Glass and Ali Lasell say that Jeffco schools has $1.3B in “Deferred Maintenance” (at 4:44 of A Community Guide from Dr. Glass, and at 6:32 of Talking Ed: Jeffco’s Future Funding ).

However, their claims are far from the truth!

There is a very specific definition of “Deferred Maintenance” in the business world. The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board defines “Deferred Maintenance” as maintenance and repairs that were not performed when they should have been or were scheduled to be and which are put off or delayed for a future period.

The key point is that Deferred Maintenance is maintenance that was delayed. This definition does not discuss, or include, maintenance that may be scheduled to be performed in the future.

I looked at Jeffco’s 2016-2017 Facility Condition Assessment, the latest I could find, to determine how the District came up with $1.3B in Deferred Maintenance. I could not even come close.

First, the document discusses $575M in 2016-17 facilities “needs”. $440M of this comes from facilities and another $135M in Educational Adequacy deficiencies.

Yet, even that $575M total is not “Deferred Maintenance”. $475M of this amount is classified as Priorities 3, 4 and 5. That means that they are costs expected sometime in the future, not maintenance that was deferred.

Since Priority 3 is for 2-3 years in the future and consists of $234M, I will assume that this has all been deferred and can be added it to the Priority 1 and 2 categories of 2016-17. This gives a total of $334M in deficiencies costs in 2018-19.

The other component of facilities costs this document describes are Life Cycle Renewal costs. These costs are related to things such as roofing, heating, plumbing, stairs and elevators. Costs related to this are projected yearly for 5 years out. These costs were projected to be the following:

2018	2019	2020	2021	2022
$51M	$108M	$94M	$73M	$43M

Assuming that all Life Cycle costs for 2017-18 and 2018-19 were deferred, we can add another $159M to the District’s Deferred Maintenance to come up with a generous estimate of $493M in Deferred Maintenance costs.

A generous $500M in Deferred Maintenance is NOT the $1.3B in Deferred Maintenance that Glass and Board members keep repeating. Their claims are outright false!

What Glass, Lasell and others are saying is inaccurate, misleading and deceptive and brings the credibility of Glass and the Board into question.

How can they expect taxpayers to trust them and approve a needed Bond package when the numbers they repeatedly discuss are just plain wrong?

Jeffco – Taken for a ride by Jason Glass

August 22, 2018 / ijsadmin

Recently, Jason Glass did a video interview with Glenn Wallace of Colorado Community Media as they took a trail ride together on mountain bikes.

During that interview, the real Jason Glass was revealed, and it wasn’t pretty.

At 1:55 of the interview, while taking a break from riding, Wallace steered the conversation to a Twitter parody account called @NotJeffcoJason, an account that compares Glass to “Edward Longshanks (a nickname for King Edward I of England), reincarnated in Jeffco.” In a humorous, casual vein, he asked Glass what he thought of it, using a series of silly questions designed to elicit chuckles.

Glass replied that it is his policy to ignore, rather than listen to, accounts with differing opinions than his. He took a pretty strong swipe at those accounts when he said that @NotJeffcoJason was like “a lot of fake Twitter, fake social media, fake news accounts that are around in Jeffco”

First, Glass doesn’t understand the difference between a parody and fake news. If someone does a parody it’s not fake news, it’s a parody. Once Glass starts labeling parodies as “fake news” he starts seeming a lot like Trump.

Glass’s admission that he ignores people in the District who have different perspectives than he does is particularly appalling, especially when he starts accusing them of lying and exaggerating – “they can lie, they can exaggerate, they can say things and then they hide behind this false persona.”

There are just so many disturbing things about this admission. First, he basically said that he doesn’t care about anyone’s opinion except those people who agree with him. He also essentially said that their opinions were all fake news and therefore, essentially meaningless and worthless. But at the same time his supporters such as Support Jeffco Kids spew more fake news than anyone (here, here and here).

In addition, Glass doesn’t just ignore people, he actively blocked people whose opinions he didn’t want to hear on Twitter. He did this until he was informed that a Federal Judge ruled that Trump was violating people’s First Amendment rights when Trump did the same thing, and that ruling applied to public servants, including him.

