OPED: Jeffco Schools fail too many, time to change course

SUBMITTED BY: Linda Sasenick

There’s no question some students are doing very well in Jeffco schools, and that’s great.
The problem is too many kids aren’t.  No matter how you might want to deflect that fact by cherry-picking data to “debunk myths” and “lies,” what’s undeniable is that more than 1,000 students from Jeffco aren’t graduating, every year.  Thousands more are graduating every year without the skills and proficiencies they need for college OR the workplace.  It’s not a money issue, the district has been on this trajectory for many, many years – long before it faced any real fiscal belt-tightening.
…And what is shameful is: It doesn’t have to be this way.  There are programs and schools and methodologies that are propelling even significantly challenged students to breath-taking heights of success and achievement, yet the district viciously attacks any challenge to its stale, one size fits all model.
Although taxpayers foot the billion dollar bill for Jeffco schools, the only “weigh-in” we get is the election of five board of education members, whose job is to set policy for the district.  If you are happy with the district results we’re getting, you can support the status quo by voting to fill the two vacant seats on the board with the two candidates the teachers’ union has endorsed – Jill Fellman, a career teacher/administrator, and Lesley Dahlkemper, president of public relations firm Schoolhouse Communications.
If you believe Jeffco is stagnating and failing thousands of students every year (data is pretty clear that it is), vote to fill those two vacant seats with open-minded thinkers like yourself – people who are intelligent problem solvers, not stuck in the “edu-think” that was obsolete generations ago.  Preston Branaugh is a Jeffco schools product and has his own local law practice, Jim Powers is a self-employed architect specializing in forensic investigative work.
Electing the two “reform” candidates, Branaugh and Powers, will give non-union backed Jeffco citizen representatives a majority on the board for the first time in many, many years.  Can we really afford to keep wasting the potential of thousands and thousands of young adults?