Sheridan on Thursday joined the long list of school districts whose leaders have voluntarily confessed their failings during testimony at the Lobato school funding trial.
During testimony that took all morning, lawyer David Hinojosa led Superintendent Michael Clough through lengthy testimony about the district’s demographics, achievement scores, budget, building needs and more.
Sheridan has about 1,600 students, 80 percent eligible for free and reduced lunch, nearly 80 percent Hispanic and more than a third English language learners, according to Clough’s testimony. Sheridan is accredited with a turnaround plan, the lowest category of the state’s five-step accreditation system.
After Hinojosa asked the standard plaintiffs’ punch-line question – does the district have the resources to help all low income and ELL students meet state achievement standards? – Clough simply said, “No.”
“Is that difficult to say?” Hinojosa asked.
“Yes,” Clough replied.
Also testifying Thursday was Maribel Payan, mother of four children in the Sheridan schools and a plaintiff-intervenor in the Lobato v. State lawsuit. The original plaintiffs are a group of parents and school districts that sued the state in 2005, claiming the state’s school finance system doesn’t meet the constitutional requirements for a “thorough and uniform” school system.
The intervenors, including families from the Greeley, Mapleton, Rocky Ford and Sheridan districts, joined the case in 2010, represented by lawyers from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. (The Sheridan district is not a plaintiff.) The intervenors’ case focuses on claims about the failure of Colorado schools to appropriately serve poor students and English language learners.
Speaking through translators, Payan repeatedly answered “No” when asked if her children, all English language learners, have received the services they needed at school.
More than once she simply said “Bad” when asked how some of her children were doing in school.
Asked about her expectations for her children, Payan said, “I want for them to have the best education … so that when they go to the university they can do it. I want the best for them.”
Asked if she felt her children had been prepared to achieve, she said, “No, of course they’re not,” shaking her head and smiling.
During afternoon testimony, expert witness Kathy Escamilla, a bilingual specialist from the education school at the University of Colorado at Boulder, also had discouraging words about Sheridan.
Escamilla prepared a report on the state of Colorado programs for English language learners, including reviews of the programs in Greeley, Mapleton, Rocky Ford and Sheridan.
Of Sheridan, she said, “Nice people trying hard but not a very good program at all.” ELL students are “being taught by teachers who don’t have specialized training.”
Escamilla seemed a little taken aback that Sheridan was using Rosetta Stone software to help ELL learners. “This is the only school district I’ve seen that uses Rosetta Stone.”
Clough had mentioned use of the software during his testimony.
Escamilla made similar comments about the ELL programs in the other three districts.
Highlights of the day
QUOTE: “Twenty minutes usually means at least an hour.” – District Judge Sheila Rappoport at 5 p.m., after a state lawyer said he needed about 20 minutes to cross-examine Escamilla. The judge delayed that until Friday morning and adjourned court for the day.
MANEUVERING: On cross-examination, after sitting through Clough’s testimony about Sheridan’s woes, Assistant Attorney General Erica Weston pointed out to him that the district website contains a very positive statement from him about the district.
Clough acknowledged that he’d written the statement. When his turn to re-question came, Hinojosa asked the superintendent if he’d “ever seen a message from a district” that stressed failure and problems.
“No,” Clough said. “You won’t get any better by beating people up … there has to be some message of hope.
“We do offer the highest quality education we can provide, given the resources that are granted to us.”
Weston returned to the lectern to ask if the “message misled your community?”
“Possibly,” Clough replied.
DOCUMENTS: Read Sheridan’s three-year performance report and its improvement plan. Read Escamilla’s report.
UPCOMING: Defense cross-examination of Escamilla opens things on Friday, and more parents from the MALDEF plaintiffs group are expected to testify. In the afternoon Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond is scheduled to testify for both sets of plaintiffs, talking about the issues and costs involved in improving educator effectiveness. (Read her pretrial report.)
The state is expected to begin presenting its case in the middle of next week. Among possible witnesses at the end of the week are Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia; past and current executives from the Department of Education including Rich Wenning, Joe O’Brien and Nina Lopez; State Board of Education member Angelika Schroeder; former education Commissioner William Moloney; DPS innovation executive Kristin Waters, and Hoover Institution scholar Eric Hanushek.