And this attitude is really counterproductive. Throughout my career as a leader and top executive for a number of organizations, I’ve found that listening to and incorporating differing opinions only makes an organization better. Maybe Glass hasn’t recognized that fact yet. Finally, I think that accusing people of lying is inappropriate and uncalled for, especially by someone in his position.

Glass also took offense to people using fake personas online, instead of using their real names. But there are plenty of Glass supporters who do the same thing, such as “Support Jeffco Kids” and “Jeffco School Board Watch”. Why does Glass apply a double standard?

Personally, I don’t hide behind a fake persona (Glass knows who writes this blog). Yet Glass hid behind some BS interpretation of a District policy to prevent me from expressing opinions he didn’t like at public Board meetings. That’s not just “ignoring”, that’s actively “preventing” the expression of differing opinions. I actually consider his actions in that regard to be another violation of my First Amendment rights, but Glass looks at marginalizing and shutting people down as “things getting better in Jeffco.”

Glass came to this District claiming to be someone that would talk with and listen to everyone. Through his first year on the job he has done the exact opposite. He ignores, marginalizes and blocks anyone who has a differing opinion with his many Trump-like actions.

The only people he listens to are his own disciples and the only people taken for a ride with Glass are the people in Jeffco who unquestioningly believe everything he says.

District says recent 1st Amendment ruling does not provide precedent in Colorado

June 4, 2018 / ijsadmin

With a recent ruling by a Federal Court judge in support of 1^st Amendment rights relating to President Trump’s pernicious and unconstitutional practice of blocking critics on Twitter, I sent an email to the Board of Education relating to Jason Glass’s similar, Trump-like, behavior.

While Jason Glass coincidentally unblocked my account, the response from Amanda Stevens of the Board was a bit puzzling.

Amanda’s response was:

“Dr. Glass and district leadership enthusiastically support the 1^st Amendment to the United States Constitution. In fact, even though this Southern District Federal Court decision does not provide precedent for Colorado, I have confirmed with Craig Hess, district legal counsel, that our practices are in compliance with Justice Naomi Reice Buchwald’s decision.”

And, what exactly does that mean, Amanda?

Are you saying that this Federal ruling has no applicability in Jeffco schools and Colorado? Why then did the plaintiffs’ attorney in this case say the ruling “should guide all of the public officials who are communicating with their constituents through social media.”

And Amanda, in light of this ruling and if Jason Glass is blocking constituents on Twitter, how can you say that the District’s “practices are in compliance with Justice Naomi Reice Buchwald’s decision”?

You can only say that if Jason Glass unblocked people whose viewpoints he didn’t want to hear before you sent a reply.

The fact of the matter is that Jason Glass was violating the constitutional rights of taxpayers in this District. However, in the interest of protecting him, you can’t admit it and go on to provide some meaningless mumbo-jumbo from world renowned constitutional law expert (just joking), Jeffco Schools legal counsel Craig Hess.

Guess what – the law applies to Jason Glass too!

Taxpayers deserve an open and fact-filled discussion on teacher pay

May 2, 2018 / ijsadmin

Over the past few weeks we’ve heard many things regarding school funding and teacher salaries.

We’ve heard that:

Colorado teacher salaries are 46^th in the nation.
Colorado teachers have an average annual salary of $46,506.
Teachers leave the teaching profession because of low pay.
Teacher pay has not kept up with inflation since the Great Recession.

And while all of these statements may be true in some context, in Colorado teacher pay is set at the school district level.

That effectively means that what is happening at the national, or state levels, may or may not be true in Jeffco.

Therefore, Jeffco taxpayers deserve to hear specific data in relation to their teachers so that they can make informed, and local, decisions regarding school funding and teacher pay.

For example:

What is the change in Jeffco per pupil funding since the Great Recession?
What is the average teacher salary in Jeffco? Can total compensation be quantified?
How many teachers in Jeffco have salaries which have not kept up with inflation since the Great Recession?
Why, with 2 JCEA negotiated contracts, increased state funding, budget cuts and a school closing, are there still teachers with salaries that have not kept up with inflation?
How many teachers in Jeffco have salaries that have increased by more than 125% of the rate of inflation since the Great Recession?
What would be the total cost of salary increases, or one-time payments, to ensure all teachers have salaries, or compensation, ensuring cost-of-inflation equivalency since the Great Recession?
How would these numbers change if the 2010 mandated 3.5% increase in SAED is factored in, since SAED is to be funded by moneys otherwise available for employee wage increases?
What is the exact number of teachers who leave teaching in Jeffco because of low pay?

