What Happens To An Incompetent Teacher at Jeffco? Sadly, Very Little. #NotAnotherDimeJeffco

Visitors, last month I published a column detailing the flagrant incompetence of two teachers that my children had to endure at Evergreen Senior High.

That column has netted me several ugly comments, a couple of near threats, and several anonymous, cowardly, lying reviews on Google regarding my early childhood facility, Evergreen Academy.

Regarding the comments, well, words have consequences, but if criticizing me for writing the truth is all you can do, then have at it. Regarding the threats? My course of graduate study could not have been better timed. I’m studying Criminology and Behavioral Deviance at a local university, and a very good name for the McCord-Fritzler-Kwasny crowd (who I am certain are behind the words) is “deviants”. It gives me great joy to now possess the digital forensic tools to track down these criminals, especially if they choose to escalate their behavior beyond harassing me. Wendy McCord, Shawna Fritzler, Scott Kwasny, Michael Blanton, Tina Gurdikian? I’m warning you off, so behave yourself.

Regarding the deceitful attacks through Google reviews? After my brother, John Newkirk, had the safety of his children and family threatened in Evergreen, I stopped being amazed at the lengths this crowd will stoop force their agenda on the Jeffco public. Evergreen Academy isn’t bulletproof, nothing is, but it’s a place full of love, kindness and skilled care for the youngest and most vulnerable in Evergreen. Keep up the lying reviews, anti-reformers, and you’ll likely find yourself at the mercy of a crowd of young parents who love what we do at EA.

Now, to the topic at hand. I’d like you to lean in with me here, Visitors, this is a little complicated, but I have faith in you. Colorado recently enacted a teacher effectiveness law, Senate Bill 191, in an effort to address teacher effectiveness.

In Jefferson County, new teachers are hired on a ‘probationary’ status for three years. Their contracts are year to year, and at the end of each year they can be dismissed for any reason allowed by law.

(For us civilians, that means that budget issues, student shifts, or poor fashion choices could lead to a dismissal during the three ‘probationary years’. Virtually any reason.) According to this law, probationary teachers must have three ‘effective’ evaluations to be considered for tenure.

“Ineffective” evaluations can be appealed, often at Union expense. You can appeal a poor evaluation and keep your job, and this can take months.

So, it hangs on the evaluations. Here’s where it gets interesting, Visitors. According to Senate Bill 191, HALF of the evaluation has to be based on student achievement. Seems reasonable, no? You are rated on all kinds of things: lesson planning, classroom structure, classroom conduct, can you play nice in the sandbox with other staff, and ARE YOUR STUDENTS MASTERING YOUR MATERIAL. Are they even close? Are they making progress from the beginning of the year to the end?

You have three years, THREE, to prove that you know your craft. Regarding effectiveness, achievement scores are NOT available to be included in your annual evaluation. Why is that? Generally, because the scores are returned to schools in July, long after ratings are completed. So, principals and fellow teachers who rate you, do NOT include effectiveness in your scores, even though they are required to by law. Here’s why that should concern you greatly.

Where is the emphasis on achievement? Where?! Jeffco has 87,000 of our children, and is UTTERLY ineffective in teaching them math. Grade schoolers, (my favorite population and area of specialty) start out well, likely because of their natural eagerness to learn. Please, Visitors, I’m pleading with you, note the terrible, precipitous drop by high school.

How will we advance? How will our children gain the technology oriented skills they must have without foundational math? Reading and science scores are similarly terrible.

By tenth grade, FAR less than half of our children are NOT proficient in math. Where else can we look besides disinterested teachers? Yet, out of 4,700 teachers in Jeffco, not ONE teacher will lose their tenure do to ineffective teaching. (http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2016/07/14/denver-public-schools-set-to-strip-nearly-50-teachers-of-tenure-protections-after-poor-evaluations/#.V_AUGJMrJE5)

Cheryl Manning is safe.

Dave Myers will keep his job.

Effective teachers, of which there are many, will continue to get lost in a crowd of disinterested, lectern-pounding, ineffective teachers who will keep their jobs until retirement. This must stop.

Again, Visitors, this is just exhausting. Jeffco is a mess.

Here’s what you can do, in fact, this is the only moral thing you can do.

