Mike DeGuire reports on troubling developments in the Denver school system. Published in Colorado Times Recorder.
On June 13, 2024, while district families were on summer break and with limited community input, the Denver (DPS) school board approved new guidelines (Executive Limitation, EL-18) for closing schools in the ‘25-‘26 school year. At that same meeting, in a 6-1 vote, the board approved a six month contract with a New Orleans charter school founder, Ben Kleban, to assist the board in writing their policies and in evaluating the superintendent.
Documents obtained through a Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) request indicate that Kleban was first hired by DPS in January, when Board President Carrie Olson authorized paying him $10,000 to facilitate a two-day board retreat after three new board members were elected in one of the most expensive school board elections in Denver’s history. Chalkbeat reported that the slate of newly elected members — John Youngquist, Kimberlee Sia, and Marlene De La Rosa — received over $1.4 million “from a group called Denver Families Action, which is the political arm of a relatively new organization called Denver Families for Public Schools. Its board is made up of local charter school leaders.”
Denver Channel 7 News documented that “Denver Families Action receives its funding from the City Fund, a national education organization that promotes increasing charter school access and school choice programs.” The “dark money” funders behind the election of these three new board members are especially relevant in this recent school closure criteria vote.
After the January board retreat, CORA documents show that Kleban secured unidentified “philanthropic support” to provide monthly coaching meetings for interested board members, and his input seems to have had a significant influence on the final school closure guidelines. Throughout the spring, Kleban met with board members and several key staff members, and in May, he proposed a comprehensive plan to continue working with the board during the next school year to provide advice and facilitation on board policies and the superintendent evaluation process.
Before the June 13 board meeting, board members had been committed to specifically not including any reference to standardized testing and state performance frameworks results as criteria for school closure decisions. They had also agreed to “equitably distribute the effects of changing demographics across governance models,” i.e. charter schools, in their criteria.
However, just weeks before the vote, Kleban provided board members seven pages of recommendations which stressed, among many other things, the importance of including standardized testing performance measures in school closure/consolidation decisions, and he also stated the equitable distribution effects across governance models should be removed.
