Closing Schools Is O.K.

The Denver Public Schools has made the following proposals for the coming academic year:

The schools to be closed:

• Columbian Elementary
• Castro Elementary
• Schmitt Elementary
• International Academy of Denver at Harrington
• Palmer Elementary
• West Middle School
• Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design

The grade-level restructures, impacted schools and grade levels recommended are:

* Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy

Removal of 1st through 5th grades

Becomes 6th through 12th grades only

* Dora Moore ECE-8 School

Removal of grades 6th through 8th

Becomes ECE through 5th grade only

* Denver Center for International Studies Baker Middle School

Removal of 9th through 12th grades

Becomes 6th through 8th grades only

This makes the least sense to me. Where do you go to high school after this, when you've been focusing on learning Chinese for three years?

I'm not sure that every one of those decisions is a good one. But the main source of the differences in economic success between command economies and market economies is that market economies shut down businesses that can't break even for a sustained period of time, while command economies rarely due as a result of political pressure.

Shutting down firms and workplaces and schools that aren't working well enough to make sense, not just in the extremis is what really matters and makes the difference between a healthy economic system and a sick one.

Denver's Tight Housing Market

It's a seller's market in Denver's housing market right now. 

There were 486 active real estate listings in Denver yesterday, including lots and mobile homes, according to a friend of mine who follows these things. This is down from the start of 2022 when there were only 1,477 active properties on the market in the Denver (968 single family homes and 509 condos), which is 11,175 fewer houses on the market than usual.

Denver's population was 715,522 at the 2020 United States census, a 19.22% increase since the 2010 United States census. The average household size in Denver is 2.29 people. Denver has about 312,455 households in all, and Denver's demand for home went up by 50,372 homes in the last decade, on average, 5037 new households per year.

About 20% of people in Denver, in a typical year, live someplace different than they did a year ago. So there are a lot of people looking for new places to live.

As of July 1, 2019, there were 338,341 housing units in Denver. Denver issued 5,059 building permits in 2020, some of which was for commercial properties, but some of which was for apartment buildings with more than one residential unit. So, supply and demand are neck and neck. This has led to soaring housing prices.

Also, it is worth noting that while Denver's population is rising, that enrollment in the Denver Public Schools is actually falling significantly, to the point where the district is planning to close schools and lay off teachers and staff. 

Migrants to Denver are apparently disproportionately childless adults (often Millennials), and people are having fewer children. Indeed, the high cost of housing in Denver, fundamentally driven by a failure of housing construction to keep up with demand, is one of the reasons people are having fewer children.

Housing prices in Denver are soaring at far more than the rate of inflation, eyeballing it, an increase of 125% from 2012 to 2020 (an average rate of increase of 10.7% per year).

In 2021, the average price of a single family home in the Denver metro area was $612,274, up 16.68% over 2020, an all-time high and the tenth consecutive year of rising housing prices. 

In December 2021 in the Denver metro area the median price for a residence was $545,000 (average $626,573), the median price for a single family home was $599,990 (average $705,753), and the median price for a condo was $381,500 (average $441,390), all of which are record highs.

Rents in Denver are no better. As of October 2021:

[A]ccording to October’s National Rent Report from Zumper, the third largest online rental platform in the U.S.

Since pandemic closures swept the nation in March 2020, Denver’s median one-bedroom rent has risen 11.8 percent, and two-bedrooms grew 14.3 percent. In 2021, those rates have climbed 20.7 percent — making Denver the sixteenth priciest rental market in the U.S.

Median Denver rent for a one-bedroom is $1,690, and $2,190 for a two-bedroom. . . . One-bedroom rent prices are highest in New York City, where they’re $3,100, followed by San Francisco at $2,800 and Boston at $2,530.

There also aren't lots of rental vacancies. In 2021, "metro Denver’s apartment vacancy rate plunged from 5.5% in the first quarter to 3.7% in the second[.]"

In contrast, "the median rent in metro Denver, including the incentives offered by landlords, was $805 in the first quarter of 2010, according to RealPage." This was an increase of 81% from 2010 to 2018. 

Another source says that average rents in metro Denver were up 85% from 2010 to 2019 (somewhat less than the 105% increase in the median housing price in that time period in the metro area). There were 61,700 apartment units built in the Denver metro area from 2010 to 2019. 

Meanwhile, median household income in metro Denver was up only 55% from 2010 to 2019. Inflation from 2010 through 2022 has cumulatively been 28% (nationally).

Zillow puts the increase in rent from 2010 to 2019 at 88% in the Denver metro area.

This is a stark contrast with metro Denver from 2000 to 2010, when metro area rents grew at slightly less than the rate of inflation (a 22% increase in nominal dollars and a 2% drop after adjusting for inflation). 

Moreover, since the surge in prices is driven by the fundamentals of demand outstripping supply, this doesn't appear to be just a speculative price bubble that could pop at any time.

How To Restructure PK-12 Education In Colorado

The preschool to high school (PK-12) education system in Colorado would benefit from a major restructuring of its governance and finance. I've provide my proposal first, and then review the status quo for those not already familiar with it.

My Proposal

1. Finance PK-12 education entirely from state revenue with the increased state revenue demand financed with an income tax increase. This would require an increase from a 4.5% state income tax to a 6.53% state income tax.

2. Eliminate all property tax and car tax funding of schools. This would reduce real property taxes, business personal property taxes, and motor vehicle property taxes by an average of approximately 60% across the board statewide, although the reduction would vary by school district and by locality within school districts. Districts will low property tax rates due to large property tax bases per student would receive the least benefit.

3. The State of Colorado would guaranty all school district municipal bonds to which property tax revenues had previously been pledged.

4. Replace the elected state school board with a school board appointed by the Governor with approval from the state senate, with staggered terms. (While we are at it we should do the same thing in the case of the CU-Regents, which are also elected statewide on a partisan basis.) This would reduce the number of statewide elected officers per voter by four.