DON’T VOTE FOR THE JEFFCO BOND ISSUE #NOTANOTHERDIMEJEFFCO

VOTE NO! This is a 565$ Million dollar ask for a system that is completely broken, disinterested in student achievement and thoroughly infested with corruption and inefficiency. More on that later.

IT REALLY IS A BILLION DOLLARS

You must, simply must, demand that Jeffco do its job, and that is to educate! This bond issue will take ONE BILLION DOLLARS to repay, while student achievement will continue to decline.

This simply makes no sense. Demand it, visitors. Demand accountability.

We owe it to our kids.

Much respect,

Victoria

The Lying Mouthpiece of Jeffco Teacher’s Union: Meet Scott Kwasny

Readers, especially Jeffco visitors, I’m almost boring myself here. Honestly, this whole Jeffco debacle is such a relentless drumbeat of hate speech, deceit and disruption, I find myself running out of adjectives. Those of you who have been with me for a while, remember the Louisa stories I developed a while ago?

Louisa (who was me, of course) was a medieval warrior princess. She had lost her prince in a terrible battle to the death. (That was Chris, dying of cancer). She was burdened heavily with the responsibility of her community, largely of families and children. Louisa discovered, as time went by, that this work suited her. It was tremendously consequential, and only successful with the aid and succor of local villagers.

In short, Louisa and her village had to come together to prosper. Corny, but true. We, all of us, have to band together to stand in the gap for Jeffco’s disadvantaged kids.

Check out this guy:

Meet Scott Kwasny.

Kwasny is Jeffco Teacher’s Union hired gun. He was hired by Jeffco Teacher’s Union one month after my brother and his colleagues were elected in 2013. Prior to moving to Denver, Kwasny was a well-paid agitator for the American Federation of Teachers in Detroit.(NINETY THREE percent of Detroit kids can’t read well. Mission accomplished, Kwasny? http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/detroit-public-schools-93-not-proficient-reading-96-not-proficient)

For my international Visitors, there a two chief education-related labor unions in America. One, the NEA, or National Education Association, was the union I referenced in a previous column. It was one of three unions that pre-funded the recall election with hundreds of thousands of dollars. (This is what made  Wendy McCord, Tina Gurdikian, Terri Straut et al, liars, as they swore this was a parent-driven effort. )

American Federation of Teachers, or AFT, is the other big-dog player in the pro-Union scene in American education today. As of this year, AFT has over a million and a half members. They give millions of dollars to political causes, all of the funds coming from rank and file members. 95% of AFT donations are of a liberal, left-wing bent. AFT has publicly endorsed Obama, both Clintons and has given tens of millions of dollars to political causes. AFT has given far more than any private corporation in America. AFT, and Scott Kwasny, are the epitome of education politics in America today.

Someone I respect greatly once said “Know where someone sits, before he takes a stand.” So, we know this about Kwasny. A fairly young man, he worked for several years for hard-left union causes in AFT. Jeffco Teachers Union is a hard-left organization, therefore, when they lost to conservatives in 2013, you can assume that they would hire a hard liberal like Kwasny to bring Jeffco back into the union fold.

This is where it gets interesting, Visitors. Kwasny is very, very good at what he does. Mainly, because the man has no moral compass, and will say, and do, anything to get a win. Check this out- This is the beginning of a  Facebook conversation I had with Kwasny during the election season:

Scott Kwasny

• If you think that you have fought for social justice and that helps you sleep at night than so be it… you are only ten years older than me. I am a hard working father and husband who has a very different belief system than you and your brother…for example – I would not kick a child out of my daycare because they had 2 mothers or 2 fathers. I spoke to a woman this past weekend who said that is exactly what you did. Keep on pretending, Victoria.

   

   

• 10/26, 10:02pm

   

  Victoria Lierheimer

  Scott, I will get on you every single time you post another lie like the ones you just said. I have never, not one single time, ever discriminated against a gay couple, and I will give you names of gay folks in this town who will attest to that. You are a liar of the worst sort, one in a position of influence and power, and I have dedicated my life to protecting innocents against people like you.

