School Culture Under Fire At Stedman Elementary

Many Teachers Vote No-Confidence; Others Hopeful

For the past two months, Stedman parents, teachers and staff members have contacted me to express their concerns for the school. Except when specifically named, they have asked to remain anonymous to protect themselves, their children, or their positions within Denver Public Schools.

Stedman is an elementary school at 2940 Dexter St. in Park Hill. According to DPS documents, the school had 353 students in 2014-15, 84.4 percent of whom qualified for Free and Reduced Lunch (FRL), an indicator of poverty. Although some Stedman boundary families choose to send their children to different elementary schools (69 percent in 2014), the fact is, more than 50 percent of the school’s students (181) come from families choicing into it.

Stedman is a Transitional Native Language Instruction (TNLI) school, which means it provides native Spanish speaking students with instruction in both Spanish and English. Over time, instruction shifts from being mainly done in Spanish, to being done in English.

New leadership team

Anchored in decades of history in the Park Hill neighborhood, Stedman has a number of its families who have had a long relationship with the school and its veteran teachers and staff.

Exactly a year ago, Melissa Peterson and Hannah Kehn were appointed Principal and Vice Principal to the school. This gave them little time to get to know the community, the school, or its culture before they began implementing some changes in August, 2014.

With new leadership always comes a period of adjustment but changes happening without notice caught parents and staff by surprise. For some, it has been a long year.

In an interview at Stedman on June 9, Peterson said her goal, as given by the district, was to bring the school from a being coded yellow (accredited on watch) to green (meets expectations), admitting this would not happen in a single year.

Denver Public Schools’ first goal in its Denver Plan 2020, a five-year strategic plan, is Great Schools in Every Neighborhood. A “great school” is defined as being green or blue (distinguished). No one disagreed with the need or desire to improve achievement at the school. But the methods used to get there are what have some in an uproar. Others question the motive behind such drastic changes.

Just a few weeks before my interview with the principal, at a May 21 DPS Board meeting, parent and Collaborative School Committee member Danielle McDermott made this statement:

“In August, we walked into a different Stedman. Over the course of the next several months, the students, the teachers, and the parents found themselves in an increasingly strained environment.”

Culture clash

When most people hear the term “school culture,” they think of the atmosphere and traditions associated with a school: the pictures hanging in the classrooms, the school’s mascot and colors, its sports teams, the clubs and awards, the way teachers interact with students, a specific focus in the curriculum, the annual performance and ceremonies. It’s the feeling you get when you walk into the building.

“School culture,” however, is a coded word in the education reform movement. Much ink has flowed to define, explain, and codify it. Simply put, it is a driving factor in improving student achievement. New leadership in a school is most often tasked with changing a school’s culture. This is a top-down approach whereby the district or the state pushes systematic new ritual and procedural models.

Indeed, Stedman staff will be participating this summer in a DPS-sponsored “School Culture Academy,” a professional development course focused on re-shaping its school culture.

“They wiped out our school culture,” said one teacher who reached out. “School colors were changed without any input from the staff or students.”

School colors may be a trivial matter but they are symptomatic of a larger problem: sweeping changes that have occurred without any input from its stakeholders.

Ashle Johnson, a parent at Stedman for six years, said the school’s annual huge potluck was discontinued. The traditional selling of tamales by parents and local community members? No longer allowed.

A teacher stated that bi-weekly staff meetings no longer took place, taking away discussion, teacher input and collaboration time. Staff meetings were replaced with long weekly emails coming from the leadership team.

Another teacher theorized that bringing in new leadership from outside Colorado with no ties to the community was a way for the district to dismantle the school, to eventually turn it into an innovation or charter school.

Indeed, discussions about Stedman becoming an innovation bilingual school have already started.

No-nonsense nurturing

A new discipline approach, called no-nonsense nurturing, was instituted to reduce the rate of out-of-school suspensions, which was high at Stedman.

“We’ve had great success with this program and have seen a drastic decrease in out-of-school suspensions,” says Peterson. She noted that teachers who had been trained in the approach had better performance evaluations and students were more focused in class. “It is absolutely our top priority to keep students in class and learning,” she said.

Some teachers and parents, however, do not feel this new method has been successful. In order to lower the out-of-school suspension, they said extremely disruptive students were forced to stay in the classroom creating an environment that was unhealthy and unproductive for the rest of the students. Teachers also noted that they were discouraged from referring students to the newly hired Restorative Justice Coordinator.

One teacher described the new success as a “false sense of security and a manipulation of numbers.” She noted that students were still fighting, disrespecting teachers and peers but not receiving consequences and potentially leading to more serious consequences.

McDermott described the no-nonsense nurturing at the DPS Board meeting as follows: “I saw a color chart in each classroom displaying each child’s name. If a student displayed disruptive behavior, he’d be demoted down the color chain without an ability to move back up. There were no positive reinforcements set in place. My son began to refer to himself and to others by their daily assigned colors. The color-coding systems are simplistic and are destructive forms of student discipline. They are damaging to self-esteem and they often place teachers in impossible positions.”

Staff feel bullied

An unplanned but particularly egregious event sparked parents and staff to speak out. Zuton Lucero-Mills, a Stedman staff member, described it to the DPS Board:

“On the morning of April 15th, Ms. Kehn was overheard on the school intercom having a conversation with a potential differentiated role candidate. Parents, leaders, teachers, students, staff and community were witness to her calling the staff lazy and worthless.”

The interviewee was subsequently hired to evaluate the teachers in the coming year.

Teachers report feeling demoralized and stressed. They say their personal and family lives are being affected. Those who came forward spoke of a culture of fear at the school whereby they feel they cannot voice their opinion, give suggestions or even speak to parents about their children without having the administration question them. A parent mentioned a teacher whispering during the parent-teacher conference for fear of being heard.

