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One finalist enough for DPS board

Boasberg pledges to carry on with district reforms

By Nancy Mitchell, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 9, 2009 at 12:05 a.m.

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Denver Public School Superintendent and Senator-designee Michael Bennet, back to camera, turns to Tom Boasberg, the district's chief operating officer, after speaking at a news conference Thursday where Boasberg was introduced as the sole finalist to take over the superintendent's post from Bennet.

Photo by Preston Gannaway / The Rocky

Denver Public School Superintendent and Senator-designee Michael Bennet, back to camera, turns to Tom Boasberg, the district's chief operating officer, after speaking at a news conference Thursday where Boasberg was introduced as the sole finalist to take over the superintendent's post from Bennet.

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Denver Public Schools board members on Thursday named Tom Boasberg as their sole finalist to run the 75,000-student district and scheduled a vote on Jan. 22 to officially name him superintendent.

Boasberg, 44, the district's chief operating officer since May 2007, was seen as the top contender to replace Michael Bennet, who has been appointed to follow Ken Salazar in the U.S. Senate.

"If I've done a decent job, Tom will do an even better job," Bennet said at a news conference Thursday, turning to the friend he's known since nursery school. "I know you're not going to screw it up, which takes a huge burden off my shoulders."

Boasberg, like Bennet before him, brings a law degree and work in the corporate and public service spheres to the top schools job but little classroom expertise.

He taught English at an impoverished junior high school in Hong Kong for a year - six classes of 45 students each every day - but since law school has focused on civil rights and telecommunications in Asia and the U.S.

"One of my first priorities will be to hire a talented chief academic officer," Boasberg said. "My focus is going to be on our achievement, our results, are we making progress in reading, writing and math.

"Education is the civil rights issue of our generation, and I'm deeply committed to the work here to do just that - to give our kids a chance."

Taught in Hong Kong

Boasberg was born in San Francisco, but his family soon moved to Washington, D.C., where his father, Tersh Boasberg, went to work with Sargent Shriver to implement President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs.

Boasberg and Bennet, whose father also worked for the Democratic administration, stayed close through their days at prep school, despite Bennet being held back in second grade because of his struggle with dyslexia.

They separated for college, with Boasberg heading to Yale, where he played four years of football and graduated with a degree in history. It was during a trip to China afterward that he fell in love with the country.

"I called my mom and dad and said, 'Can you send me out some clothes? I'm staying,' " Boasberg said.

He spent a year in Hong Kong teaching English and playing semipro basketball before returning to the U.S. and Stanford Law School, where he focused on immigration law and co-founded a legal clinic for Vietnamese and Chinese refugees. But he missed Asia.

After the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Boasberg returned to Hong Kong and spent the next three years working with political leaders to build a democracy. He then went back to Stanford to finish his law degree and decided to focus on telecommunications, an area that allowed him to move back and forth between Washington and Hong Kong.

In Washington, he worked as legal adviser for the Federal Communications Commission. In Hong Kong, he built Asian operations for Level 3 Communications. But when the telecom bubble burst, Level 3 closed its Asian market and Boasberg came to Colorado.

During the winter, as 2006 became 2007, Bennet and Boasberg talked by phone about DPS. Would Boasberg be willing to work for him?

"You get a few real chances in life to really try and make a difference," Boasberg said. "I felt what Michael and team were doing here was one of those opportunities to make a difference."

In spring 2007, he traded in a lucrative corporate salary to run the business side of a school district.

'One of those chances'

Boasberg has taken the lead on some of DPS' knottier issues, from refinancing the district's pension debt to making an opaque budget more transparent and student- centered.

He said he had not considered the superintendency until recently, as Bennet became a candidate first for U.S. secretary of education and then the U.S. Senate.

With three young children and a home in Boulder, he said he sat down with his wife, Carin Chow, and they decided "this is one of those chances" to make a difference.

The couple has not yet decided about a move to Denver, which would mean taking their children out of their small, teacher-led charter school there.

Naming Boasberg as the sole finalist virtually guarantees his approval by the DPS board this month. State law requires the board to allow 14 days to pass between the announcement of a finalist and a final vote.

Boasberg has pledged to continue the reforms initiated by Bennet, and DPS school board President Theresa Pena said hiring Boasberg means "you don't skip a beat" in the district plan.

Favorable reaction

Reaction to his appointment Thursday was favorable, with statements of support from Colorado Senate President Peter Groff, City Councilman Michael Hancock and the community advocacy groups Padres Unidos and Metro Organizations for People.

Kim Ursetta, the teachers union president who had sought a national search for Bennet's replacement, issued a statement saying the union "looks forward to working with Mr. Boasberg" and in helping him find a new chief academic officer "with a strong education background."

DPS board members have deliberated almost daily for the past week on Bennet's successor, meeting behind closed doors. Four of the seven stood behind Boasberg at Thursday's news conference and a fifth, Arturo Jimenez, said later that he also supported Boasberg.

Board member Jeanne Kaplan said her hesitation about the appointment was not with Boasberg but with the process surrounding it. "I really would have liked it to have been not so hurried and more open," she said.

Pena said the board will hold a series of community meetings over the next two weeks for Boasberg.

Comments

  • January 9, 2009

    5:56 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    FreeToChoose writes:

    5 of 7 DPS board members support him, he has the endorsement of this paper, the State Senate President and Community groups. I'm happy to see the DPS board chose a successor to Mr Bennet who obviously will follow up on Mr Bennet's reforms and initiatives. Bravo!