BSVDWatch.org

For those who missed the BVSD School Board meeting on May 22, 2007, you may not have noticed the approval of the start of a $4,000,000 project to construct a new IT and Professional Development facility near Platt Middle School. The approval was to spend about 10% of that amount for initial architectural efforts. (see: http://agendapublic.bvsd.org/meetings.aspx ; select the 5/22/07 agenda for the actual meeting agenda item or the 6/12/07 agenda for the approval of the minutes.)

Last year voters in BVSD approved a bond of approximately $297 million for capital improvements to BVSD schools and facilities. A Citizens Bond Oversight Committee (CBOC) was established to oversee projects under this bond.  However, unlike projects covered by the bond, the one approved in May for the IT facility slid under the radar of the public, except for those who may have attended the Board meeting.

(Click the "Read More..." button to the right for the rest of the article) 

Chris King was interviewed on KCFR Tuesday July 24th, 2007.

From the KCFR.org website:

Superintendent Works to End Segregation in Boulder Valley School District

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that school districts cannot assign students to schools based on race. But they can consider other factors to integrate the classroom-like whether a student is poor or not. That's what Boulder Valley School District has been doing for two years. Ryan Warner speaks with Superintendent Chris King.

Click here to listen to the broadcast.

BVSDWatch.org congratulates Chris King for listening and responding to district parent concerns in his recent decision regarding student participation in the Liberty Bell cross country meet in the fall.  (Daily Camera: “School Officials OK Track Meet”)  This is a high profile athletic event that draws top runners regionally as well as college recruiters, so it is a significant event for our top runners. A number of parents were concerned about the previous superintendent’s decision prohibiting student participation in this event due to a religious day of observance for some.  BVSD would have been the only district in the state of Colorado to have banned their students from Liberty Bell.  But, on his first day in the job, Chris showed his willingness to listen to the concerns of parents and students who weighed in on the issue and he reversed the earlier decision.

(Click the "Read More..." button to the right to read the rest of the article)

We now have the video from last week's BVSD board meeting.

Click here to watch the videos. 

We hope we don't come across as a one trick pony, not having additional stories or comments about the BVSD community beside the ongoing BHS & CWA issue. The end of the school year keeps all of us involved with BVSDWatch.org pretty distracted. However, we do have a few things in the works, and we'll have additional posts in the near future.

Here are a few notes on some of the things we have been thinking about. If you have any comments on these items, please drop us a line:

    • Once we have the technical bugs worked out, we hope to have video files of BVSD board meetings available on our website (from the link above) reliably a day or two after the meeting. The ones from May 22nd are up now, and we appologize for the delay. They are not always as exciting as what we have  experienced lately, but still worth checking out.

    •  We would like to see BVSD seriously consider hiring an Ombudsperson (Ombudsman). What is an Ombudsperson? From the Austin Independent School District website: "The District Ombudsman serves as an independent, confidential resource to assist AISD parents and community members in resolving problems, complaints, conflicts, and other school-related issues when normal procedures have failed." Sometimes the chain of command for filing a complaint through a school district does not meet everyone's needs. We believe an Ombudsperson could help. We'll go into more detail soon, but for now, here are a few other school district websites that have Ombudspersons on staff and explains how they help make their district a better place for their employees and community.

        - Austin Independent School District, Austin, Texas.

        - Kent School District, Kent, Washington.

        - Poway Unified School District, Poway, California.

    •  Stronger IT oversight. Other school districts have an IT oversight committee, not BVSD. We want to be sure we don't have the tail wagging the dog. 

    • Don't forget there are four school board seats open in the fall. If you are considering running let us know and we will post your info and statement on our website. We will also be interviewing all school board candidates and will have a questionaire for each to answer that we will post online for the community to read. Let us know the issues that are important to you and we will consider adding them to our questionaire.

    • Zero tolerance policies are a hot issue for many in the community. We'll be talking to community members on that issue and reporting back in more detail soon.

We hope everyone has a great summer vacation and check back frequently, tell your freinds about us and send us your BVSD stories (good, bad, or ugly).

(If you haven't, please check out our comments section below. Read what other BVSD community members are saying, and tell us your thoughts as well. Click on the "Read More..." link below to view the comments.)

Update #2: Tapes Again has generously offered online access to the audio of the STDs panel. The link to the audio files is below. Normally, CWA audio recordings are available from them at a modest fee. If you would like to order a CD of this session, please visit www.tapesagain.com, call, 303.447.8787, or visit their offices at 5741 Arapahoe, Suite 2D to order a copy of the CWA BHS panel session #2500.

At this time, BVSDWatch.org has very little to say on the matter, but we are happy to provide comments from BVSD or CWA, links to local articles, letters to the editor, and CWA session transcripts so the community can make a more informed decision. We do feel however that BVSD seemed to take too long in addressing the issue, and it took to much energy on the part of a concerned Boulder Valley citizen to have her concerns acknowledged.

Here are a few links to get people started, and we'll add more here as we receive them:

"CWA Debate Continues to Heat Up", Daily Camera Article, Vanessa Miller, June 3rd, 2007

"GOP Calls for Dismissals", Daily Camera article, Vanessa Miller, June 2nd, 2007

Letters to the Editor Blog, "CWA Cloud has Silver Lining", Kathleen Brewer

Letters to the Editor Blog, "Kudos to BHS", David Accomazzo

"Boulder students want apology from O'Reilly", Daily Camera article, Emily Tienken, June 1st, 2007

"Earth to O'Reilly", Daily Camera Editorial, Clint Talbott, June 1st

Letters to the Editor (x2), Daily Camera, June 1st, 2007

Rocky Mountain News - Opinion: Vincent Carroll, "Good Sense Recanted", May 25, 2007

O'Reilly Factor on CWA @ Boulder High, May 18th, 2007

Audio files of the CWA session at Boulder High School.

Daily Camera article, May 23rd, 2007

A complete transcript of the CWA session at B.H.S.

BVSD Official Statement, May 17th, 2007, re: CWA & B.H.S.

Statement by Priscilla White & Daphne White to BVSD Board, May 8th, 2007 (PDF Document)

Official statement from CWA about the panel at B.H.S., May 16th, 2007

Response from the White family to the CWA statement above. May 16th, 2007

Video of Priscilla White speaking to BVSD board, May 8th, 2007 (about 1/3 into the video, the tall woman dressed in a light blue suit)

  * This is a large file and make take a few minutes (with fast internet connections) to load.

Daily Camera Article, May 10th, 2007 

Daily Camera Guest Opinion, May 12, 2007

Letter to the Editor, May 14th, 2007 (free registration required)

If you have any comments about the issue or BVSDWatch.org's role, please let us know by clicking on the "Read more..." link below and leave us a comment.