It was the first time in its 132-year history that the three entities formalized their relationship.
In a joint announcement Friday, the Aspen School District, the Aspen Education Association and the Board of Education celebrated the ratification of the new master agreement, which represents roughly four months of negotiations.
“A master agreement lays out clear expectations and procedures that govern the workplace environment for all employees and administration,” the announcement explains. “The agreement is grounded in policy and law and is meant to foster increased collaboration among the parties.”
Aspen School District Superintendent David Baugh was thrilled about the milestone, calling it a “win-win” for all parties involved.
“It raises the professionalism and stability of the school district, so I think it’s a major win on all hands,” Baugh said Friday.
The agreement — which goes into effect July 1 and through June 30, 2024 — also represents a decided shift in relations between the three groups from the beginning of the year, when a January AEA survey showed that 20% of respondents indicated they were planning to leave the school district or “seriously considering it.”
“I think it’s a swing story from the fall, where it was just so volatile. We’ve really come together as a community and are working super hard for the kids,” Baugh said, noting the timeliness of the agreement being ratified at the board of education’s final meeting of the year. “It ended up being overall a very productive school year.”
But he also noted some trepidation around the best way to frame the development in the district’s communications with stakeholders. After all, AEA is essentially the local teachers union, though the association’s 170 members also include special service providers and educational support staff such as bus drivers and custodians. And while Baugh sees the agreement as a mutually beneficial memorialization of the entities’ relationships with each other, “union” and “collective bargaining” have become part of the vernacular that for some inspires strong political feelings.
A balancing act
It’s a fine line the relatively new Aspen superintendent (Baugh began his role in July last year) finds himself walking more in recent years in his decades-long career. Like educators across the country, he is noticing politics creeping into school policy and curriculum discussions, from unions to how to teach about race in America.
Baugh’s clear about his feelings on the matter: It’s not a welcome development.
“My job is to take care of the Aspen School District. It is my fervent hope that no student knows the political inclination of their instructor,” he said. “That’s my job, and that’s my expectation and that’s what I was hired to do … so any kiddo coming through our school district has the most options available to them. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.”
Still, when Aspen High School students participated — anonymously and voluntarily — in a survey identifying many demographic factors about themselves such as their race, sexual orientation and religious affiliations before rating the school environment, Joyce Rankin, who represents the 3rd Congressional District on the Colorado State Board of Education and is married to Republican Colorado Sen. Bob Rankin, wrote a column published in the Steamboat Springs Pilot & Today criticizing the exercise.
Rankin’s chief concerns she wrote about centered on perceived legal and privacy issues of the student, but it wasn’t long before concerns from several parents surfaced that the school district was teaching critical race theory. That, in turn, led to Baugh and AHS Principal Sarah Strassburger co-authoring a community email putting the issue to rest, as well as Strassburger publishing a guest column of her own.
“First, to those that think we are teaching critical race theory, we want to say, not true! Neither of us support or endorse that position, and it is not part of ASD’s curriculum,” the email starts. “To be clear, trying to meet the needs of each and every student where they are is not critical race theory, it is sound public education. In addition, ensuring that all students are seen, heard, and celebrated is not critical race theory. We want students and staff to approach each other with empathy and kindness and to embrace the IB mission that ‘encourage[s] students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.’”
A national trend
Critical race theory has been making national headlines recently, as 21 state governments are seeing efforts to curtail or outright ban teaching critical race theory, though not all legislative pursuits have proven successful — in May, for instance, a bill seeking to fine educators $5,000 for teaching “biased” topics failed in the Arizona Senate. A few states, including Tennessee, Idaho and Iowa have implemented legal teaching restrictions regarding race, with Texas and Florida governors signaling they’ll be following suit.
Critical race theory is an academic concept with a 40-year-plus history that maintains that societal legal structures have contributed to a larger, systemic racism as part of the country’s legacy, rather than racism being limited to individual interactions. Opponents, often conservative lawmakers, contend that the theory puts too much emphasis on the nation’s worst moments in history while negating the progress the country has made regarding race relations — and, in fact, by focusing too much on race in every arena, actually increases racial tensions.