5. Replace existing school board elections for the general public, with internal elections conducted on a one enrolled student, one vote basis, in which parents or guardians vote as proxies on behalf of their children of less than high school age (the vote for a student with two parents would be split in half, one for each parent), and high school students would vote for themselves. A single transferrable vote system would be used (and would be more feasible given the smaller number of voters involved). In Denver this would reduce the number of school board posts per voter to vote upon per election cycle by three. A set of rules and processes related to school district campaigns would be developed to fit this new kind of election.

6. Future bond issues would have to have the support of the same people who vote for school board (so that major capital projects get parent-student approval), but could only be made if the Colorado Department of Revenue certifies that the school district will have enough revenue to service the bonds for their term and agrees to guaranty those bonds. 

7. End all state and local elections in odd numbered years, outside home rule cities or cities and counties that can make their own rules.

Why?

* It resolves inter-district school funding level and tax burden disparities in a fair way.

* It provides a stable funding base for education that is appropriate to what it funds.

* It makes Colorado's state and local tax system less regressive.

* This is a boon to lower income property owners and vehicle owners, and tends to make housing more affordable.

* It eliminates conflicts between state government and local government in school finance.

* It is basically neutral in terms of tax administration costs since the process of collecting property taxes and the process of collecting income taxes would remain largely unchanged with only the amounts due changing.

* School boards make decisions on how to spend school funds (they don't have the power to raise funds with taxes without state legislature or voter approval), which are only salient to students and people not related to students shouldn't have a say in that matter. But, it gives a say to non-citizen parents and parents of students from outside the district who make school choice decisions to attend there.

* Frequently, the combination of the different voter base for school boards, and the use of a single transferrable vote system, would provide a voter base that would appropriately reflect the greater diversity of children enrolled in schools in an area than the local community as a whole.

* Giving high school students a vote in real school board elections is an excellent way to build habits of good civic participation, and high school students are old and wise enough to participate in making these decisions.

* It substantially reduces the burden imposed on voters by eliminating elections for the general public in odd numbered years.

* It substantially reduces the burden imposed on voters by ending general public elections for local school boards, the state school board, and local bond and mill levy issues that impose a significant burden on voters to investigate and vote upon. It would reduce the number of candidate races per four year election cycle per voter by seven and would also reduce the number of ballot issues each voter would have to evaluate.

* Elections for Governor, the State House, the State Senate, and state TABOR voters would provide an adequate protection to taxpayers in the general public and adequate general public supervision of the educational process, in a manner with a similar political lean.

* While this is a substantial overhaul, it wouldn't require federal legislation or changes in federal appropriations. This is a major improvement in public policy that could be achieved despite gridlock on most policy issues at the federal level. 

* It isn't likely to result in meaningful positive or negative externalities outside of Colorado, something that is a major consideration for high education financing reforms where interstate travel by students is common.

Background: The Complex Status Quo In Colorado

PK-12 Governance

Currently, the state is divided into school districts that provide PK-12 education that are governed by school boards elected in odd numbered years by all registered voters in the district. These voters also vote on requests from school boards for property tax funding and in order to authorize significant debt financing of capital expenditures with municipal bonds to which property tax revenues and other revenues of the district are financed. 

Neighboring school districts may established Boards of Cooperative Education, which are joint ventures of two or more neighboring school districts to cooperate to provide services such as vocational schools or special education services that smaller school districts could provide more efficiently with the economies of scale provided by a joint venture. These BOCES, as they are called, are governed by officials selected by representatives of the member school districts and are financed with funds from the member school districts' funds.

Some PK-12 education policy issues, other than school finance, are handled by an elected state school board. For example, the state school board sets statewide curricular standards, approves certain charter or voucher school applications, and can intervene to place school districts that are in crisis in a receivership type status.

School Choice

The default rule is that students in a public school district are assigned to attend the school appropriate to their grade in the system in their neighborhood with each elementary school, middle school, and high school having its own territory within the district. Many schools have multiple programs that have distinct student bodies for most classes and different curricula and teachers, while sharing things like sports teams, school dances, and cafeterias, and students in those schools, on a space available or applicable basis, can be placed in one of these programs at a neighborhood school. 

But, students can attend a school outside their assigned territory within the school district is there is more than one school at their grade level using a school choice system, and a system of statewide school choice exists to allow students who reside in one school district to attend a school in another school district. To utilize the school choice system, one applies to attend a neighborhood school outside your own neighborhood to the extent that there is space available there. Sometimes one can apply more specifically a special program in a school of choice. 

Also, the school system has authorized "charter schools" and "voucher schools" which are public schools with almost no district level supervision that don't have an assigned neighbor and admit students who choose them based upon applications and the choice system rules. 

PK-12 Finance

School boards are financed through a combination of local property tax collections and from state funds appropriate from the state general fund budget that is raised predominantly from state income and state sales taxes. 

State PK-12 funds are distributed to school districts based upon a formula established by the state legislature which begins with a per enrolled student dollar amounts, with adjustments for certain higher need enrolled students, and is further adjusted at the aggregate level based upon the property tax revenues that the district raises. The mix of PK-12 funding in the Denver Public Schools (from here) is fairly typical:

In fiscal year 2017-2018, in the Denver Public Schools, total expenditures per K-12 student were $11,476.

Property taxes to finance the operations (mill levies) and municipal bond payments (redemption mills) for the local school district typically make up a majority of the property tax burden. There is a certain baseline mill levy rate that a school district can impose without voter approval. There is also a maximum amount of property taxes that the state allows a school district to impose. Voter approved property taxes above the minimum amount are called mill levy overrides and the extent to which local taxpayers approve them varies considerably.

Because some school districts have a larger property tax based per student than others, the amount of money raised by a given mill levy varies. Some school districts can generate more tax revenue than they need from a low mill levy, while others generate very little tax revenue even from a maximum level mill levy. Schools with less property tax revenue generating capacity (generally rural farming based areas, areas heavily impacted by tax exempt government property, and low income urban areas) receive more state funding than schools with more capacity to fund themselves with property taxes (such as ski resort towns). For this reason the state funding component of PK-12 funding to school districts in Colorado is called a "state equalization payment."

Specifically, as a March 3, 2020 article from the Colorado Sun explains:

Currently, Colorado sends about $453 million in state funds to districts where school property tax rates are below the level needed to fully fund themselves, or below 27 mills. . . .