It’s easy to throw around numbers that may, or may not be in context.

However, in the interest of full transparency I believe that it is important for both Jeffco schools and the JCEA to have an open and fact-filled discussion with Jeffco specific numbers so that taxpayers can fully and completely understand the issues as they pertain to our teachers. This includes an opportunity for taxpayers to ask pertinent and relevant questions.

What do you think John Ford and Jason Glass?

Can you provide full transparency and make this happen?

An Extraordinary Lack of Leadership from Jason Glass

April 21, 2018 / ijsadmin

Can anyone give me an example of any organization that would ALLOW its employees to force it to shut down its core functions merely because its employees WANTED to take a day off?

Don’t almost all organizations require supervisor approval if an employee requests a day off?

Don’t (competent) supervisors subsequently ensure that the organization has adequate staffing during the employee’s requested off time prior to granting approval?

What does that say about Jeffco schools then when District and School Leadership essentially ALLOWED sufficient numbers of teachers and staff to take “personal” days on April 26^th “forcing” Jason Glass to shut down the District for “safety” reasons?

In my mind, it means 3 things:

That Jason Glass is an extraordinarily weak leader. He clearly demonstrated that he doesn’t have the will or courage to stand up for students and perform his PRIMARY job responsibility.
It clearly demonstrates that students are NOT the Number 1 priority of Jason Glass or the District. The District has one job, and that is to provide a quality education to the District’s students. How does that happen when teachers, and students, are not in class? And what about the 31% of the District’s Free and Reduced Lunch students? Where are they getting their meals that day? It certainly seems that from the actions of teachers taking a “personal” day and Glass shutting down the District, that students are NOT the Number 1 priority.
Jason Glass and teachers don’t care about working parents. What are working parents supposed to do if their kids aren’t in school? Jason Glass and the teachers essentially told these parents that they want them to take their own day off work, take their own “personal” day, or a day without pay so that teachers could “protest”. Selfish, selfish, selfish!

Who is running the school District? Certainly not Jason Glass. And after not standing up for the students and parents, and by extension the taxpayers who pay his salary to ensure kids get an education, JCEA knows that they run the District and can do whatever they want in the future.

What happened here demonstrates an extraordinary lack of leadership. It sets an extremely bad precedent. What will JCEA do next if they now know there are no repercussions for coordinated job related actions? While Jason Glass might agree with some of the funding related issues, it is his JOB to look out for the students, and their education, FIRST.

Finally, why haven’t we heard from the School Board? Actually, that’s not a hard question to answer as we already know the Board is owned by the union.

It is just shocking that there is so much lack of leadership, particularly from Jason Glass. This would just NOT happen in any other organization that is truly serious about its core mission.

Innovation Fund – Another poorly thought out idea by Glass

January 14, 2018 / ijsadmin

The difference between a Visionary and Operational organizational leader became painfully evident at this week’s Board meeting.

I agree that an Innovation Fund, managed well, has its place and could derive benefits for the District.

However, once again, as is becoming a common theme with Glass, the implementation details were poorly thought out and demonstrate the operational inexperience and incompetence of Glass and his District staff.

First, even though this may be a good idea, you don’t raid District reserves that have already been depleted by adding seats for the District’s controversial move to a K-5, 6-8 configuration. This puts reserves at the very low end of the recommended level. It also seems extremely dangerous to me, given the length, and now velocity of the economic upturn. As someone who has experienced multiple downturns, that scares me every day. Therefore, instead of planning for the inevitable, as prudent and experienced leaders would do, Glass, and the Board, have put the District into a position of financial weakness if the economy collapses in the short term. All of this for an idea that is not an absolute necessity.

