Dear friends and family,

I know we all are mourning the end of summer; we celebrated that in our family by having the entire crew get the stomach flu over Labor Day weekend. 

The end of this summer has particular significance in my life. As a career teacher and principal, this August was the first since I was 5 years old that I wasn’t preparing to go back to school. I am, however, meeting my withdrawal by spending the entire month of September focused on education issues. There are a number of exciting things happening around our district regarding education, so for updates on Race to the Top, my national work on education issues, the school finance committee, school visits, and the Stapleton schools situation, please read our Update on Education section below.

In other news, I am delighted to be hosting U.S. Senator Michael Bennet at my house this Saturday night for an informal meet and greet from 5PM-7PM.  It is not a fundraiser, just a chance for residents of Northeast Denver to get to meet Michael and hear from him in an intimate environment. I encourage everyone to come, meet him, and hear about the battles he’s fighting on our behalf in the U.S. Senate. Read below for details about the event and more about Senator Bennet.

And finally, after months of hard work and planning, the doors to our community office are open at 5405 E. 33^rd Avenue (right on the corner of 33^rd and Hudson).  We hope you will take some time to come visit us, utilize our space, and get involved in our neighborhood work. If you are interested in volunteering some time to staff our office, join our Neighborhood Outreach Committees or our Citizen Policy Committees, please contact Nina at nina.safane@gmail.com.  (Read more about our community office activities below.)

As always, please don’t hesitate to contact me, and feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends, families, and coworkers.

Sincerely,

Mike Johnston

MEET AND GREET WITH SENATOR MICHAEL BENNET

I am delighted to be hosting Michael at our house this weekend and welcome everybody to join us on Saturday.  I know our party may find itself in a passionate, family debate about a possible senate primary.  I am a big fan of Andrew Romanoff and think he is a talented and committed public servant, but I will continue to be a strong supporter of Senator Bennet’s. I believe he has already done an outstanding job in his first year in the Senate, I know that he has a track record of building strong coalitions to accomplish incredible things for children, and I believe that our party needs to spend every available dollar to make sure we keep the Governor’s office, keep our 60 votes in the U.S. Senate, and keep our majorities in the state house and state senate. 

The event will be hosted at our house, 2538 Akron St, on Saturday, September 19 from 5-7 PM. I hope to see many of you there!

COMMUNITY OFFICE AND CONCERNS ABOUT GANG VIOLENCE IN PARK HILL

Our community office is generally open from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm Monday-Friday. We encourage you all to stop in and visit and get involved in whatever way you can! We are excited that a number of local entrepreneurs are using our office to launch their own organizations and businesses.

We are still in process of obtaining all the supplies we need for our office to function at the capacity that we anticipate. Right now, we are looking for a printer, a fax machine, and a TV. If you are able to donate any of these items, please contact our Director of Operations, Nina, at nina.safane@gmail.com.

Additionally, each month our community center will feature a different local artist in our urban art forum, and offer that artist the chance to hang and sell their work out of our community center as a chance to celebrate local art. If you are interested in being a part of our urban art forum or know artists who are interested, please contact Nina.

In some more concerning news, the gang activity in Park Hill has escalated in recent weeks, and this has meant increased violence around our community office.  Two Thursdays ago there was a shooting across the street from our office while I was in a meeting here with a neighborhood environmental organization.  After talking with police on the scene, they confirmed witness reports that a believed Crip drove by and open fired 8 times on some of the presumed Blood gang members standing across the street.  One young man was shot in the head; however, he was only grazed and was treated at the hospital and released.  In the tragic payback for that shooting, a number of presumed Bloods stormed into a house several blocks away from our office Friday night and shot and killed a suspected Crip.  I was at the office when that happened and got to visit with Captain Calo, the head of the gang unit, about their plans for intervention.  They redoubled their efforts to prevent future retribution and were successful in keeping the neighborhood and the Holly safe since Friday.  While this is a tragic disappointment, it symbolizes the very reason why we opened our office in the Holly.  When young people in our neighborhoods are more preoccupied with how to dodge bullets coming home from school than how to get their homework done, we have a real problem.  This is why we are partnering with Prodigal Son, a youth violence prevention program that we have invited to share space in our office, and why we are hosting a series of convenings with non-profit, community, and police leaders on how we can work collaboratively to keep the neighborhood safe and make sure that every child knows there are real and rewarding opportunities for happy and healthy lives that don’t involve gang membership.