  Consider this, Visitors.  I make a point of wide-open inclusivity in my non-denominational Christian school, even to the point of irritating my more conservative friends. Why? Because I’m convinced it’s what Jesus would do. These days, we have family structures of all kinds. Young, old, May-December, divorced, not married, gay, straight and single, straight and living together-gracious, I have to write it all down or I get lost. It’s important to me, again, as I’m certain I’m pleasing God by doing so. Incoming family structure is not important at EA. How that child is parented, that’s the only important thing.

  Irrelevant to Kwasny. He makes it up as he goes along.

  Here’s another:

  Scott Kwasny 10/6 9:27 pm 

  John Newkirk is nothing but a gold plated trust fund baby who’s never done anything by himself, only slid along the coattails of his father, a well-respected man in the community. He doesn’t know anything about Jeffco kids, he’s never had to work a day in his life! Victoria Lierheimer, John Newkirk’s sister, isn’t even a teacher! She’s the ‘principal’ of a failed religious academy. #standup4kids

  10/6, 9:38 pm

  Scott Kwasny Actually, let’s deal with this here, you lying coward. As a union employee and hack yourself, you now have access to my teaching license? My 28 years of licensed teaching preschool, kindergarten, grade school, and middle school English? In both public and private settings? What, you don’t like school choice? Addressing the needs of languishing schools like Alameda? Ali Lasell, Brad Rupert, Amanda Stevens, Ron Mitchell, this is who you have fighting your battles for you.         Readers, remember these names, remember Scott Kwasny as an excellent, gold-plated example of the type of a lying union employee who doesn’t give a plugged nickel about the well being of your children, or the state of Jeffco Schools, and instead wants to shove his union agenda down your throat. #norecall#standuptounionbullies (that’s you, Scott Kwasny)

   

  Brrrr.  Absolutely chilling. Most of you know that I’m studying for a masters degree in Criminology, with an emphasis in pathopsychology.  I’ve always been interested in questions of behavioral deviance, and my course of study could not have been better timed. Kwasny, as you can see, is a sterling example of the hired-gun henchman who will discard all morality, engage in all kinds of deviance, all in the name of politics.

  As the election continued, all kinds of deviant and criminal behavior surfaced. I uncovered five artificial FB identities, three fake twitter accounts, and at least two stolen identities, all surfaced on line in order to spread slander and hatespeech in the name of this successful recall.

  Kwasny and his crowd won this round. One can only hope that the forces for good will win the next one.

  Respectfully,

  Victoria

   

   

 

The Endless Lies Of Wendy McCord

Tina Blackmore Gurdikian and Wendy McCord at today’s (7/28/2015) rally for submission of petitions in the Jeffco School Board Recall campaign.

Visitors, I have had it. Simply up to HERE. Wendy McCord and the bottom feeders at her organization Jeffco United were forced by a judge to disclose their donor list on Christmas Eve.  McCord, you remember, was the lying, hatemongering  spearhead of the recent successful recall.  McCord’s noise was characterized by treating  ‘union’ as a dirty word. This is a grass roots effort! A coalition of angry mommies! The donor lists show a vastly different story. This was, from beginning to end, a battle funded by the educational establishment as maintained by national and state teachers’ unions.

Most of you who have been with me since Chris died, know that I have an overdeveloped sense of justice. Chris would kid me about this all the time.

“You can’t fix everything, honey.”

“You are not the police officer for the world.”

“Sure, you’re right, they’re wrong, what of it?”

Often, he’d be right. I can’t fix everything. Unfairness and injustice abound in the world. The weak get overtaken all the time. Powerful people run roughshod over the powerless, poor folks get the shaft, people of color get discriminated against and children get neglected. As Christians, we are promised that trouble will always be with us.

So, what to do?

Seriously, I’d ask him. What to do? Ignore all of this around us? Be happy that we have made our way to an affluent white enclave like Evergreen, and be thankful that hey, at least we have ours? We’re OK? Everyone else be damned?

Hmm. Let’s look at the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25 verse 40 for a minute.

THIS is why I fight. This cause is mine. I have been an advocate for children my entire professional life, and this verse contains the social justice imperative which cannot be ignored.