Second, I don’t understand why this needed to happen so quickly, or even how there is any chance that fund uses will show results by the end of this school and fiscal year. Grant recipients won’t be announced until the week of March 5th. This means that awardees will only have approximately 2 months to use the funds and show results before the end of the year. I don’t see how anything meaningful can come about in that short of time. The proposed timeline for 2018-19 is even more puzzling. For that school year recipients won’t be announced until November. While this provides roughly a semester for awardees to implement and obtain results, it completely ignores full-year, or first semester innovation opportunities. When added together, wouldn’t it be better to slow this process down and award grants in the April time frame for the 2018-19 school year? Wouldn’t this give grant awardees planning time that would better ensure the success of their ideas? To account for the District’s budget cycle, grants could be awarded contingent upon the Board approving 2018-19 Operating Funds, removing the necessity of depleting Reserves. If during the upcoming Budget cycle the Board prioritizes other District needs higher than the Innovation Fund, then the awardees do not receive their grants. They would know by June, still have time for planning and eliminating the need to pull from reserves.

All of this raises the question: “What’s more important in Jeffco, a Visionary or Operational leader?” Clearly, Glass wants to be a Visionary, and with this recommendation he wanted a quick “win”. However, he has demonstrated time and time again with his poorly thought out ideas (e.g. no clue regarding implications of and the difficulty of starting an Arts Academy, a HS GT RIE committee that utterly failed in its stated purpose of finding program sustainability and now a poorly thought out Innovation fund created from District reserves) that he and his District staff have no clue, are incompetent and are out of their league operationally.

A Vision is nice, but Glass and his staff have proven that they won’t have the ability to implement it, merely reinforcing DeliverEd’s findings. I guess we shouldn’t expect anything less as the Board hired someone from a District 12 times smaller than Jeffco and without the operational experience necessary to manage a district the size of ours.

District Staff Hides Fact MAP data shows decrease in Growth Rates

January 13, 2018 / ijsadmin

At the January 11^th Board meeting, Matt Flores and his staff of PhD’s went way out of their way to hide the true facts regarding Winter MAP data.

Starting out by saying they were extremely happy with the data, on several occasions they highlighted that the Growth data was better than the growth data in 2015-16, except for 4^th Grade Math.

Yet, the true facts are that Reading growth rates stayed the same or decreased in 4 out of 8 grades in comparison to 2016-2017 and decreased in 6 out of 8 grades for Math.

That’s not a trend we should be seeing!

In addition, Matt destroyed any credibility he had by trying to snow the Board into believing that 4^th grade growth rates in Jeffco were worse in comparison to 2015-16 because 4^th grade math concepts were harder. He completely ignored the fact that 4^th grade math concepts were harder for EVERYONE taking the MAP. Nice try Matt, but after that, why should we ever believe anything he ever says?

The Board, and Matt and his team, should have focused on the disturbing downward growth rate trend. Instead, Matt had his PhDs work overtime to perpetuate the “everything is going great in Jeffco” myth. As a result, no action gets taken and our kids continue to suffer.

Who was Glass’s Arts Academy for: Kids or his Reputation?

November 26, 2017 / ijsadmin

Why did Jason Glass just try to shove an arts school down our throats, out of the blue? Was it because Jefferson County needs an arts school? No! It was because DeliverEd said Jason Glass needed a “quick win” to demonstrate that the District could implement his vision.

The reality is, the arts school was a poorly conceived idea that clearly demonstrated Glass’s lack of experience, the hypocrisy of his “listening” and “communication,” and his complete disregard for the financial implications and reality of starting an arts school. The uproar it provoked is evidence that Glass hadn’t bothered to even find out if there’s a need.

My oldest child graduated from Denver School of the Arts (DSA), so I understand the basic concept of an arts school. After what I heard at the School Board meeting on Nov. 14, it’s clear I have more of an understanding of what it takes to create an Arts school than do Glass and District staff.

There were so many things wrong with this proposal that I don’t even know where to start.

I guess I’ll start with what people describe as Glass’s strength – communication. Did he even discuss the concept of an arts academy with anyone? I’ve heard there was a meeting on October 26^th (a night when he probably knew people would be distracted by a BOE candidate forum). No one I know knew anything about this meeting in advance, or has heard anything about what happened.