Baugh in his trademark style walks the proverbial tightrope regarding the issue.
“I think critical race theory — it’s a legal theory, it’s a legal discussion — and it overlooks much of the legislation from the civil rights movement and doesn’t explain or acknowledge that. I have as many questions about that as I do answers, but what I do know as an educator, I know how to move a kid’s reading score regardless of their economic or racial background,” Baugh said Friday. “Everything else above that is above my pay grade.”
Zooming in on equity
The district leadership is very interested in getting more answers about its own students, which was the impetus for the survey. Not because there were any secret curriculum designs to incorporate critical race theory, but because there is an authentic interest in reexamining the school culture through an equity lens. To that end, the survey was an information-gathering exercise to better inform equity and inclusivity efforts. Using a July resolution as its primary framework, an equity team has met more than 20 times to craft a mission statement — still a work in progress, but it’s coming along — and best practices for staff and students.
The list of tasks the equity team faces is a long one, but Assistant Superintendent Tharyn Mulberry said during his update to the Board of Education during its June 1 meeting that it had been narrowed to four for this year’s priorities: the aforementioned mission statement, curriculum review, district and school professional development and gathering stakeholder input.
The mission statement, in its current, early iteration, recognizes “the uniqueness of each individual, embracing diverse backgrounds, values and points of view. We commit to equity and inclusion as the shared responsibility of students, staff, faculty and community members.
“All stakeholders must challenge inequity wherever it is found and seek out systemic inequity rooted consciously and unconsciously into our institutions, policies and practices. We will confront difficult topics related to diversity and inclusion within our local, national and global communities,” it continues.
Inclusivity is the name of the game, and the equity team practices what it preaches in its own work — each meeting was led by a different team member who presented a discussion point that person found particularly interesting or important to the conversation around improving equity districtwide.
“Every person on the committee was asked to lead a meeting and really find some sort of activity that was near and dear to them with equity, so we had the opportunity to have multiple voices as part of our equity work,” Mulberry said.
In doing that work, though, it became clear to the team that an outside, third-party professional would be helpful in navigating such a large, often elusive topic like equity.
“Equity is a huge term and there’s a lot of different things that fall under that category,” said Tameira Wilson, an AHS social studies teacher who serves on the equity team. “We really had to try to focus on what was something we could accomplish this year and what was a good starting point. How we came to our priorities was straight from this proposed Board of Education resolution.”
But it’s the lack of definition around terms like “equity,” “inclusivity” and “diversity” that most concern Melanie Sturm, an otherwise “satisfied parent of the Aspen School District.” Sturm — who is the founder and principal of Engage to Win, a persuasion coaching agency that counts PragerU and Turning Point USA among its clients — is the mother of a rising senior who has found academic success despite dyslexia, a feat for which she imparts much credit to his early childhood educators.
She fears that talk of hiring consultants to advise on equity work could take away limited resources that could be allocated toward ensuring the kind of individualized education opportunities from which her son benefitted. She refers to systemic racism as an “unsubstantiated” notion and — especially as it pertains to the education system in Aspen — an “allegation.”
“One of the things that’s so perplexing in this movement is that … different people have different definitions for words,” she said Saturday via telephone. “Everybody is for diversity, equity and inclusion. There’s nobody who isn’t for that — the question is what’s the definition that people are using? I haven’t yet heard a definition from those presenting at the Board of Education. They haven’t even identified the specific problems they’re trying to address with these efforts.”
School board member Jonathan Nickel signaled during the June 1 meeting that he’d heard similar concerns around defining terms and brought it up.
