P.S. Superintendent Jones
It’s been two years, if you remember, since I wrote that you were Pueblo’s best hope to turn around the beleaguered school district. So I wish, writing to you today, it would be under different circumstances.
I had hoped that you would have been the one to put this troubled school district on the path forward. Instead, your 30-years of experience in Lee County Schools in Ft. Myers, Florida, weren’t enough to overcome District 60’s internal politics, Pueblo’s poverty and community-wide problems. But for as troubled as the district seems to be, it appears a district of 17,000 students and the one organization that has the greatest single impact on the lives of Puebloans is leaderless and secretive.
That’s not entirely your fault, but I’m sure you would agree that parents, teachers, students and taxpayers should know what transpired.
Maybe this crisis is down to your performance. Or, maybe this was about the ineffectiveness of the school board. Isn’t it sad that no one knows, that the community cannot even make a judgement because it doesn’t know. After a decade of decline, leading to possible state intervention, this new crisis is met with silence.
And with that I reluctantly have to admit, on that Wednesday in July, Pueblo City Schools Board and district leadership have now become a danger to the district at-large, the students, the parents, the district employees and the Pueblo community. I don’t think anyone has ever called a school district a threat to itself, but what else can people be thinking?
The district’s problems didn’t happen overnight, from the tenure of Superintendents John Covington and Maggie Lopez and your two years — that’s a decade of unstable leadership. But this cyclical nature of school decline turning into economic decline that fuels crime and drug addiction screams out to residents that Pueblo is broken. If you ask most Puebloans, they are tired and embarrassed of this cycle.
Is this how a city becomes Detroit and it collapses on itself? Is that what we are watching? Pueblo turn into a Gary, Indiana, a coal mining town in the rust belt or a town in the rural deep south? Detroit didn’t collapse overnight and Pueblo didn’t have crime, economic decline and school problems that suddenly exploded yesterday.
So why do these problems exist? You only have to look at the symbolism of the school board meeting, when they appointed an acting superintendent.
In front of a half-filled room, running an hour late, the school board needed three security guards, two armed, to announce a replacement leader but not a reason for what is happening.
The school board, and maybe the district at-large, believes it is under siege but under threat from whom? Too few seem to care about the health and future of the district.
When I welcomed you two years ago I wrote, “Welcome to Pueblo! Pueblo is a tough nut to crack or Puebloans are just tough nuts. The opinion is still out.” I didn’t know that was a warning of what was to come. I naively thought, like many, with your selection finally the district had the leader of the district to stop this death spiral of humiliation.
Dr. Jones, I feel embarrassed to even write this, but I have to apologize for the destructive politics and secretive attitudes that corrode nearly all parts of Puebloans’ daily life in the city and embarrass its own residents.
But, and I say this honestly to you, of all the negative news I discuss in these pages and in the community — about crime, poverty, jobs and so on — when people have asked about the bright spots in Pueblo, I told them without reservation, “Look at Connie Jones at D60. I think she finally righted the ship.”
When you first came, I asked you to turn into cheerleader number one for Pueblo, to stand in front of the crowd at the Bell Game and tell them you are going to save this district. You stood in front of that Bell Game in 2014 much to my surprise. Little did I know, I should have put a disclaimer to you — don’t bother; the district doesn’t want to save itself.
You did your part and now I owe you this.
Just the other day a teacher said to me, “I would speak up but I’m too afraid I’ll lose my job.”
Well, community, are you waiting for some clever editorial here? I’m not going to give it. Instead I’ll say — disrupt everything.
Teachers speak up. You don’t deserve this. Over the years, we have heard from so many of you, “If only you knew the things that really went on.” What are you waiting for? To those willing to speak up and go on the record about the problems in District 60, journalists at the PULP will listen and will tell these stories. And to those who need to go off the record, our journalists are the best. We can protect your identity, but you have to speak up.
To the parents with children in the district, demand better. Show up to parent-teacher nights. Call up your child’s teachers and get to know them. Ask them if they are getting the support they need. If they tell you no, ask what you can do to help. If your teachers feel they aren’t supported by the district don’t just wait for the media to report on it. Complain about it, email the board every morning, tell them you are watching. And actually show up for board meetings and share your comments. When internal politics threaten teachers, you can be their voice.
And to Dr. Jones, what I ask you might be the hardest. The community is tired of being embarrassed by backroom politics. The community needs to hear your voice on why you left. It deserves not to feel embarrassed and to see a leader lead by being honest and open with them.
Don’t leave Pueblo like this. If you leave, then leave Pueblo the way you came in, with hope and honesty. Pueblo deserves this and so do you.
Sincerely,
A Pueblo that won’t be embarrassed anymore
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Published July 31, 2016 for August’s PULP print edition.