One teacher stated this was a direct assault on teachers. “The churn of veteran teachers and paraprofessionals is intentional,” she said, “and emblematic of Tom Boasberg’s tenure as superintendent [of Denver Public Schools]. They treat teachers as if they are bad, they ride them hard, they are in classrooms evaluating all the time. We’re guilty until proven innocent. We’re vilified and all we do is want to work with children.”

Asked about such a culture, Peterson insists her door is always open and the staff is welcome to come in and discuss any issue anytime.

Vote of no confidence

At the same May Board meeting, Lucero-Mills announced the results of a vote of no-confidence on the part of the teachers. 60 percent of the teaching staff voted no-confidence in the principal, and 83 percent voted no-confidence in the assistant principal.

As much as the new leadership has imposed change at Stedman, its staff would like to see some change as well. Better communication for one. Peterson agrees that better communication will be essential to building better relationships next year.

Lack of transparency and proper procedure

If relations were strained between the administration and the staff, they were also very tense at Collaborative School Committee meetings.

As per DPS’ website, Colorado law requires its schools to have a committee that increases accountability and parent involvement in schools. The CSC is that entity.

Its tasks are listed as follows: “This group works with school leaders to provide feedback on important school decisions. These decisions may include ways to improve academic performance, budgets, and the school’s program. The CSC is also responsible for evaluating their [sic] principal on leadership and collaboration.”

The meetings have been described as contentious. The budget agreed upon and voted in last year included funding for a librarian and a technology assistant. But Peterson did not hire a librarian-tech assistant. This led to CSC members voicing their disapproval.

Peterson explained, “When I started in July, we searched until October for a highly qualified person but there were no people at the time in the candidate pool.” Since the school had a high rate of out-of-school suspension, she decided to hire a Restorative Justice Coordinator instead.

This was done with the opposition of CSCmembers who felt that in a school with an 84 percent FRL population, having a library, with access to books, is critical. Same for the technology assistant who was deemed critically important in a year when new PARCC testing would be done online. Not having access to technology on a regular basis might put some students at a disadvantage.

Peterson insists that students still had access to technology and computers within their classrooms and in the computer room with their teachers.

A librarian and technology assistant were hired this spring but the school is again looking for a tech assistant for the coming year.

“We asked how we should go about giving our input for this year’s budget given that last year’s approved budget was not followed,” asked a CSC member. “For all intents and purposes, the CSC has been disbanded,” the member concluded. The CSC has not met since January.

A CSC member concluded, “This course of action is causing many of the parents and community members on the committee to believe they are purposely excluded from the process.”

Letters from the CSC were sent to DPS’ Susana Cordova, Chief of Schools, and Erin McMahon, Instructional Superintendent, in February to express concern over CSC procedures, concern that the budget was not in accordance with Mill Levy Guidelines, specifically relating to physical education, and to ask why certain budgetary items (Assistant Principal, Restorative Justice Coordinator and Playworks Coach) were being described as mandatory by the principal when they were, in actuality, not mandatory.

These were taking away teaching position from the school, leading to an increase in multi-age classrooms, the CSC stated.  Superintendent Boasberg was also contacted and District 4 Board member Landri Taylor was copied on the emails.

Under pressure

With a new elementary charter school, Roots, opening nearby on Holly Street by the Boys & Girls Club, Stedman may experience a decrease in its enrollment. Currently it is projected at 327 for the fall, down from 353 for 2014-15. Because school funding is student-based, Stedman has had to adjust its budget. Peterson is hopeful that the enrollment will not decrease and funding will be restored.

Although DPS claims to fully support its struggling schools, positioning a competing school within its enrollment boundary puts even more pressure on Stedman to retain its study body.

The budget crunch means Stedman will reduce its physical education position from full-time to half-time next year. Stedman will also have a higher number of multi-age classrooms next year. Peterson remains positive, stating, “We will be using the opportunity to differentiate and meet students’ needs.”

Because of low enrollment, Stedman already has multi-grade classrooms. For example, the 2nd and 3rd grade were combined this year. Adding to this challenge is the fact that this class had four teachers this past year. The 4th grade class had seven to 10 teachers, depending on how substitutes are counted. That is one teacher per month. The lack of stability certainly exacerbated student behavior and taxed teachers.

McDermott addressed the Board members directly: “Letters have been sent. Phone calls have been placed at DPS since at least December and attention has now shifted to new innovation and charter schools opening up when my child’s school continues to struggle.”

Your hope for Stedman

To those who reached out to me for this article, I asked, “What do you want for Stedman?” Most were distressed and wanted the community to know what was happening in the building. They wanted accountability for the school’s new leadership team and for the district.

Ashle Johnson said, “We can’t be cowards, we have to stand up for what’s right.”

Some parents are positive about the changes and the future. Jennifer Meyer noted that some changes came fast and without much communication. But she seems them as positive. “The school leaders have a vision for what the school can be.” She says she loves being able to walk to school, develop relationships with kids and parents and she looks forward to next year.

Another parent felt the new leaders had brought a lot to the school, including art and dance – namely an artist in residency program and a collaboration with Cleo Parker Robinson Dance.

“They want rigor and follow through and they have a clear plan,” the parent noted. “We are definitely in flex and transition but there are great things happening at Stedman.”

Peterson says she is excited for next year. “Three teachers will be taking on coaching roles and will show that we value teacher leadership. The school will be implementing a parent-teacher home visit program, which will strengthen relationships with families. We will continue all the data-driven teaching. We will really focus on relationships and do more team-building with our CSC members.”