Colorado’s history of inequitable school funding was set in motion in 1988, when property tax rates were all over the place, similar to how they are today. . . .

The legislature aimed to establish a consistent level of investment in schools through a uniform tax rate, mandating all districts levy the number of mills at which they would be fully funded, or at most 40 mills. That would have resulted in local communities covering half of the funding needed for K-12 education with the other half contributed by the state. . . .

By 1991, all districts had reached 40 mills or the number that would enable them to be fully funded with local property tax revenues. But in 1992, Colorado voters passed the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which capped the amount of revenue the state government and local governments could generate and spend. In K-12 education, that cap was dictated by growth in inflation and student enrollment. . . .

That posed a problem for school districts in communities where the assessed value of properties was rising rapidly, causing them to generate revenue amounts above their constitutional limit.

The solution: decrease property tax rates.

In some communities, particularly those experiencing an oil and gas boom, property values soared, causing property tax rates to plummet, [for example in] Primero RE-2 School District in rural Las Animas County. That district’s property tax rate dropped from 40 mills in 1993 to 1.68 mills in 2006.

Some districts in Weld County also cut their property taxes and mill levies and are fully funded because of oil and gas values. Those districts include Pawnee School District Re-12, Prairie School District and Platte Valley School District RE7.

In 2007, after property tax rates had continued to fall, the legislature stepped in and froze the rates to keep them from ratcheting down. At that point, some districts were approaching 0 mills. . . .

That legislative decision, she said, also froze inequities in place with no way for districts to resolve them and no incentive to change because they can count on the state to backfill budget gaps.

The resulting system has been an unbalanced one in which wealthier school districts are in many cases receiving state funding at the expense of districts in lower-income communities, and the state’s role in funding public education has become increasingly outsized.

The scales have tipped so far that the state is now providing 61% of education funding while local communities cover the remaining 39%, according to figures provided by the Colorado Children’s Campaign.

State funding per student varies greatly in across Colorado's 178 school districts: 

Rural districts receive large upward adjustments in per pupil funding, despite their low cost of living due to the diseconomies of scale associated with having small schools with low enrollments, and because their property tax base is anemic.

School districts typically own the buildings and facilities used to provide education in their district which are funded with municipal bonds that are repaid with voter approved bond redemption millage. Sometimes, school districts made their buildings available to charter schools or voucher schools in their district which rent the spaces from their budgets.

A lot has changed since October 24, 2005 (including the state income tax rate) when I summarized state and local finance in Colorado, but some of the broad outlines remain the same:

A single comprehensive solution can solve the problems above to a great extent.

Colorado currently collects the following amounts of taxes:

State Income Tax-------$3,972M at a 4.63% flat rate.

State Sales Tax--------$1,849M at a 2.9% rate.

Local Sales Taxes------$1,862M at an average 2.95% rate.

School Property Taxes--$2,048M

Other Property Taxes---$1,366M

About 25% of Colorado's aggregate property valuation is business property now assigned to bear 55% of the total property tax burden. About 75% of Colorado's aggregate property valuation is reisdential property assigned to bear 45% of the total property tax burden.

The gas tax currently brings in about $900 million a year, with no funds currently being contributed for transporation spending from general revenues, but the Department of Transportation needs $1.4 billion a year to maintain state roads in a way that will match growing expenses and traffic.

As of 2019-2020, state K-12 education spending was $4,405.2 million of general fund money and $1,780.7 million of other state funds. The total state general fund revenues are $12,641.4 million, of which $8,387.6 million comes from state income taxes (net of diversions to the state education fund which funds K-12 education outside the general fund).

Denver Ballot Issues 2021 And Colorado State Ballot Issues In 2021

Ballots are just starting to arrive at people's homes in Denver, Colorado this week for the 2021 general election, for which ballots must be returned by November 2, 2021. 

Your ballot can be mailed back if you complete it soon enough and pay for postage, or it can be dropped at any of numerous, conveniently located Denver ballot drop boxes around the City for free at any time before the end of the day on Tuesday, November 2, 2021.

The ballot in Denver will have three statewide ballot issues and thirteen City and County ballot issues.

The ballot in Denver will also have four Denver Public Schools school board elections which make up about half of the DPS school board: an "at large" director election with five candidates seeking one seat, and DPS School Board district director elections in three Districts (Districts 2, 3 and 4 with two, two and four candidates running in each respectively). I personally only vote in the "at large" race because my district had a vote for school board director for a four year term two years ago when the other half of the current DPS school board was elected. My analysis of the Denver Public Schools school board races will be saved for another possible future post.

Any given voter in Denver will thus have either seventeen or eighteen decisions to make on their ballot. Long ballots like these, even in off years, are a systemic problem with Colorado's political system that should be reformed. But that is a matter for another day in another post.

This is based largely on official voter information pamphlets for the measures and casual awareness of local news coverage of the issues. If you want a second opinion you have review a Denver Post voter's guide on the same issues.

Executive Summary

If you are in a rush, and you trust me, here are my recommendations on the sixteen ballot issues voters have to consider in the City and County of Denver, Colorado this year.

Vote No on all three state ballot issues (Amendment 78, Proposition 119 and Proposition 120).

Vote No on the following six local Denver ballot issues: 

2E, 2F, 300, 302, 303 and 304.

Vote Yes on the following seven local Denver ballot issues: 

2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 2G, 2H, and 301.

State Ballot Issues

Amendment 78

Amendment 78 would require the approval of the state legislature, following a public hearing, to spend state money that comes from sources other than legislative appropriations, like lawsuit settlement proceeds and certain federal grants. It is a response to conservative dissatisfaction with the fact the Governor Polis, a Democrat, was able to decide how to spend emergency COVID grants from the federal government.

You should vote No on Amendment 78, a change to the state constitution. 

The reality is that these kinds of funds may not be available at all unless the executive branch can actively negotiate where they will be going (e.g. class action lawsuit settlements earmarked for particular purposes), or need to be spent quickly (e.g. disaster and pandemic relief funds) to have the desired effect. Colorado's legislature is in session for only four months each year, so in order to get quick action, the wait to spend emergency funds could easily be as much as nine to ten months, unless an expensive special session of the legislature is called for what is usually, relative to the size of the state budget, a fairly small amount of money.