When I got my first teaching license in 1986, I was pretty naive. I thought that anyone in the profession was there for the good of our students. I honestly thought that everyone there was like me. Bright enough, interested, engaged, and convinced that some skill and intentionality would be rewarded with results in the classroom. Wages in the eighties were abysmal, so we weren’t in it for the money, obviously.

Fast forward to current day. Wages are actually competitive now, and compared to some fields for new grads, teachers actually do pretty well. We do get more than 14 weeks vacation, and PERA, or the Public Employee’s Retirement Account, actually does much, much better than Social Security. Add that to a powerful union that makes firing an incompetent nigh on impossible, and you’ve got a pretty cushy berth for a contracted Jeffco teacher.

Rewind to two years ago. A set of conservative board members which included my brother, John Newkirk, was targeted by a group called “Jeffco United”. Jeffco United was organized by lawyer Wendy McCord, pictured above. Wendy is an Evergreen local, which means she has a household income larger than most Jeffco families, by about 50%. (It’s a demographic fact that Evergreen denizens make more. Neither good nor bad, just a fact.)

Wendy went on a lawless, deceitful, and ultimately very successful jag to unseat the conservative board majority.

Jeffco United received 99.9 percent of it’s funding from the three teacher’s unions in Colorado.

http://coloradopeakpolitics.com/2015/12/29/blowback-media-pissed-about-jeffco-teachers-union-lies/

99.9 percent, Visitors. Over a quarter of a million bucks, and this from the ladies who SWEAR this was a ‘grassroots effort’. An effort backed by citizens. Liars, through and through.

Visitors, this is the point where my verbosity gets the better of me. I am sorely tempted to pour out pages of statistics like these:

*Alameda High School, once run by Ron Mitchell, is a school of color. More than eight out of ten Alameda kids are not white. The same number of kids fall UNDER the poverty line. NINE out of TEN of Alameda grads can’t do math on an tenth grade level. This started during the ten years Ron Mitchell ran Alameda. Ron Mitchell is now Jeffco Board of Education president. This is just so bad as to be unbelievable.

*HALF of Jeffco kids are not at grade level for reading. HALF.

*ONE THIRD of Jeffco kids who go to college need remedial work. ONE THIRD.

The list goes on, and on, and on.

Our schools are broken. Wendy McCord successsfully campaigned that they stay that way.

(Can you imagine the HELL that would break lose if that kind of nonsense happened in Evergreen? I can tell you what would happen. All of the white soccer moms up here would jump in their late model SUVs and go looking for blood. )

Wendy McCord did an excellent job of orchestrating the chorus of lies, damned lies, and outright endless hatemongering. Check these out.

Uh huh. With 265,000 dollars coming from the unions, and what, 3 grand coming from your ‘coalition’.

This one is particularly staggering. If you inspect the donation records that McCord was FORCED to disclose, you can see the 265k$ was there when this post was made. Nowhere near six figures, Wendy?  Lie much?

And my favorite. She posted this after some imagined slight from John.

From who, Wendy? You? While you were out there peddling the oppressive, sickening tales that Jeffco is just fine? Your destruction has set us back decades, and this truly makes me sick.

Well, visitors, I’m just about at my limit. For our next column, we’ll explore more destructive perfidy of organizations like Jeffco School Board Watch.

Until next time.

Warm regards,

Victoria

 

 

The Overt Racism of Jeffco Recall Supporters

I just had an interesting experience with a recent Alameda High School graduate. I had to take my car into the dealership, gone are the days where dealing with car keys involved a simple trip to the hardware store. I was directed to the parts desk, where an attractive young Latino man smiled at me.

“I was directed here because I need a new battery in my key fob. Can you help?”

“Sure!” he said pleasantly. He took my key and disappeared behind desk. A few minutes later he bustled out and said-

“Take this to your car and try it out. If it doesn’t work, we’ll go from there.”

I hustled out to my car, and the thing started right up, low battery woes are gone!

I brought the key back to the young man, and prepared to pay.

“OK, that’s eight dollars and thirty five cents. ”

I was delighted! I know nothing about cars, and a small car bill is a pleasant surprise. I handed the young man a ten dollar bill and four dimes. He looked at it, and scowled for a minute. He hemmed and hawed, then disappeared in the back again.