“In my discussions with people about this, different people have different interpretations of what equity means. So I think that is something that we should have a shared vision around because that moves everybody to coalesce together,” he said. “I think we need to go through that step because I think there are a lot of people who have misconceptions, feel threatened by it. There are different things around that. So if we don’t go through that learning process together as a community, it’ll end up taking a lot longer to accomplish what we want to do.”
Using notes from the past to inform the future
He pointed to the district’s move toward embracing the International Baccalaureate, or IB, program, now the hallmark of the Aspen school curriculum. While the school is bracing for offering even more expanded IB courses and the recently graduated Class of 2021 represented the highest number of IB diplomas in the school’s history — a fact Sturm emphasized proudly after seeing the factoid on the student newspaper’s front page at graduation — its early adoption wasn’t a smooth process, Nickel recalled.
“As we’ve seen as kind of a takeaway from IB in the past, when there wasn’t good communication and good discussion, it really impeded progress in terms of being able to move forward. But when we were able to have those conversations with the communities and different groups of interests, it was clear that everybody thought it was a pretty good idea,” he said.
Baugh, in his presentation to the board, also drew parallels between the district’s consideration of the IB curriculum and its current endeavors around equity. The district hired a third-party consultant then, to help navigate how best to implement IB. He recommended on June 1 that the district do the same now.
“This is a new conversation for a lot of school districts, a lot of administrators and a lot of teachers, and we think Bill [de la Cruz] will be a fantastic resource for us,” he said.
De la Cruz is a consultant and author of “Finding the Origination Point: Understanding our Biases to Create a More Peaceful World.” Among the equity team’s tasks is to roll out a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI, professional development plan, which will include a full-day training in August led by a third party, perhaps de la Cruz, and monthly 90-minute DEI trainings for all staff, administrators and board members.
This is all deeply concerning to Sturm and other parents, many of whom have spoken about their issues directly to Baugh. But for those serving on the equity team such as Wilson and Board of Education President Susan Marolt, it’s incredibly refreshing and crucial work.
“It really is about Aspen School District as a community and making sure we’re able to pull people in and make sure that we’re all working together,” Wilson said, calling the equity work “critically important.”
Marolt, though not present June 1, forwarded a statement to be read on her behalf at the meeting, reflecting her optimism for the future.
“They have invested hours of time and energy, and I have seen that they are committed to learning and practicing empathy, compassion and engaging in difficult conversations for the good of our district and community,” she said of the equity team. “We have a lot of work to do, but just seeing this group’s dedication to inclusion and equity is inspiring and encouraging for our future.”
It’s a bit ironic that a conversation focused on inclusivity and bringing more people in is causing division, not just locally but nationally. The definition of words and constructs are open to interpretation, as well as data points. Among the key resources Sturm points to as evidence to support her position that the school district would do better to continue developing individualized and supplemental opportunities than continue developing the equity team’s work? The very student survey that initially ignited concerns. Far from Rankin, Sturm is grateful that it was conducted, as it showed a majority positive outlook from the student body toward the schools.
Of the 295 respondents, 262 — 88.8% — of students identify as white. Forty students — 13.6% — are Latino, 10 — 3.4% — are Asian American and seven students — 2.4% — are Black. When asked in general, “during your time at AHS, have you felt discriminated against?” 80.7% responded “no,” with the remaining 19.3% responding “yes.”
There’s plenty of room for common ground, everyone in the conversation seems to agree. For instance, Baugh and his team are also in talks with the Anti-Defamation League about making the Aspen School District a recognized “No Place for Hate” campus, an initiative that is “startlingly affordable” and likely won’t cost the district itself any money, he said.
“A local leader has offered to explore helping raise the money,” Baugh said. “We want to make sure it’s a balanced and completely inclusive program, and we believe it is, but we’re looking into that.”
That’s certainly something Sturm can get behind, she said.
“I support any efforts to educate kids about stamping out hate. I just think we have to define it and we have to identify how best to achieve those goals,” she said.
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What’s in a name? Concerns linger among some parents surrounding what constitutes ‘equity’ in the classroom - Aspen Daily News
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