Based on the surprised reaction to the subsequent “grapevine” news that an arts academy would be discussed at the upcoming Board meeting, I’d say that Glass certainly didn’t live up to his reputation as a communicator. Teachers were caught completely by surprise and universally opposed the idea, even Glass’s usual parent supporters and Support Jeffco Kids. Glass wants people to believe he listens and communicates, but actions speak louder than words. He listens to and interacts with people who support him, but when HE wants to do something, does he really listen and want input? Not in this case.

Let me address some of the financial aspects of the proposed Arts School:

Renovation Cost. District staff estimate that it will cost around $500K to make the vacant Sobesky building usable for an Arts school, including new doors, a dance floor, a new roof and a raised ceiling. I think anyone who knows Sobesky was shocked at hearing this, since we were told the reason special education services was moved out of the building several years ago was that it was uninhabitable. And then the complete shocker was that the building’s FCI was 28 — better than the 31 FCI at Wheat Ridge. More troubling, though, is that less than 8 months after what the Board described as a “budget crisis,” where is $500k coming from to upgrade? Or did the budget crisis miraculously go away when Jason Glass needed to make himself look effective?
Operating Cost. The District just closed aging Pleasant View Elementary to save $600k yearly in operating costs. Won’t the annual operating costs of Sobesky, another old building, be similar? Where is this additional $600k magically going to come from? What will have to be cut to pay for these costs? Or, if Glass did miraculously find this money, what better uses could it go to? Many teachers have suggested it be channeled into supporting arts programs at neighborhood schools. But the District response would probably be that that has to be done with SBB.
Speaking of SBB, were the SBB implications of the Arts school clearly considered? It seemed clear from the Board discussion that the Arts Academy was an attempt to prevent Denver from getting state funding for the 90 Jeffco students who go to DSA. Is the District so naive as to think that just because Jeffco starts an arts academy, kids won’t continue to go to DSA? Let’s be serious. Kids, and parents, know quality programs. DSA has a sterling reputation and is one of the top-ranked high schools in the state. It also has programs that Glass didn’t include in his proposal, such as creative writing and music.

The fact of the matter is that while a Jeffco Arts Academy may retain some kids, DSA will still get Jeffco kids, especially in the start-up years – so the true losers will be other neighborhood Jeffco schools. And the loss will be more significant than the misleading 1-2 students per school that a Cabinet member told the Board. Maybe the Cabinet is making the assumption that NO Jeffco kids will go to DSA. But it doesn’t take a math genius to work that out. Even in the first year of the Academy, schools will lose more than the 1-2 students projected. Considering that middle schools would lose 150 kids (grades 6-8) to the Academy and there are 20 middle schools, that works out to 6.5 kids, on average, per middle school. It is reasonable to expect that schools closer to the Academy would lose more while schools farther away would lose fewer. The numbers are even more pronounced for high schools, once the Academy is operating as a 6-12 school. In this case, the Arts Academy would draw 200 students from 17 high schools, an average of 12 per school, but once again more pronounced at closer schools. Wheat Ridge, Lakewood, Jefferson, Golden and Alameda could expect the loss of 15-20 students each. That’s the equivalent of $100,000 SBB dollars, or more than one teacher, per school. Were these consequences fully thought out?

And what about staffing? If my memory serves me correctly, DSA holds auditions in November or early December. If the Arts School is approved by the Board for an August 2018 opening, how would there be enough lead-up time to staff up, where would teachers be hired from, where would auditions be held, and who would hold them? Would the school’s teachers be hired away from our neighborhood schools, putting dents in the continuity of already existing Jeffco programs? And before starting a new school, wouldn’t teachers need time to develop the curriculum?

Finally, the budgeted eight teachers is not adequate to teach 200 students core subjects plus their specialty areas – unless you plan to have dance teachers teaching areas they’re not trained in such as math.

Once again, Glass’ concept may look good from a high level, but once you dive into the details, it is poorly conceived.

The Board was right to put the brakes on something that was moving way too fast, based on a 3-year-old survey that found that one of the things people were looking for in the District was an arts school.

It’s funny. The day before the Board meeting, DeliverEd recommended that the District find a “quick win” to help sell Glass’s “Vision.” Was the Arts Academy recommendation the “quick win” Glass was looking for?

