Johnston’s Think Tank
The Senator’s Urban Leaders Summer Fellowship program participants are generating the next big policy ideas while experiencing policy in practice
By Erin Vanderberg, Editor
Before he co-sponsored the school finance reform bill this session (see sidebar), Park Hill’s State Senator Mike Johnston had at his fingertips current research on education funding as well as developed policy ideas on the issue. This was made possible through the Senator’s Urban Leaders Summer Fellowship program, which brings together a policy-focused group of young adults, many of whom are former educators, to Denver for public policy experience under Johnston’s tutelage.
Now in its third year, the Urban Leaders Summer Fellowship is currently hosting 28 young adults in an intensive, six-week policy and practice lesson in empowering underserved communities. Participants are paid a small stipend funded by partner organizations, for example the NY-based America Achieves. They live in sublets that they find on Craigslist or that the office helped to arrange, and dedicate half of their time to creating policy and half of their time to practicing policy.
The high-level policy thinking takes place at the Senator’s office at 33rd and Hudson while the policy in practice comes through working in community organizations like the Denver School of Science and Technology and the Denver Office of Children’s Affairs. Six weeks is a short amount of time, so fellows are assigned a reading list prior to their arrival in an effort to get them up-to-speed on Colorado’s policy developments. In addition, local policy experts are available to provide ideas and serve as a resource to the fellows throughout the summer.
The program is tweaked slightly every year. Last year, for instance, eight fellows with an interest in city-level policy went to Memphis to study under City Councilman Lee Harris, a friend of Johnston’s from Yale Law School. Of the 53 program alumni from the first two years of the program: 18 have either graduated from or begun attending law or policy school; 10 have accepted a full-time policy position in education; 10 have remained in Denver; three applied for and were accepted into Harvard’s 2013 Doctorate of Educational Leadership Program; three are establishing education related non-profit organizations; two are becoming school leaders; and one is running for school board in Atlanta.
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“Mike’s unique talent is surrounding himself with talented, committed and driven people,” said Leslie Colwell, Legislative Director for Johnston’s office who has managed the fellowship since its inception. “He always thinks policy is better when you have a lot of smart people helping to develop it.”
Last summer, five summer fellows worked to craft a policy proposal which included ideas like changing the way students are counted and reforming the way the state and local share of school funding is calculated. After the fellows left in August, several stakeholders coalesced behind their proposal. Over the fall, the Colorado Children’s Campaign convened a Technical Advisory Group to assist Senator Johnston’s office and other stakeholders in translating the principles of the fellows’ work to the detailed policy level. Fellows were routinely consulted during this period to get their take on the translation of their proposal into bill language.
This year, because the school finance reform ballot initiative is such a critical issue to the Senator’s office, education has been the main focus area for fellows, who are even volunteering to canvass and signature-gather in their free time for the experience of what it means to realize policy change.
“When you’re working on education policy, the value of bringing in 28 practitioners, with their perspective and experience, is unrivaled,” said Colwell.
For more information on the Urban Leaders Summer Fellowship, visit mikejohnston.org/get-involved or email urbanleaders@mikejohnston.org.