The Denver Board of Education and the district’s CDM Commission are inviting community members with opinions or observations about the district’s Collaborative Decision-Making process to provide their thoughts during a public hearing on Thursday, Nov. 7.

Written comments are also welcome. They may be sent to: CDM Commission, care of Office of Community Relations, Room 400, 900 Grant St., Denver, CO 80203. Comments may also be sent via e-mail to: Ginny_Tice@dpsk12.org.

Speakers who wish to speak at the Nov. 7 public hearing should call 720-423-3210 by 4 p.m. on that day to be included on the speakers’ list. The hearing will be held at 7 p.m. at the district administration building, 900 Grant St. The hearing will be televised on cable Channel 22 in Denver. Individual speakers will be given three minutes to speak.

The Collaborative Decision-Making process was launched in 1991 and ushered in a new era of site-based management in Denver Public Schools. The CDM concept gave parents, community members, teachers, other school staff members and students (in middle and high schools) a seat at the decision-making table at each school.

CDM teams were organized within the contract between the district and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA) as part of a settlement fashioned in 1991 by former Colorado Governor Roy Romer. With the new contract approved last spring by the Board of Education and the DCTA, both parties agreed to organize the CDM Commission and asked for an in-depth conversation and study of how CDM teams function – and what changes might be recommended.

The CDM Commission includes four parents, four teachers, two principals, a member of the Board of Education and a staff representative.

The recommendations from the CDM Commission will ultimately be the subject for teacher contract negotiations. The commission expects to finish its work in a few months.

Among the questions being given to the new Commission are:

• Should CDM teams exist at all?
• Because the CDM process involves administrators, teachers, parents, students and classified employees, should it remain part of the Agreement?
• Should the CDM Committee become a collaborative advisory Committee?
• If the CDM Committee became advisory in nature, how would the remainder of the Agreement be affected?
• If shared decision making remains the function of the CDM Committee, what is the system of shared accountability?
• Since each school is not an independent unit but part of a larger system, which decisions should be made at the school and which decisions should be made centrally in the interest of improving the achievement of all students?
• What is the appropriate role of the CDM Committee in the selection, evaluation and retention of principals?