This recommendation was certainly “quick,” but it was not going to be a win for anyone. Fortunately, the Board saved us, at least temporarily, from a potentially costly decision that would have affected the District’s finances, neighborhood schools and kids who opted to attend such a dubious “start-up.” This recommendation seems to have been aimed more at advancing of Glass’s stature than serving the District or our kids.

Jason Glass is a Fraud!

November 3, 2017 / ijsadmin

The dictionary defines “fraud” as:

a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities.

Using that definition, Jason Glass is a fraud.

Jason Glass arrived in the District with great fanfare as someone who would listen to everyone in the District and bring the District together.

He has done neither of those, actually quite the opposite.

Jason Glass, it seems, only wants to listen to those people who praise, support and agree with him.

Community Critic. I was personally taken aback when on only his second day on the job Jason Glass labelled me “community critic” here:

You can see the original exchange here: https://storify.com/COJasonGlass/profile-of-an-ideal-graduate-twitter-conversation

While I don’t necessarily mind being labelled a “critic”, I was shocked that someone only on the job for 2 days, with a stated intent to listen and unify, called someone who expresses their opinion (and I was advocating for a focus on College and Career Readiness in the tweet exchange) “community critic”. What, am I the only person in the community who thinks that Jeffco schools can do better? Do you get labeled “critic” for not accepting mediocrity? Do you get labeled “critic” for not bowing down to the new King of Jeffco schools? Was that an attempt to silence anyone else who might be looking for some accountability from our school District?

It certainly sent a pretty strong message – “Agree with me or you too will be labelled “critic”. Is that what you would expect from someone who states they will listen and unify? Not in my book! Was this intended to be a message to anyone else who might think a bit differently? I think so!

2. Listening Tour. Did Jason Glass really get an opportunity to listen to everyone during his initial “Listening Tour”? I think not. His Listening Tour was held during a summer business day when many working people weren’t able to attend. What he got were teachers, stay-at-homes and retired people. Nice idea, not well thought out and certainly not representative of the District.

3. Deleted Tweets. Over the course of the next several months Glass and I engaged in several other twitter exchanges. On several instances his tweets, some of which could have been interpreted as a bit testy, were soon deleted. Not exactly full transparency there.

4. Failure to investigate allegations of lying by Cabinet Member. Through Glass’ blog, twitter and email I have made allegations of repeated lying by a District Cabinet Member to the Board, teachers and parents. I have offered to meet with him and provide supporting evidence of that to Glass. He has completely ignored my allegations and requests to meet. This is not the definition of “listening” that I would expect. (https://advancejeffco.blog/2017/05/24/3-questions-jeffco/)

5. No record of moving education needle. Glass doesn’t like it when I bring this up, but the truth of the matter is that his record of academic growth and achievement in Eagle County is worse than Jeffco’s own mediocre record. How is he supposed to be the great Jeffco savior when he couldn’t bring any great academic growth to a district 12 times smaller over the course of 4 years? (http://improvejeffcoschools.org/index.php/2017/05/05/a-different-perspective-on-jeffco-schools-new-superintendent/, http://improvejeffcoschools.org/index.php/2017/05/21/disappointed-in-the-hiring-of-dr-glass-as-superintendent/, http://improvejeffcoschools.org/index.php/2017/09/11/the-board-failed-on-its-most-important-task-hiring-a-superintendent-who-could-move-the-education-needle/)

6. Vision statement. Let’s be clear. Glass replaced the collaboratively developed, community driven Jeffco 2020 with a Vision that he singularly (well, with help from his Assistant Tom) developed. Yes, he will say it was developed with community input. But what community input did he listen to and totally disregard just because it didn’t fit into his ‘vision”. Early on he was engaging me in an attempt to get someone to mention Entrepreneurship so I know he always planned to include that, no matter what he heard from the community. Jeffco 2020 was a community Vision, Jeffco Generations is a Glass vision. That seems to be a big difference to me.

7. Involvement in Board campaign. One second Glass writes: “As a public servant, I’m prohibited from encouraging any vote for or against any issue or person on the ballot.” But hadn’t he already started his “On the Issues” series on October 17^th, late in the campaign season and addressed issues that supporters of challengers for Board seats were talking about. Was that a coincidence? Why did he feel he had to address those issues at that time? Shouldn’t he have shown some restraint until after the election to eliminate any appearance to partiality? Absolutely. But he didn’t in only a thinly veiled attempt to provide assistance to the incumbents. I also asked him why he didn’t include a rebuttal to the current Board members’ lies regarding how compensation increases slowed teacher turnover. His response, no longer available, was for me to stay tuned.

