2401 E 35th Avenue
Denver, CO 80205

For years I defended Principal Jenks and gave leadership the benefit of the doubt. Columbine is a complex school serving a diverse community with competing needs, and I believed that deserved patience and grace. I can no longer defend it. When your best teachers leave and you replace them with far less experienced ones, that's indefensible. When the parents who most vocally defended her are now privately saying she needs to go, that's indefensible. At some point the evidence speaks for itself and we've reached the point that Columbine will now take years to recover from this mass exodus of our best teachers. The K-2 teachers at Columbine are wonderful and the data shows it. Or they were — because they're all leaving. After that it gets complicated. Third grade has been a revolving door for years (4 years now of long term subs in the classroom) and 4th and 5th grade are failing kids academically. The root cause isn't the teachers — it's leadership. Chronic instability, high staff turnover, and a culture where raising legitimate concerns gets you managed rather than heard (or for teachers - fired or let go through the budget cuts). If you question anything publicly, all of a sudden, you have the Principal Jenks' supporters privately saying - come on, she's trying her best. Columbine Elementary is a great neighborhood school that deserves far better leadership than it currently has.