Education

William Norris has filed a lawsuit against the University of Colorado Boulder, where he was a student and member of the Air Force ROTC program before being suspended in the wake of sexual assault allegations that were later rejected by a jury. He claims that CU Boulder administrators violated Title IX and his right to due process, among other things, by way of what his legal team calls “a profoundly flawed and intentionally biased sexual misconduct investigation.”

Dr. Christina Boucher’s ogling lawsuit against Colorado State University was superpowered by the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, a project launched in the wake of sexual-harassment horror stories linked to disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein and others. But despite the increased attention being paid to complaints like hers across the country, a jury has ruled against her, finding that CSU’s actions didn’t qualify as improper retaliation.

Tay Anderson was the youngest person to ever run for Denver’s Board of Education. This week, he announced he’s running again, this time for its at-large seat.

On August 10, an organization called FASTER Colorado is sponsoring a three-day class to instruct teachers, administrators and other school personnel interested in carrying a gun on the job how to stop an active shooter. The idea of armed teachers in classrooms remains controversial, but FASTER Colorado executive director Laura Carno sees the concept as common sense, pure and simple.

In a result that’s sure to stir frustration and confusion among alumni from the University of Denver, the University of Colorado Boulder and plenty of other institutions across the state, a new analysis names Colorado State University the best four-year college in Colorado.

Colorado State University has failed to short-circuit Dr. Christina Boucher’s ogling lawsuit over her time at the school. CSU’s motion to toss the complaint has been denied, removing the last major obstacle prior to the scheduled August 20 start of a trial in a case that is supported by the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund but actually predated the 2017 sexual harassment horror stories that helped inspire the #MeToo movement.

Boasberg announced Tuesday he’s leaving his post at after an unusually long tenure – nearly ten years at the helm of Denver Public Schools, a 92,600-student urban district nationally known for its innovative approaches to school improvement.

Coloradans could see their first constitutional ballot initiative during the November general elections since voters approved the “Raise the Bar” amendment in 2016, which placed significant barriers to amending the state constitution.

Educators report that undocumented students have expressed increased fear in response to family separations on the border.

In a lawsuit scheduled to be heard at trial in August, former Colorado State University computer-science professor Dr. Christina Boucher claims that CSU reacted to her reports of a male colleague’s ogling by retaliating against her.

The big news about teens and marijuana in Colorado is that there isn’t big news. Just-issued federal government statistics show that the rate of cannabis use among high school students in the state is slightly less than the national average and below the percentage who smoked pot before Colorado voters approved legal consumption for adults more than five years ago.

Established in 2014, RiseUp is one of twenty Alternative Education Campuses — schools that accommodate at-risk populations — in the DPS system. The charter school specializes in teaching students who have either dropped out of school or are at risk of dropping out, or have a criminal background or a history of child abuse or neglect, among other criteria.

Two elite charter schools in the Denver area — Stargate School and STEM School Highlands Ranch — are some of the highest-performing schools in their respective districts. Both have long wait lists of parents eager to wield their choice and enroll their children. But families in both schools have learned the hard way that charter schools can come with a heavy price.

The latest order in a 2016 lawsuit filed against the University of Colorado by a male student who was expelled after being accused of sexually assaulting two fellow enrollees dismisses a claim that he was a discrimination victim under Title IX but is allowing an assertion that his due process rights were violated to move ahead.

Kris McDaniel-Miccio, one of the seven intervenors named in the consent decree between DU and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which brought suit against the university on the female full professors’ behalf, has written a letter to Chopp that she’s given Westword permission to share. And it pulls no punches.

The University of Denver has agreed to pay $2.66 million to resolve a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which accused DU of paying not just one or some of its female full law professors less than the mean average salary of male full profs at the law school, but all of them.

Parents, students and staffers at RiseUp Community School want answers about an alleged room-to-room search at the school conducted by the Denver Police Department, with officers said to have shown their weapons while searching for a student who wasn’t in the building.

The Colorado high schools ranked highest in the latest U.S. News & World Report analysis score better marks within the state than outside it. Not one of the top ten Colorado high schools in 2018 lands within the top one-hundred facilities nationwide, with the top finisher sliding 47 slots from just two years ago.

Colorado Department of Education data about marijuana violations in state schools reveals the facilities with the most pot-related incidents during the 2016-2017 academic year, with five registering fifty or more. The numbers also illustrate the wide variation in how schools handle such matters, with many seldom or never referring the students in question to law enforcement. The most common punishment: out-of-school suspensions.

Colorado State University is taking a barrage of flak after two Native American students who’d signed up to tour the campus were detained by police after the mother of another potential CSU attendee dialed 911 because their appearance disturbed her. But Cheryl Crazy Bull, president and CEO of the Denver-based American Indian College Fund, sees the university less as the cause of a disease than a symptom of one.

During its 10 p.m. broadcast on May 2, nearly two weeks after Westword revealed that an investigation into former Manual principal Nick Dawkins found he had violated Denver Public Schools policies related to “equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination” and “procedures for the investigation of employee complaints of discrimination or harassment,” 9News reported that DPS had finally sent a letter to Manual parents about the inquiry. But that wasn’t true. Or at least it’s not true yet.

According to former Friends of Manual board chair Lainie Hodges, staffers and students were left reeling by news that a Denver Public Schools investigation found that former Manual High School principal Nick Dawkins had violated policies related to “equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination” and “procedures for the investigation of employee complaints of discrimination or harassment.”