The reason for voter input in TABOR ballot issues is to give the public a say on spending that they are paying for, this justification isn't present, however, for Amendment 78 funds.

Proposition 119

This initiative would increase retail marijuana sales taxes from 15% to 20% (phased in over three years) raising an estimated $137.6 million to fund grants for tutoring and other after school education programs in a way independently of existing school boards and higher educational programs. The priority for the programs would be for lower income families.

You should vote No on Proposition 119.

Like most complex ballot issues, it isn't very well drafted or thought out, relative to comparable initiative of the state legislature.

This is a major new regressive tax the strengthens the incentive to move marijuana to the black market. It creates a new bureaucracy independent of the State Board of Education and Colorado Department of Education to run this program rather than working with existing educators. It doesn't have a clear focus or buy-in from educations whom it is supposed to support. While supporting kids learning is a worthy cause, this leaves open lots of room for dubious programs when other public needs are more worthy of taxpayer financed spending.

Proposition 120

The state legislature temporary reduced for 2022 and 2023, real property tax rates by 9% on all forms of real estate covered by Proposition 120 except multifamily apartment buildings and hotels.

Proposition 120 would make those reductions permanent and would also lower property taxes by 9% on multifamily apartment buildings and hotels.

Proposition 120 would significantly and permanently reduce funding for public schools and would also significantly reduce revenue for public schools, only some of which wouldn't be restored by state funding. It would also reduce the availability of homestead property tax exemptions for senior citizens and disabled veterans. The reduction would be about $46 million statewide in 2022, about $50 million in 2023, and more in subsequent years.

The ballot language doesn't reflect the impact of significantly changed state laws since it was proposed.

Denver Ballot Issues

Issues 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D and 2E

Denver ballot issues 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D and 2E are requests from the City and County of Denver government seek voter permission to issue new municipal bonds, financed with existing taxes, to replace prior municipal bonds that have been paid off, for particular major capital expenditures broken into five subcategories (A-E). Some of these expenditures are for repairs and renovations of existing infrastructure. Some are for new projects.

In substance, the City is asking voters if they favor the major spending commitment that each of the five measures calls for on the merits as a good or a bad way to spend money. 

Issue 2A would devote $104 million to capital expenditures on various cultural facilities in the City.

Issue 2B would devote $39 million to capital expenditures on homeless shelters.

Issue 2C would devote $63 million to capital expenditures for pedestrian and bicycle transportation infrastructure and to improving a Morrison Corridor Art District in West Denver.

Issue 2D would devote $54 million to capital expenditures for park and recreation facilities.

Issue 2E would devote $190 million to a major expansion and overhaul of the National Western Stock Show Complex in North Denver (basically the "county fair grounds" for the City and County of Denver).

Vote Yes on Denver ballot issues 2A, 2B, 2C and 2D because the amount of spending on these capital improvements are things that the City needs. 

Vote No on Denver ballot issue 2E because the very large amount of money that the City proposed to devote to a major expansion and overhaul of the National Western Stock Show complex isn't consistent with the City's needs.

Issue 2F

Issue 2F is a proposal to repeal the Group Living Ordinance recently adopted Denver's City Council. 

This would substantially reduce the number of unrelated people who can live in various kinds of housing (disallowing homes where roommates rent rooms in a larger home in many cases) and would also greatly restrict the geographic areas where nursing homes, group homes for foster children, women's shelters, and other kinds of temporary housing can be located.

Vote No on Denver ballot issue 2F which would make housing less affordable and increase homelessness in Denver. The fears stoked by its opponents that higher population density in neighborhoods destroys those neighborhoods are absurdly exaggerated. 

Issue 2G

The City has an Independent Monitor's Office to review misconduct allegations directed at Denver's law enforcement agencies, but it doesn't have enough authority to be effective. For example, it doesn't have the authority to hire lawyers to analyze claims of police misconduct. Issue 2G would give the Independent Monitor's Office the authority it needs, such as the authority to hire lawyers and experts, to more effectively carry out its mission of monitoring Denver's law enforcement agencies.

Vote Yes on Denver ballot issue 2G.

Issue 2H

Denver's City Charter contains timelines for municipal elections which violate state and federal laws related to military and overseas voting. Issue 2H would bring the Denver City Charter in compliance with state and federal law by moving its municipal election date a month earlier from May to April. If Issue 2H isn't passed, a court would probably order Denver to change its election date anyway.

This is basically an uncontroversial "housekeeping" amendment to the City Charter, although it also has the side effect of making it much easier to college students to vote in municipal elections.

Vote Yes on Denver ballot issue 2H.

Issue 300

Issue 300 would impose a 1.5% sales tax on retail marijuana sales, in addition to existing marijuana retail sales taxes which are 10.3% now in Denver. It would use the money raised (about $7 million per year) to fund non-medicinal COVID countermeasures research (e.g. research on the effectiveness of masks and social distancing) which is already being done by other public and private agencies with public health responsibilities.

This ballot issue is ill-conceived. It supports funding for programs that Denver is ill-suited to conduct and isn't supported by the proposed grant recipients. Others are already doing the same research this issue authorizes funding with better protocols associated with being in the public health research business, so the results will be obsolete if the research is conducted. It is also a regressive tax and proposes spending on purposes that aren't as great a priority for tax funding as other more urgent needs.

Issues 301 and 302

These issues are related to the future use of the former Park Hill Golf Course. The City of Denver was recently given a conservation easement when the golf course (owned by a private non-profit) was closed that was intended to preserve the use of the course for open space and parks. But the conservation easement had an unintended loophole that allows the City to authorize real estate development on the former Park Hill Golf Course instead (with a significant share of affordable housing) and the City is poised to allow that now.

Issue 301 would require a citywide ballot issue to approve discontinuing the Park Hill Golf Course conservation easement, and also requiring a vote of the people to discontinue any other conservation easements or develop municipal parks in the future.

Issue 302 would allow the former Park Hill Golf Course to be redeveloped, would allow other property with flawed conservation easements in favor of the City to be redeveloped in the future, and would require a vote of the people to discontinue well drafted conservation easements or develop municipal parks in the future. 

