DPS has no plans to close schools, job finalist says

Boasberg grilled at first of 5 meetings

By Tillie Fong, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 14, 2009 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by Brian Lehmann / The Rocky

Tom Boasberg, the sole finalist for superintendent of Denver Public Schools, meets on Tuesday night with parents and teachers at Kimbal Hall, 2358 Washington St.

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Abran Sandoval was direct in his questioning Tuesday night of Tom Boasberg, the sole finalist for the Denver Public Schools' superintendent position.

"Are you planning to close our schools?" asked Sandoval, 57, a parent of a George Washington High graduate.

Boasberg, 44, said the controversial closures of some schools last year was necessary to cut costs.

"Our schools were not full," he said. "We were spending thousands and millions of dollars on schools that were not full."

However, he said there were no plans to close any more elementary schools, because most are 95 percent full, with some even reaching 100 percent to 110 percent capacity.

It was the first of many hard questions he faced Tuesday at the first of five planned community meetings the school district is holding to introduce Boasberg, current DPS chief financial officer, to the community before the school board votes to approve his appointment as superintendent on Jan. 22.

He will be replacing Michael Bennet, who was tapped by Gov. Bill Ritter to fill U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar's seat.

Nearly 50 people attended a gathering at Kimbal Hall in north Denver where Boasberg was introduced by DPS board member Kevin Patterson.

"Tom will be that person to move our district forward," Patterson said.

While Boasberg spoke about some of the improvements being made in DPS, such as increasing the enrollment of children in preschool from 500 last year to 2,000 this year, he also acknowledged that other problems remain.

"The achievement gap that was found with kids of color is exceedingly sobering," he said.

Boasberg also gave details of his vision for the district, including recruiting and retaining good teachers and principals, and allowing them more authority to run their schools.

But many parents have worried about whether Boasberg would do anything different from what Bennet has done and whether minority students and disadvantaged students would bear the brunt of further changes.

Boasberg said he wasn't going to be much different from Bennet but that he planned to "accelerate" the reforms that were already in place.

"We're not where we need to be," he said.

He also said he wants to make the budget process more transparent so that everyone - parents, staff, teachers, principals - knows how money is being spent in the district.

At one point at the gathering, as Boasberg was mingling with the crowd, he was confronted by Rita Moreno, a former DPS school board member, who questioned the process in which he was selected.

"I don't think he's qualified," she said afterward.

Sharon Bailey, another former DPS board member, said two weeks were hardly enough time to recruit, screen and select a candidate for superintendent.

"I have been involved in the process of picking three superintendents," she said.

"We did not make our selection without an open process involving the community.

"We would have been tarred and feathered," she said.

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