Oh, dear, I thought. He can’t possibly be struggling about making change. Say it isn’t so. He came back through the door to the back, beaming.

“OK, here we are! Change of a dollar sixty five. ”

Oh, goodness. I sighed inwardly and asked him-

“Are you, by any chance, a recent Jefferson County graduate?”

“Sure am! I went to Alameda High School! ” Oh dear. He handed me a dollar sixty five in change. Gracious. I put on my friendly old lady math teacher mien and smiled back.

“Look, hon, I owe you  8.35, right? I gave you 10.40. There is two dollars difference between eight and ten. So you give me two dollars. There is a nickel between 35 cents and 40 cents, right? So now, give me a nickel. Two dollars and a nickel back, make sense?”

The kid slapped his forehead and said  “Oh! Right! Brain fart! Sorry!”

Sigh. Well, that’s instructive.  Friends, those of you who have been with me for a while know that education issues, especially to kids who present unique challenges, are very important to me. I’ve been a teacher since I graduated in 1986, and challenging kids are fascinating.

My brother, John Newkirk, shares the same desire for an excellent education for all, which was why he was elected to the Jeffco School Board two years ago.

When he and the other two members of the conservative majority were ousted last week, some really ugly facts about the typical pro-recall voter began to surface. (A “pro” vote meant that you voted to replace the current conservative majority with the liberal, union-backed candidates).

Outright lies, lack of respect for law and order, and teachers advocating for the union point of view in the classroom dominate the list of ugly things that marked the race.  But there is a very real, very profound racism running through this election that I would like us to visit.

Consider Alameda High School. Jefferson county is huge, at 85 thousand students it is, I believe, the largest district in the state, and thirteenth in the nation. The demographics of Jeffco are all over the map, from white affluent mountain dwellers, to racially diverse populations in the Alameda articulation area. Currently, Alameda HS has about 850 students, grades 9-12. Eighty three percent of Alameda students are not white. Eight out of ten of these kids qualify for free or reduced lunch, which means they’re poor. NINE out of ten graduating seniors cannot do math on an eighth grade level. Nine out of ten. Sit with that for a minute, friends, and build a mental profile of a typical Alameda graduate.

Much like my parts helper, an Alameda graduate is not white. He likely was raised in poverty, and got substandard instruction during his stay at Alameda. She doesn’t have the money to go to college, or even trade school.  Instead, he got shunted aside, trapped in a poorly-performing school that the white kids can avoid. She depended upon Jeffco to provide an exceptional education, and Jeffco failed her miserably.

Friends, the conservative majority addressed this issue for the first time, ever. The conservative majority diverted resources to improve reading and math instruction at Alameda, and even changed curricula, all of which are beginning to show improvements for the students at that, and other racially diverse schools.

Enter the Jefferson County Education Association, or the Jeffco Teacher’s union, as we call it here. One of the candidates that was vetted and inserted by the union was Ron Mitchell. Ron is a thirty year veteran of Jeffco, starting as a teacher, going for two stints as a principal, and then retiring ten years ago due to health reasons.

Who ran Alameda for ten years? Ron Mitchell. Who is responsible for not meeting the special challenges of a diverse population? Ron Mitchell. Who disengaged from his position enough to let Alameda become a talking point for poorly performing schools? Ron Mitchell. Who did the Jeffco voters mistakenly think is more competent than the ousted majority? Ron Mitchell.

Who is now in charge of a billion dollar budget, very little of which supports the racially and linguistically diverse student? Ron Mitchell.

Well. You might ask, “I voted for the recall. I couldn’t stand the noise. How on earth does that make me racist?”

Friends, it makes you racist because ignorance of profound inequality is no excuse. If you have any sense of social justice, you have a responsibility to address these nagging social problems, like the failure of Alameda High. Your vote is how you do that, and you voted to keep Alameda the way it is.  You voted to keep instruction substandard. You voted for an incompetent administrator in Ron Mitchell and his union-supported colleagues; you voted for a return to the status quo. You voted to continue to produce class after graduating class of Alameda kids who can’t make change. You voted to keep an underclass from getting the tools to make a better life. You voted for yourself, and not for these kids who depend on an education to improve their circumstances.

That makes you racist. Please, reconsider in 2017.

With respect,

Victoria