Issue 302 was proposed by the real estate developers seeking to redevelop Park Hill Golf Course as a "dirty trick" to confuse voters into thinking that they were protecting parks and open space when they are really authorizing real estate development on the Park Hill Golf Course despite the intent of the conservation easement that was granted to the City to disallow that use.

While I recognize the City's urgent need for new affordable housing developments, the City's conduct in brazenly abrogating what was intended to be a conservation easement that prohibited that which it recently was given in good faith, and the dirty tricks used by the developers in proposing Issue 302 make the right choice more clear.

Vote Yes on Issue 301. Vote No on Issue 302.

Issue  303.

Issue 303 directs the City to vigorously enforce the City's controversial anti-homeless person camping ban, deputizes private individuals to do so if the City doesn't act in just a couple of days or so, and prohibits the City from establishing more than four authorized camping locations in the City for homeless people which must meet fairly high standards for public facilities on site if it does so.

Basically, Issue 303 seeks to punish people harshly for being homeless and occupying public property as a result, even if the City wants to do so, or wants to establish interim solutions like designating City owner property that isn't fully developed as a long term RV park type facility.

It was proposed by the chair of the Denver County GOP.

Vote No on Issue 303.

Issue 304.

Issue 304 permanently reduces Denver's sales tax rate from 4.81% to 4.5% for ordinary retail sales. The ballot issue is ambiguously worded so it isn't clear if it would also reduce the City's short term car rental sales tax rate of 7.25%, the City's 10.31% sale tax on retail marijuana sales, or if it would increase the City's 4.0% sales tax rate on non-grocery store food and beverages.

It would reduce the City's tax revenues by an estimated $48 million to $55 million per year, without providing an alternative revenue source, which would force dramatic cuts in essential municipal services and functions.

Modestly reducing Denver sales tax rates and creating a legal nightmare to figure out what the poorly worded ballot issue really means, in order to cripple the function of the City and County of Denver's government is not good policy.

It was proposed by the chair of the Denver County GOP.

Vote No on Issue 304.

An Evolving Home And Family

It is easy to fall into the mindset that your home and your family are constants. But they evolve with everything else.

My grandparents, and many of many aunts and uncles have died. My brother and I got married (acquiring in-laws in the process) and had children, as did my wife's sister and many of my cousins (some of whom married or found a lifetime companion without having children). I moved west and learned of a whole new branch of the family no one had ever mentioned out here. My mother passed. My dad remarried, and in the process, I gained a stepmother and several step-siblings and step-nieces and nephews. My children have become adults and found significant others who may or may not end up becoming long term additions to the family. My family tree will continue to evolve.

We bought our home in the year 2000 when it was 75 years old. Previous owners had already done a lot to it after its construction in 1925. It originally had a coal fired steam heat boiler, tiny fireplaces or stoves on two floors, a milk door, and may or may not have been wired for electricity (much of the old lighting was do it yourself work not up to code and the thermostat was added later). Do it yourselfers and renovation contractors replaced some but not all of the galvanized steel water pipes with copper. The steam heat boiler and fireplaces were converted to natural gas. A later owner drywalled over one of the natural gas fireplaces and sealed the other one. The milk door was sealed. Someone carpeted the main room in the basement even though it flooded sometimes. Tiny amount of painted woodwork on the mostly brick exterior was repainted. Our immediate prior owner turned the Model T sized garage into a pottery studio, put a shop sink in the basement, and outfitted much of the house with original tile.

We've probably been more ambitious than any of the prior owner over the last twenty-one years. When we bought it, we helped draft the party wall agreement that divided it and had it subdivided. We built a backyard fence to separate the two units. We added an attic access previously only possible to reach from the other half of the duplex. When the next door neighbor's house was scraped and a new duplex was built there, the fence was rebuilt and a resolution of a boundary irregularity was resolved. We put in a swamp cooler. We replaced the curtain rods and put in new curtains. We got the doors to shut and replaced the garage door and the rear wall of the garage. We rearranged the main floor, taking down a cement wall and chimney from the downstairs utility room, sealing off two doors out of the kitchen, extending a hallway to provide access to a room previously entered through the kitchen. We completely renovated the kitchen and dining room (except for the dining room floor and one historic dining room light) from floor to crown molding with new cabinets, a new sink, countertops, new lighting, and new appliances (and have since replaced the refrigerator and the dishwasher again). We replaced a sink, toilet, lighting, and fan and added a cabinet, in a bathroom and replaced the fixtures in the tub. We refinished the floors. We replaced single pane, steel frame windows with triple pane vinyl windows. We replaced the front door and an adjacent light fixture. We refinished the wood floors. We replaced a ceiling fan. We replaced the shop sink in the basement and another toilet. We replaced the converted coal fired boiler and removed related asbestos. We restored one of the fireplaces. We put in a water line to the freezer (a feature of the freezer which needs to be fixed). We put in new utility room appliances. We put an egress window and new flooring and lighting into a downstairs storage room to make it more of a bedroom. We took the original kitchen cabinets and relocated them to a basement storage room with a new countertop. We replaced a garage door opener. We put in a rear patio and gazebo and planting box. We replaced an outdoor faucet that froze and put in a shutoff valve so it doesn't happen again. We planted a tree that has grown to adulthood. We replaced all of the light switch hardware. We repaired our mail slot and a gap in our brickwork. We put in and then abandoned a satellite TV dish and digital TV antenna (that latter of which never really worked). We extended our gutter to prevent foundation inundation. We replaced our roof. We re-poured the concrete sidewalk in front of our house and replaced the grass between the sidewalk and the road with rocks. We removed obstructions from a main drain. We've repainted all of the interior walls (in some cases, more than once).

