Wealthy county can't quite accept its success

I suppose I could get into teacher bashing almost every day in this blog, and there is some benefit in being consistently reminded about the low status that educators "enjoy" in America overall. I take some comfort in the fact that despite so many years of being undervalued and over-criticized, great people somehow still manage to enter the profession.

The latest bashing in these parts begins with -- and this will not shock anyone -- Republican radical politicians who have floated the idea on a local talk radio station of the Douglas County School Board publishing the names of all nearly 1,500 district employees who called out sick yesterday. 

Radio host and attorney Dan Caplis said this: "I think the names of every one of those teachers who abandon the kids tomorrow, they should be considered public record, and nobody should be threatened or abused or anything like that... None of that garbage. That's weak and silly and awful."

Beyond helping you decide to never hire his law firm in the future -- a decision unlikely to hurt the firm, which has plenty of rich people to service -- you might be wondering about the quality of his thinking and how that might seep into his law practice.

The inherent logical contradiction in his position is clear: He wants those names made public and he played the "teachers aren't in it for the money but for the children" card -- "they abandoned our little girl."

But he immediately tries to soften his call for public shaming and for the public to know exactly who they should criticize by saying that, really, nothing bad should come of that public shaming. No one should be threatened. Ha! 

Rabid politicians providing red meat to their most ardent followers often try to play this game of whipping up emotions with one hand while urging everyone to "keep it clean." Which hand gets the most attention?

I have heard a number of people talk about "elections do have consequences," claiming that the turnout for the November election was very small. That sounds right, doesn't it? After all, the common wisdom is that school board elections don't gather much interest since most voters don't have kids in the schools. Board elections are held during "off years," depressing voter turnout and (so goes the hope) reducing the impact of politics. Again, ha!

I looked up the stats. Roughly 119,000 people voted in the last board election out of a total number of registered voters of 282,334. That's 42 percent, which is disappointing but not unusually small. You can find all sorts of examples of board elections across the country drawing 10-15 percent of the potential voters.

So I would guess that it wasn't so much microscopic numbers of voters in the November election as much as the "cause and effect" relationship between modest turnout and increasing power for each individual vote. The power of getting extra voters to the polls and the fact that each "new" or changed vote carries power has led to some swings in board membership, and it would not be surprising to see another swing in the 2025 board election.

But a lot of bad (or good) can happen in four years. After all, for current freshmen that span covers their entire high school career.

School board elections are officially nonpartisan though that is true in much the same way as Supreme Court judge nominations are officially nonpartisan. 

Douglas County voters break down like this: approximately 100,000 registered Republicans, 54,000 registered Democrats, and 123,000 Undeclared. 

It's not easy to track down board members' voter registration status, but the four new members were quite open about their Republican Party affiliations, while the three holdovers include two Democrats and one Undeclared. So, the current political party splits seem to accurately mirror the county breakdown other than in the Undeclared category. 

The schools regularly score well by almost any measure, from standardized test results to college admission to graduation rates. At a glance, you might think that the board members must be child-centered, thoughtful policy makers, supportive of educators and parents... all striving to give every student and staff member a chance to excel.

As is often the case, the better things are, the worse they feel. Many Coloradans must shake their heads at the idea of all this strife in one of the nation's wealthiest counties with a long tradition of academic excellence.

Poor Douglas County.