Town Hall Meeting – March 9th

Posted March 4, 2022

We need your help to Protect Innovation-Please show up to a Town Hall meeting on March 9th 5:00 – 6:00 pm (on this zoom link) 

The program they are putting together will highlight innovation school leaders, teachers, and family voices with a focus on:

1. Lifting up the many voices of innovation schools who have worked in partnership to create meaningful innovation plans that are effectively serving students and families;  
2. Emphasizing that our Innovation Plans are our school’s strategic plans that allow us to best meet the needs of the students, teachers, and parents we serve; and
3. Alerting stakeholders that the EL Proposal threatens school-based decision-making by limiting flexibility currently used by our schools to deliver our unique programs.

Our goal is to have 1000 people present–and to do so, we need your help spreading the word. By having that many people we can show the board that we as a community value our Innovation Status to keep the unique model that we love at Swigert. You can also help by emailing the board at board@dpsk12.org and DPS_Superintendent@dpsk12.org with a brief, original and polite email. It should be original to your voice, and not copied. Please express why you support Innovation Schools. 

Read on to find out more details about the DPS Board’s proposal and how it will impact us.

High Level: What is happening? DPS Board Member Scott Baldermann has drafted this proposal, which will likely be voted on in the next board meeting (March 24th). Specifically, it seeks to undo some Innovation School flexibilities that we use to make school decisions that vary from DPS while also including some more demands like ‘workloads that are reasonable‘.

High Level: Why is this happening?: There is no data that teachers are less happy in innovation schools and innovation schools actually score slightly higher in student performance on average. While that may be true, there are stories from teachers in innovation schools that feel like they were not treated well, so this is being sold as a “teachers rights” proposal. With real politics in mind, it is important to know that in every board election, the candidate that received the most DCTA funds won, thus there is clear momentum to undo some of the policies from the reform era and swing the pendulum more toward labor’s views and DCTA has a negotiation with DPS on their master agreement coming up soon so this effort is a clear way to define what they are able to negotiate with DPS.

How Can I Support Innovation and Swigert?We need as many people as possible to attend a zoom meeting on Wednesday, March 9th from 5pm-6pm Here is the zoom link to Join the meeting.

You can also have your voice heard by emailing the board at board@dpsk12.org and DPS_Superintendent@dpsk12.org with a brief, original and polite email. An email should be original to your voice, and not copied. Subject lines should indicate your email is supporting innovation schools or Swigert and why you love our school.

Flyer of talking points –