An old house is never done and will continue to evolve. We plan to put a closet in the downstairs room we remodeled so that it can officially be a third bedroom. Several old light fixtures should be replaced. The thermostat could be replaced with a more modern one. A crawl space could use better insulation and a few basement windows could be upgraded from the original steel framed single pane glass that ones that don't completely shut well and have ragged old screens. The dryer vent could be upgraded. A basement bathroom/utility room could use further remodeling. We have a side door that could be replaced but doesn't have to be, and our fence may need some mending. An outdoor power outlet that we never use needs to be replaced. There is landscaping to be done in our dying, steeply sloped, 400 square foot front lawn (the last bit of grass remaining on our 1/15th of an acre lot). The garage door need to be replaced. We should get a shed so we can make room for a car again in the garage which currently holds mostly home and lawn maintenance materials and equipment, particularly if we decide to buy a plug-in electric car some day. 

Perhaps by 2025, when the house is a century old, some of those finishing touches could be completed.

Some of the renovations are driven by the high value of housing in Denver. It is easier to polish your existing small home into a gem, than to buy a new one. We also did well by the Denver Public Schools. We paid $245,000 for our home, which was a fixer upper, the cheapest house on the block just a couple hundred years from Washington Park, the premier jewel in the crown of Denver's park system and a desirable urban residential neighborhood. The mortgage has been refinanced twice to a much lower rate (3.25% fixed) than what we started with, and the balance we've owed on it has declined over the years. Now, one of the realtors that courts us tells us it is worth $610,000 and that probably doesn't even reflect its much improved trim level and amenities. 

Even the neighborhood has evolved. Some houses on our block have been scrapped and replaced or pop topped. The nearby main intersection has new stop lights and crossing lights. The sidewalks at the intersections of wheelchair ramps. The asphalt has been redone on the street, and the alleyway concrete has been redone. The dumpster we replaced with trash and recycling bins. There are 5G towers throughout the neighborhood. Some trees have died and been replaced in the neighborhood. The water mains will be replaced in the near future.

I do a lot of estate planning and probate work as an attorney, so I often visit the homes of the elderly and the recently deceased. So many of those homes are frozen in time to a state almost the same as it was when they bought it several decades earlier when they were just starting a family. Even many of the decorations, spice drawer contents, and liquor cabinets are often undisturbed for decades. We have thankfully avoided that trap, so far, and have a home that is fresh and modern with only period touches. It doesn't yet have the smell of death and decay that is so common in the homes of the very old, although that may come with time. I'd like to think that we can escape that.

Stray Thoughts

* The Trump Administration has broken all past records concerning government shutdowns in the United States except for the record of the number of separate shutdowns per Presidency where he is currently tied in second place (he is tied for first place in number of shutdowns in a single Presidential term already). One more would tie Ronald Reagan who had three one day shutdowns over two terms.

He has the longest single shutdown. The most combined days of shutdown in a Presidential term or a Presidency. The shutdown affecting the most worker-days. It will no doubt be the most expensive to the government.

From here. The chart doesn't reflect another 420,000 "essential employees" who aren't furloughed but aren't getting paid either.

* The vast majority of government employees in the United States are not affected by the shutdown. The vast majority of government employees (more than 93% of civilians) work for state and local governments. All military employees of the federal government except the Coast Guard, and more than half of the civilian employees of the federal government are not affected because their appropriations bills were passed.

* There is enough bipartisan support in Congress to end the shutdown with a continuing resolution. Indeed, there is enough support to override a Presidential veto. Bills to do so have previously passed unanimously in both houses of Congress. The unwillingness of Mitch McConnell, who is a U.S. Senator from Kentucky and the majority leader in the Senate, to hold that vote to contradict Trump is the reason we are still shut down.

* A teacher's strike is looming in Denver as negotiations have broken down between the district and the teacher's union. There will be votes on January 19th and 22nd regarding a strike. A simultaneous Denver Public Schools teacher's strike and federal government shutdown are likely.

* Ultimately, the conservatism generally is driven by economic scarcity and insecurity. Racism, a center of attention on this Martin Luther King, Jr. day, is an indirect consequence of a feeling on the part of whites who are seeing real wage stagnation and persistent unemployment that they are suffering economically that opportunities that are "theirs" are going to others. Blue collar men in the U.S. have seen their relative status in society and capacity to provide dramatically eroded in the last 50 years. When that problem is addressed, the fuel that drives racism and xenophobia will be gone although racism won't go until that condition persists long enough for the existing racists to die.

* The U.S. in on the wrong track in multiple respects. It has ceased to invest sufficiently in infrastructure. It has permitted ranks of the desperately poor to persist in a way that no other developed nation does. It has too many people who have lost touch with reality, don't trust accurate sources of information, believe that education does more harm than good, and have developed a mean demeanor that condemns empathy as weakness. Deaths of despair like suicides and opioid overdoses are on the rise.

* Lots of people who recognize that big problems of the United States as problems have framed those problems in ways that suggest solutions that don't work. 

For example, the single biggest solution to a lack of affordable housing is to relax land use regulation, but many people think that rent controls and subsidizing the construction of affordable housing is the answer.

* It doesn't help to have a federal government run by people who don't believe in government as worthwhile or legitimate, who have the backing of a minority of the general population due to archaic flaws in our electoral system, who have the backing of an even smaller share of the economic wealth of the nation. This is unstable. Three million more people voted for Hillary Clinton than for Trump who won by razor thin margins to take the electoral college with dubious election administration decisions suppressing the vote and rampant lies. Not for the first time in recent memory either. Democrats represent two-thirds of the GDP of the nation because its urban base is much, much more productive.

* For all of the bleakness of the moment, it could be far worse. The agenda of inclusiveness has made great strides. Some has the criminal justice and drug war reform movement (sentencing reforms passed Congress even as all else came to a halt). 

The courts have restrained many of Trump's worst excesses and now there are Democrats controlling the House of Representatives to do so as well. Technology continues to improve. The NRA is in dire financial straights and has been a pariah in corporate America. The demographics that support the right wing are in decline and Republicans have almost completely forfeited the Millennial generation. The shutdown is going to hurt the GOP badly in 2020. Christianity, in general, is in decline in the United States.

