January 31, 2012
For more information contact DCTA at:
303-831-0590 (DCTA office — ask for Henry Roman or Carolyn Crowder)

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA) filed a class action grievance today with Denver Public Schools (DPS) regarding the mishandling of a process to provide expanded learning opportunities which would extend the school day for students in several Denver schools.

“Because of our focus on creating the best opportunities for student learning, we are concerned that directives from DPS administration to change the school day for students and teachers ignore the best practices promoted by the National Center for Time and Learning (NCTL) and several provisions of the DCTA contract,” said Henry Roman, DCTA president. Read More→

Principal Wendy Lanier listens as Henry teacher & DCTA Vice President Melissa Verdeal shares some ideas.

DCTA congratulates Henry World School on taking the first steps toward moving their community engagement efforts to the next level! Henry recently received a $10,000 grant from the NEA’s Public Engagement Project (PEP), a program that helps schools create authentic family/school/community dialogue and action to support their efforts to boost overall achievement and close student achievement gaps. The program works in cooperation with the NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign, which has successfully assisted schools to gather useful data and engage all stakeholders in a bottom-up, proactive school improvement process, at little to no cost to school districts.

Following a successful PSC training in New Orleans, members of Henry’s new PEP team met yesterday with DCTA President Henry Roman, Executive Director Carolyn Crowder and CEA’s Teaching and Learning Director Linda Barker to lay the groundwork for the community process to follow. We look forward to sharing more information about their progress!

This past week, the DCTA Executive Committee was visited by Janel Highfill, a representative from the Stand For Children organization. Janel was asking the DCTA Executive Committee to support a study of the DCTA contract. It was made clear that the study was going forward whether we supported it or not. In addition, Stand For Children had already invited the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), an organization in Washington, D.C., to review the data gathered by Stand for Children and make recommendations to the Denver community through press releases and other public communication systems.

First, the Committee asked what exactly would the recommendations be focusing on. We were given an example of a similar study done in Tacoma, Washington. The recommendations were made on three main areas: Teacher Support and Development; Performance and Evaluation; and Compensation and Career Opportunities. The Committee pointed out that there were several other studies being done on ProComp – and we are heavily involved in LEAP – so why do one more study before the final results were out on the current ones? Janel felt their study was still necessary.

The final straw that convinced the Committee to say NO to supporting this effort was when we looked at the Board members who make up the National Council on Teacher Quality – the people who want to recommend the future of the DCTA contract. Here are just a few of their names and profiles: Read More→