My point is that an impartial Superintendent, which is what we should have, didn’t/couldn’t remain impartial and used his voice and the power of the District’s communication distribution system to publish material unequivocally supporting the Board incumbents. Legal, but is that what you would expect? Not me.

8. Accountability. I found it extremely disappointing and discomforting to learn that Glass’ contract did not contain any incentive based compensation tied to academic performance and achievement similar to Cindy’s and Dan’s contracts. I don’t know if the Board or Glass suggested this, but I have my suspicions. I do know that when I walk in to a job I relish the opportunity to earn more money by meeting certain, well spelled out goals and objectives. I have confidence I’ll meet them. From Glass’ perspective I would even worry about not having the same type of contract structure as my predecessors as this may not be the impression I would want to make. But I guess Glass has a different outlook than me and values money, and his bargaining ability, more than the perception he creates. Certainly, based on the academic performance record he had in Eagle County, if I was him, I wouldn’t want performance based compensation in my contract either.

9. GT Program Funding. I have been a long-time and vocal advocate for creating a committee to discuss sustainable funding for the District’s HS GT program as directed by the Board in February. I engaged Glass on this immediately after his Listening Tour. After initially saying that he would bring this up with his Cabinet he then put this off for 2 months, ostensibly so that another HS GT parents’ meeting could be held in late September. He also asked for recommendations for the composition of that committee. The suggestions, from not just me, included a parent, a GT Teacher, someone to represent the non-GT students at Wheat Ridge, a representative of the SAC, a representative of JAGC, someone who was familiar with the creation of the HS GT program and several District people. Yet, the final committee was made up of parents selected by Glass (not by parents similar to the process the District uses to select new principals), and a community member who happens to be a member of both the SAC and JAGC, but who was not selected by the SAC or JAGC to represent them and who does not even have a child attending WR. This, in effect, shut out voices that loudly advocated for the committee and for Wheat Ridge and its issues while providing Glass with the cover to say that various groups had representation (although they may not have represented the views of various groups). The end result of this committee also happened to make the GT community happy, but only at the expense of other students at Wheat Ridge, kids who didn’t have a voice on the committee. Once again, Glass attempted to manipulate the composition of the committee to exclude voices he knew would be difficult to manage.

10. Block on Twitter (you can see some of this in 7 above). A key component of Glass’ “aura” and appeal is his supposed willingness and desire to listen and communicate. Nearly everyone loves him for this. He blogs and tweets during the business day and encourages people to engage with him on the District website–

Jeffco students, parents, families, staff, and community members may engage with Dr. Glass via Twitter @COJasonGlass.

Unfortunately, his actions speak louder than words. When he doesn’t like what people are saying he merely blocks them. People can’t see his posts and he can’t see theirs.

You are blocked from following @COJasonGlass and viewing @COJasonGlass’s Tweets.

I can understand some of the reasons for blocking people. I’ve done it myself when people have sent me racist tweets and sexually explicit pictures. However, I’ve never done that with Glass. I’ve advocated for 100% College and Career Readiness, I’ve compared the mediocreJeffco academic growth and achievement scores with the even worse growth and achievement scores in Eagle County where Glass had 4 years, in a District 12x smaller to make improvements. I’ve questioned his ability to find $300k for an assistant and consulting company when only a few short months ago a school was closed in an effort to save only twice as much money. I’ve questioned his ethics in getting involved in the campaign. I questioned why he doesn’t have pay based on performance in his contract. For that I was blocked. And, I’m not the only person that’s been blocked as Glass attempts to project an image of “listening” while also attempting to protect his personal brand and avoid listening to all views. If he’s going to say he is willing to engage, then he should engage, with everyone, particularly if he offers that opportunity on a District web site and uses business time to tweet.

Jason Glass is a fraud.

He wants everyone to think one thing, that he listens to everyone, but his actions, toward people that have differing perspectives, is quite the opposite.