* Every country has its problems. Far right movements have made political gains across Europe. Russia has engaged in unanswered military aggressions against the Ukraine. Syria and Yemen are active war zones that are living hellscapes. The situation in Afghanistan seems to be deteriorating. Latin America is plagued with extremely high murder rates and corruption driven by drug cartels. An insane far right President has been elected to lead Brazil. The continued existence of the United Kingdom is in doubt as a Brexit vote to leave the E.U. has proved intractable to implement. China's economy, while growing fast, is vulnerable and relies on deeply problematic and usustainable authoritarian approaches to maintain it. India's Hindu nationalists parties are pretty much as crazy as Christian conservatives on many scientific matters. The Sahel from coast to coast in Africa is immersed in a series of genocidal wars with religious dimensions and economic causes. Many countries, e.g. Finland and Canada and Iceland and New Zealand, are doing better in many respects. But, they all have problems and many of them have really big problems.

* There has never been a time when people have had so much access to global music, media and information. The Internet has made a lot of amazing things possible with deep cultural implications.

*  One by one, little by little, new discoveries are improving our technological ability to provide better health care, even though the U.S. is seeing falling life expectancy in many respects. China put a rover on the dark side of the moon this year. There is enough information being gathered about dark matter to sometimes right the ship on that front and find the true solution. The Standard Model works very, very well.

There Will Always Be A Socioeconomic Test Score Gap

There is a stark gap in standardize test scores between more affluent and poor students in Colorado this year, as there is every year, in every single state and territory of the United States, in every significant sized city in the United States.

If there is any perfectly consistent result from educational psychology it is that socioeconomic test score gaps are always present and always large.

If a district, like Denver, shows rising test scores, it is almost always more likely that the socioeconomic demographics of the student body is changing, in Denver's case because it lured many middle class kids who left in the wake of desegregation back into the district from suburban and private schools. Improvements in educational outcomes are always always a second order effect.

It isn't impossible to secure high educational achievement (by any reasonable measure) from children with low socioeconomic backgrounds, but it is very hard. Maybe 5% of schools accomplish that and almost all of them require far more time in school than an ordinary public school and an emphasis on deeply changing the culture of their students to act like middle class kids. 

These schools are also typically selective and can pick out higher IQ poor children. They also take advantage of the fact that poverty routinely causes children to not achieve their genetic potential in IQ. IQ is strongly hereditary, but it is more strongly hereditary in the middle class and up, when there are no significant environmental impediments to achieving peak IQ, than among the poor where environmental factors including exposure to lead and other pollutants, lack of parental stimulation, and other economic stressors prevent children from developing their natural cognitive abilities to the fullest.

It's Personal

It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that politics is just about competing abstract ideas. But, policies that result from politics, and even the social climate that results from the rhetoric that politics produces, affect the lives of real people.

My daughter's graduation yesterday from George Washington High School, an "inner city" school in Denver, Colorado, was a stark reminder of that fact.

There many speeches. They didn't proclaim a bright future where graduates could follow their dreams. Instead, the graduates were praised as resilient survivors who were equipped to survive in an adult world that had become an increasingly hostile place for them since the last election.

One graduate was a Dreamer who had lived in the U.S., undocumented, since he was 11 years old and would be attending CSU on a scholarship tailored to someone in his shoes. The Trump administration has started deporting people like him.

Another was a young black man who'd had a run-in with the law and disciplinary problems in middle school, but who turned his life around in high school and was off to play college football. The Trump administration wants to adopt policies that make it likely that he will have no recourse if he is targeted groundlessly by police and that he might end up spending disproportionate terms in prison if he makes a misstep.

One of the two valedictorians described the graduates (in the school color green gowns) as baby sea turtles, struggling against the ocean and long odds to make it in the world. Unlikely the sea turtles, they are not alone in the world, but the world is definitely not on their side.

One graduate had lost a mother to brain cancer but persisted. Another's mom had pulled through as her son struggled to figure out how school could be relevant - but his mom made clear that education was the path to a better life than he'd know in his childhood. Some graduates had children facing an uncertain future.

The programs that face deep cuts in the federal budget proposed by President Trump are programs that a large share of my daughter's classmates have relied upon to help meet their basic needs. Those cuts mean their little siblings will be hungry and may be denied medical care.

Many of her classmates' families send remittences to family abroad. Trump plans to heavy tax those transfers. 

Some of her classmates are homeless. Trump's policies, if implemented, will swell the number of George Washington High School students in those dire straights.

The upswing in expressions of hate directed at these students has visibly swelled since the election.

As a community, the students who attend George Washington High School, their family members, and the faculty and administration, are united in trying to create positive conditions for those students and in trying to give them a bright future. But, no one is fooling themselves. There are many obstacles in the way of these new graduates.

School's Out, Drive Safe

Today is the last day of school before summer vacation for most of the 70,000+ students who attend the Denver Public Schools.  They are now on the streets of Denver for the summer.  Drive carefully.

It is also National Donut Day.  Enjoy!

CNN meanwhile, is intent on passing on the news that northern Alaska is cold, especially in the winter.  Who knew?  Who needed to know on Friday, June 3?

DPS Board Appointee Backs Out To End Controversy

The Denver Post has reported that MiDian Holmes who had been appointed to a vacant Denver Public Schools directorship by the DPS Board, has declined to accept the appointment in the wake of controversy over her misdemeanor child neglect conviction which was not fully disclosed to the board during the appointment process.

The Denver Public School Board's Newest Director Needs To Resign Immediately

A newly appointed Denver Public School Board director lied on her application and has a criminal history, which includes a 15-day jail sentence for child abuse, according to court documents. MiDian Holmes was named the new Board Director for Northeast Denver on Tuesday in a special election meeting to replace vacated board member Landri Taylor's seat.

Holmes, 35, was charged with wrongs to minors in 2005, according to court documents. She was sentenced to parenting classes and supervised probation. The case was later dismissed. In 2006, Holmes was charged and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor negligent child abuse charge with no injuries. She was sentenced to 15 days in jail.

On her application for the board director position, Holmes answered "no" to ever having been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor. The application states that "potential applicants will be subject to a criminal background check.". . . .

More than 20 people initially applied for the opening, and the board narrowed the field to 10 finalists in March.

From here.

There is some merit in limiting the amount of information job applicants should have to disclose. But, particularly when no law prohibits requiring criminal record disclosures for prospective public officials appointed to fill vacancies, there is absolutely no justification for lying about a criminal record in an application for such a vacancy, particularly for a school board applicant when the case involves harm to children. And, in this particular context, there is no plausible way that the candidate merely "forgot" about the fact that she spent 15 days in jail, just ten years ago, for child neglect or abuse.

