One of the talking points the district uses regularly to justify their collocation decisions (as ratified by the board majority) is that collocations go very smoothly and that there are never any conflicts. Many of you parents, teachers and students know better, and I thought I would share the thoughts of one teacher who has experienced collocation first-hand. Read on…
I accepted a one year contract last year at a NW middle school campus where the facility was shared by a public school and a West Denver Prep charter school. There were many complicated factors involved which made me thankful to know that I had only signed up for one year.
From my perspective there was inequity towards my public school students in regards to the shared stairwells and spaces. My students were given the farthest stairwells from their classes, which served as one function for high tardy rates. (I did action research on this topic as part of my MA program). How can this be equal for public school students to have to walk further to access their classes because a charter school had dibs on the closest stairwells…?
The reality is that I neither know nor understand who/why the decisions are made about what classrooms, areas, stairwells, and facility in general that students get. But what I do know is that the missed instruction time due to longer distances to class (which may also present tempting social situations) has negative academic effects on students. This part of the building sharing is one negative effect of the WDP schools moving into the public school buildings and I have yet to see these negative academic effects quantified with data. (to what degree are the tardy marks effecting academic achievement, etc)
There were instances where student rivalries began to occur. Since the WDP schools expect students at the middle school age to walk in straight lines down the hallway (similar to how some DPS schools have elementary school students walk.….) jealousy began to manifest itself; the public school students had the benefit of freely walking to class/lunch/recess etc and were deemed as “rude, unruly” due to the fact that they were interacting in their social environments on the way to class; meanwhile, WDP students were tagged as “good” students because they would walk in their military style lines. There was heckling between both groups as they would pass by each other when walking to lunch or other areas. The security staff had to be available to diffuse bullying situations that could occur after school due to the verbal hallway interactions. (let’s fight after school type situations) This did not occur often, the fighting between the two groups, but the tension persisted throughout the school year. The WDP students were called “West Denver Gay” by our students, and our students were called “dumb” by the WDP students. Is this type of infighting between campuses okay for this community, especially considering it is mostly the same constituency of students being served? I can tell you right now that a good amount of students from this middle school will be going to North…will the rivalry continue into the high school years?
Note: I do NOT condone name-calling, nor is belittling others by calling them “gay” ever acceptable. I stand with the LGBT community, and I correct this swiftly whenever I hear it. I hope that teachers in this situation have done the same. But I keep in mind that young people do not always have the same restraint as adults, and this type of stressful situation can bring out the worst in the most well-behaved middle schoolers. Why exacerbate the situation? –Andrea
One day towards the end of a school year a disgruntled WDP teacher who had been non renewed (fired) confronted me in front of students about how loud and unruly my students were when in the hallways; now, I am a union member and there is nothing in our contract about charter school teachers and their unprofessional behavior/or conflicts etc. I had to go down to the WDP principal and have a conversation with him about how unprofessional it is to confront a teacher in front of students and basically call out students/teachers in a negative fashion. My job is difficult enough as a teacher in an underfunded school; adding in extra stress that may come from teachers in charter schools in a shared building is something that I thank God that I no longer have to deal with at my new building. Luckily, this principal is a good man and he heard my concerns and immediately addressed them with said educator. Protection for teachers under these mixed campuses is at times going into a gray area; how can teacher quality be affected and quantified to student achievement? This is another piece of the complexity of mixed campuses that has not been put into raw data. (ie. How did my anxiety level look after being verbally attacked in front of students by a random WDP teacher…how could this have affected my own instruction when there was a knot in my stomach after being embarrassed in front of my students by this teacher? How could this have affected how my students learned on that particular day or other days when ambiguous issues occur?)
Speaking of teacher protection…let’s ask how many teachers from either school got parking tickets or sweep tickets because there were clearly not enough parking space to accommodate the amount of staff at the schools? My contract states that the teacher’s lounge should be a “relaxing space for adults, not students”. Well the WDP teachers are not unionized, therefore, they would allow students into the shared lounge to purchase snacks. How is my unions supposed to step in to protect us when there are non unionized employees who play by different rules? Try working one full day around students all day and not have one spot in the entire building to relax and eat where children are not present. These types of rights are afforded to educators after years of bargaining and are being diminished and put to the side when the public schools rent space to the charters.
