Blindsiding the blindsiders
Wednesday, November 19, 2008Written by: Alan Gottlieb
I was over at Manual High School late last week, after the Denver school board heard school facility-sharing recommendations from the district staff. One recommendation that caught me by surprise was locating an alternative high school program called Concerned About You Academy at Manual. I spend a lot of time at Manual and had not heard anything about this co-location proposal.
So I asked Manual Principal Rob Stein whether he knew the program was likely to be located inside Manual. He stared at me as if i were speaking gibberish. He may have thought I was kidding, until he made some calls and found out it was true.
Manual got blindsided.
According to DPS, Concerned About You Acdemy would consist of 300 overage (18-21) under-credit dropouts. The program would be co-operated by Aims Community College and the Central Missionary Baptist Church.
Then, today, Manual learned the proposal was put on hold, at least in part because of this story that appeared in today’s Denver Post.The lede:
The Rev. Willie D. Simmons, a prominent Baptist minister, has been sued by a former secretary who claims Simmons sexually assaulted her twice in her office then fired her and expelled her young daughter from his charter school at the church.
Simmons’ church? Central Missionary Baptist, co-sponsor of Concerned About You.
DPS got blindsided.
The story also points out that Simmons was never charged with a crime related to the incident. But the alleged victim is now suing, which makes for some dicey publicity if you’re trying to open a school.
There’s a wonderful German word, schadenfreude, which means “a pleasurable emotion resulting from the misfortune of others.” I wouldn’t blame folks over at Manual if they were experiencing a bit of schadenfreude today, at the expense of the DPS administration.
November 19th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
“Oops!”
November 20th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Would it make sense for DPS schools to set up a transparent process by which the principals of half-empty schools actually request to share their space with other schools? This would give the ‘host’ principals more control over space sharing and give them voice about what kind of neighbors they want. For example, a high school might want to share with a high performing middle school. Those principals that seem to see space sharing as competition might as well make lemonade.