UPDATE ON EDUCATION

 There is so much important work to do in education right now that my team decided we needed to set aside the whole month of September to focus on education issues.  I have focused on several different categories of work in this time period. 

Race to the Top and State Level Work: The Race to the Top Guidance is now formally released, and the state is working hard to gather feedback and prepare an application for the almost 400 million dollars that Colorado could attract if we win this grant.  As part of this process I am sitting on the Low Performing Schools committee with the Lieutenant Governor and am serving on the P-20 council. Additionally, I have worked with the Teacher Effectiveness commission and hosted a meeting with Colorado stakeholders to hear from The New Teacher Project about their report on teacher effectiveness entitled “The Widget Effect.” (Click here to read more.)  These conversations will continue ramping up in the months to come as we finalize the Race to the Top application. If you are interested in any of the components of the Race to the Top program, please reach out to Scott from our policy team at scott.laband@yahoo.com.

Northeast Denver Empowerment Zone: As part of the Race to the Top application, Colorado will have to come up with a plan for how to support its lowest performing schools.  Because we know that our senate district includes a large number of low performing schools I am pushing to start a conversation about how Northeast Denver can proactively come up with a solution for designing a Northeast Denver Educational Empowerment Zone.  As a part of this idea I will be meeting with community leaders, talking to principals in Northeast Denver, and meeting with the Lieutenant Governor as well as Superintendent Boasberg to propose the possibility of Northeast Denver applying collectively to draw down federal funds targeted to our struggling schools through a comprehensive strategy to provide support and accountability to these programs.

Stapleton Schools Shortage: I have been working closely with Councilman Michael Hancock over the last month to try and reach a solution to the Stapleton school shortage.  My goal has been for any solution to meet the following criteria: building schools that are excellent, community-based, and diverse.  All three of these are incredibly important values that are at the heart of the Greenbook that gave birth to Stapleton and represent the educational ideals I have spent my career working toward.  I am proud to report that there is a growing consensus around possible solutions, and tonight I will participate in a SUN event with Michael Hancock where we will present some options and listen to options that community leaders have identified.  Right now, we are driving toward the construction of a new school in 2011 or 2012 that will meet the values listed above. I am optimistic that, together, we will get there.

National Education Work: In addition to the meetings I have had with local experts and companies, I have had some very exciting invitations to participate in conversations on the national level.  I was honored to be appointed to the national No Child Left Behind Commission.  The commission, co-chaired by Governor Roy Barnes from Georgia and Secretary Tommy Thompson, is charged with evaluating the successes and failures of No Child Left Behind and making recommendations to the Congress and White House with suggestions for how to improve the act with its upcoming reauthorization.  I attended the first hearing at Howard University in Washington, D.C. this month to hear about strategies for turning around low performing schools (Click here for link to press release and NCLB commission website).

In addition, I had the opportunity to spend the day with senior leaders at the U.S Department of Education in Washington, D.C. as part of a small group they asked to present to them on suggestions for how the department might implement a strategy for supporting and scaling turnaround schools.  I also spent some time working with the Governor of Wisconsin, the Mayor of Milwaukee and state legislators in Wisconsin to help them think about some strategies to close the very large achievement gaps they are seeing in Milwaukee.

Meetings With Educational Stakeholders: This work has led me to meet with scores of local and national educational organizations over the last month including the following:

·      Department of Higher Education

·      Colorado Association of School Boards

·      Stapleton Community Education Coalition

·      Committee on School Finance

·      Committees for Race to the Top

·      Colorado Community College System

·      Numerous school principals across Northeast Denver

·      Colorado Children’s Campaign

·      Colorado Education Association

·      College in Colorado

·      MOP (Metro Organizations for People)

·      Democrats for Education Reform

·      CollegeSummit

·      DPS superintendent Tom Boasberg

·      DPS School board members and School Board Candidates

·      U.S. Department of Education

·      New Schools Venture Fund

·      Rainwater Alliance Education, Washington, D.C.

In addition, I will be touring a number of schools this month to get a sense for challenges and successes we are seeing across the district.  So far, the schools I am planning to visit include: Ashley, Phillips, Whittier, Montbello, Gilpin, Hallet/Knight Academy, and Florence Pitt-Waller.

TOWN HALL

We appreciate your patience as we rescheduled our education Town Hall and apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused. But we hope to see many of you at our new date

CONTACT

It is never too late to get involved. Please get in touch with our staff at any point to find out about opportunities to volunteer your time, effort, and expertise.

Thank you for your continued support!