There were no procedures or processes in place to address any of these few issues listed above. I cannot speak for the North situation, and maybe they do have systems in place to trouble shoot if dilemmas do indeed occur. However, I feel it imperative to share my own experience in one of these mixed campuses so that the same mistakes will not be made in the future.
I understand why parents are choosing WDP when certain public schools may be less effective on the state tests. However, like other charter schools, it would be better in my opinion for WDP and other charter schools to rent their own buildings and avoid moving into the public school facilities. North deserves the time to grow and become the great school that it can be. I have seen a WDP who has their own building on South Federal and they seem fine; same with the New America schools in Lakewood and Thornton, Flores Magon Academy and Arrupe in NW Denver, and others. Last time I checked there are several vacant school buildings or other buildings in the area;
I hope whatever decisions are made benefit all students in the best way possible and equity is not compromised for any student in NW Denver.
Well said…. and loaded with common sense.
Dose hasn’t learned from its past errors they tried the mixed campus at Manuel it was a disaster
As a former teacher at West Denver Prep Lake Campus (now Strive prep), not the one who was mentioned in this article, I would like to add a few comments.
To answer your question, the arrangement was agreed upon, and regularly addressed, by the two principals prior to the co-location along with the numerous other agreements of space and schedule sharing. I presume solution oriented dialogue continues regularly.
As far as the author’s claim that the IB program received classrooms further away from the stairwells seems unsupported to me. The Strive program, for the most part, is on separate floors from the IB program and furthermore, the Strive program has two grades at the highest levels of the building. With numerous entrances and two main stairwells I can think of absolute no validity to that part of the author’s claim. If anything, the distances from the stairwell to the classrooms are the same, but it is the Strive students who regularly have to walk more flights of stairs.
As far as the relationship between Lake students; I agree that students find it challenging at times. As psychology would suggest, the best cross campus relations were built on commonalities. I would shout out the Mi Casa Community Center for strengthening the relationship between many students. While the relationship is not perfect, I want to stress the impact teachers and school leaders can have by modeling the behavior we wish to see in our students and building more bridges for students to build relationships from.
While I am unaware of the incident, it is clear that any instance of undermining another teacher is absolutely inappropriate. However, as you would seem to agree, this type of behavior was not condoned by the principal. In fact, he stressed building relationships between the campuses while I was a teacher. Despite this, you unreasonably hinge your argument against co-location at Lake on an isolated incident on it.
As far as your argument about parking spaces, I surely hoping you are not suggesting we let there be empty classrooms because there are not enough parking spaces for all teachers to have a spot? Yes, it results in some teachers walking a block or two, but surely there is a way to address the issue for teachers who are physically strained from doing so. And as a side note for all, the IB teachers have full privilege to the “official” parking lot as per agreement between school leaders.
As to your comment about the break room, I am shocked to hear the assertion that Strive teachers allow students to purchase snacks in the break room. Your claim makes it sound as if Strive students can enter the teachers lounge whenever they desire I can assure you this was not the case when I worked there and am very doubtful that Strive Prep would have changed their rules in this regard. But moreover, if an issue like this were to rise up, a little communication could quickly clear the problem.
Now for some anecdotal evidence. I shared many conversations with both Strive and Lake IB teachers about a sense of pride towards the entire school community and that we were positively impacting the community we taught in. In fact a few teachers who were at the old Lake program that was phased out, absolutely supported the impact of a positive academic culture on all students.
So yes, while shared locations do require a little more communication and potentially make the logistics more challenging, I very much disagree that they are untenable. On a more holistic level, in today’s environment where resources are more scarce, eliminating co-locating is akin to cutting off a foot because you have a wort. Not perfect, but something you can live with, maybe even fix.
To George, the fact that Manual was a shared campus does not mean the cause of the failure was the campus being shared. Many have suggested it was a ancillary correlation and that failure was more deeply rooted in other school leadership issues.
But you weren’t really privy to the conversations between principals, though, right?
Charter schools in Denver Public Schools are contributing to the re-segregation of most DPS schools. Until that inequity is addressed, how can co-location of charter schools that promote segregation on campus between schools not be contributing to that problem?