“Will you work with us to improve safety in Cole Middle School?”

This was the mantra of Cole parent Bertha Alvarez, a member of the Northeast Denver Parent Organizing in Education (NEDPOE) Initiative, on Thursday evening, Dec. 5, as she and Lorena Talamantes stood before 140 parents and residents and an impressive panel of school and community officials.

Based on research done in 2001-2002, the incidents of fights and harassment, and the lack of respect between students and teachers mean that students are not safe and therefore they are often not learning. It is a situation that is being turned around.

Parents want to see a plan put in place that will change this reality. They will begin to measure what they hope will be improvements in school safety.

Cole Middle School principal Nicole Veltzé committed to meeting with the parents on a monthly basis to discuss progress on making Cole a safer school. Ms. Veltzé explained that a Discipline Committee had met for the first time last week. A school safety plan will be made available to the Cole Parent Organizing Committee.

District 2 of the Denver Police Department & the DPS Department of Safety and Security will work to provide more patrols during critical morning and afternoon periods. District 2 also committed to seek funding for and train parents in the implementation of a parent safety patrol which will provide parent volunteers with cell phones to report incidents to the police.

Principal Veltzé has also opened the door to a pilot program called Restorative Justice that is being tested in several DPS schools. Students who are referred to the program will work with a community justice board that will bring together victims and offenders and seek consequences that keep youth in the community and encourage honest reflection on their behaviors.

Councilwoman Elbra Wedgeworth, a Cole alumni, closed out the panel with a heartfelt promise to provide all the support of her office to make sure that every commitment made at the meeting would be fully implemented. She promised to involve School Board representative Kevin Patterson as well.

The public meeting at Cole is the culmination of NEDPOE’s first year of organizing in the Manual feeder pattern. Similar actions at Manual, Harrington and Swansea schools have brought the voice of parents into the foreground. A new relationship between school, parents and community is emerging that promises to improve learning opportunities for children and youth in northeast Denver.

NEDPOE is a member of the Metro Organizations for People and is funded through Making Connections-Denver. For more information, contact Patricia Lawless, Coordinator, 303-391-6442 or Patty_Lawless@dpsk12.org