Moment of clarity

Now we have a referendum on Denver school reform

Published September 21, 2007 at midnight

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The Denver teachers union may not like to admit it, but this week it dropped all pretense of supporting the district's reform agenda.

You can't oppose two key board members for re-election and endorse another candidate for an open seat who opposes closing half-empty schools and credibly claim you support the Denver Plan. Yet that is the high-wire act that the Denver Classroom Teachers Association is apparently trying to maintain.

When we met with union officials not long ago, they insisted they supported district reform efforts. Their own reform plan, Promoting School Success, was a supplement to present reforms, not a substitute, we were assured.

We were surprised, frankly, since union rhetoric in contract talks had become gratuitously personal, suggesting it wasn't entirely a dollars-and-cents problem. Union officials didn't merely object to the district's proposals or pronounce them inadequate; they suggested reform was being guided by "policy wonks" enamored of "preprogrammed curricula" and "the latest fads."

With the most recent union action, any pretense of support for the present direction of reform lies in tatters.

It is possible, of course, to support current reforms and vote against one of the board incumbents. But that would suggest you think the incumbent is a poor advocate of those initiatives - or that at any rate the challenger would be better.

But is it likely that both the president and vice president of the board are feckless proponents of recent reform, and that one of the challengers endorsed just happens to be a vocal opponent of last year's board decision to close Manual High School, and that the person endorsed for the open seat just happens to oppose school closures?

That is either a most unlikely string of coincidences or a meaningful pattern, and we're pretty certain where our vote lies. Surely the public can be forgiven for suspecting that the union is trying to stack the board with a majority that will turn on the present superintendent - and eventually turn him out.

In that regard, though, perhaps the union's choices serve a useful purpose. They set up an election with far greater significance than most - a referendum, in effect, on the past two years under the leadership of Superintendent Michael Bennet, as well as his plans for the future.

If a silent majority of Denver residents oppose those efforts - as well as the closure plan the district intends to release in two weeks - they are free to heed the union's advice.

And if voters don't? Then maybe the DCTA will conclude that the public believes the Denver Plan is a work in progress, and deserves more time before it can fairly be dismissed.

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