I might have been sympathetic to the appointee if she disclosed and explained the conviction in a satisfactory way.  But, as the events played out, it is very hard to be sympathetic. MiDian Holmes needs to immediately resign from the office she was appointed to yesterday.

UPDATE: The Denver Post has revised its original story to note that the claim in the press release for her appointment inaccurately says she was a DU graduate when her resume did not claim that she was and asserts that the conviction was disclosed and that the application was worded in a way that wouldn't require this disclosure.

A 9 News account of the same story is found here and suggests that the public records and the candidate's account of the events do not seem to square with each other.

Nonetheless, it is very hard to be comfortable with this appointment when the DPS school board was not up front with the public about these issues with their appointee, when they should have known full well that these issues would come out sooner or later. This remains a case of very bad judgment on the part of the school board, and it still isn't at all obvious to me that Ms. Holmes should remain on the school board in these circumstances. Certainly, my confidence in the DPS school board is diminished.

Ms. Holmes is actually not scheduled to be sworn in until Monday, and while the DPS board appears to back Holmes and she clearly does not intend to resign, the board would be well advised to reconsider its vote and appoint a different candidate before Holmes is sworn in.

SECOND UPDATE:  Further reporting makes pretty clear that Ms. Holmes was not truthful in explaining the incidents that gave rise to her child neglect conviction.

The DPS board should change their mind and decline to seat her on the board.  It looks likely that they will at least consider the option tomorrow:

The Denver school board met Thursday afternoon behind closed doors to discuss the matter with an attorney. After the meeting, Board President Anne Rowe told Chalkbeat the board would hold a special meeting at 5 p.m. Friday to discuss Holmes’s appointment.

A full report of the 2006 incident also reveals that Ms. Holmes initially lied to responding police officers telling them that her three children left unattended all day had been with their father whom they had actually not seen for the past two years, but changed her story when the children told police that they hadn't been with their father.

Blizzard

A blizzard warning is in force for Denver and all points to the Northeast in Colorado.

Most of my professional colleagues, office mates, and apparently the Denver Public Schools folks who make decision on school closures and delays, don't seem to understand the difference between a serious winter storm with heavy snowfall, which Denver gets several times a year, and a genuine blizzard, which we haven't had in Denver once since I moved here in the spring of 1999.

The real danger of a blizzard is not that it is slippery, although it is.  Blizzards are dangerous because they can completely wipe out your visibility with the speed of a gust of wind filling the air with blinding snow.

Shortly after I moved to Oxford, Ohio as a child, in 1977, there was a blizzard.  Several college students died in it, trying to make the short several block trip from their fraternity houses to the liquor store (back when you didn't have to be twenty-one to buy 3.2 beer).  They got lost and froze to death right on High Street which runs through downtown Oxford, such as it is.

I've driven in near blizzard conditions, but it isn't something I would repeat if I could help it.  The only accidents that I've had that have involved both vehicles in motion (I've nicked parked cars a couple of times, and have been fit once while I was stopped at a stoplight on a clear day), took place is snowy, near blizzard conditions.

They are not to be messed with and I've postponed a deposition tomorrow that was supposed to start at the projected worst time for blizzard activity until the precipitation is projected to have ended in Denver (the blizzard warning ends at 2 p.m. but the weather is projected to abate from West to East).

Maybe this blizzard warning will turn out to be a false alarm.  But, I'm not about to be forewarned and rush into the situation like a fool anyway, when I don't absolutely have to do so for some reason that will seem important enough to have justified it if I or someone else is in a serious car accident as a result.

If you must drive in blizzard or near blizzard conditions, 9 News has some useful hints that you should heed which match my previous experiences driving in these conditions.

Aurora Public Schools Broken

The Denver Post highlights a new report from a local non-profit regarding the poor performance of the Aurora public schools. The numbers are bleak and make the often criticized Denver Public Schools look positively competent and effective by comparison.

Only 55% of Aurora's public school district graduate (the state average is about 78%).  Only about 40% of graduates go to college (the state average is about 57%). More than half of those who go to college need remedial work, and 67.3% of college attendees from Aurora Central High School need remedial work (the state average is about 38%).  Only about 10% of Aurora public school district students graduate ready for college and attend college.

By comparison, about 27% of students statewide graduate ready for college and attend college, and about 16% of Denver Public Schools graduates graduate ready for college and attend college. The odds of students who attend college but need to do remedial work graduating with a college degree are quite low.  Colorado, for what it is worth, is quite typical of the nation as a whole.

About 56% of students statewide are proficient or advanced in mathematics, compared to 36% of students in the Aurora public schools.  About 69% of students statewide are proficient or advanced in reading, compared to 46% of students in the Aurora public schools

The fact that the Aurora public schools performs worse in absolute terms than the state average, in and of itself isn't in and of itself a cause of concern about the quality of education that its students are receiving.

The students at the Aurora public school face challenges far more serious than those in the state as a whole.  About 40% of its students don't speak English as their native language and about two-thirds of students than the statewide average are poor enough to qualify for reduced or free lunch programs. It is an overwhelmingly majority minority district (about three-quarters of its students are Hispanic or black), which is correlated with poorer academic outcomes in almost every such school district in the United States for reasons that however problematic they are have little or nothing to do with what the teachers and administrators in this particular school district are doing right or wrong.

What is a cause for concern is that the Aurora public schools do a significantly worse job of graduating students with comparable challenges, and preparing comparable students who do graduate for college, than either Denver or the State of Colorado as a whole. 

Students are still significantly less likely to graduate from the Aurora public schools, than comparable students in either Denver or the State of Colorado as a whole, when they have disabilities, when they have limited English proficiency, when they are economically disadvantages, when they are migrants, when they received benefits under Title 1, when they are non-white, and when they are gifted and talents.  Homeless students in the Aurora public schools are less likely than the state average to graduate (although the graduation rate for homeless students in the Aurora public schools is a bit better than in the Denver Public Schools).

For example, about 95% of students in gifted and talented programs in the state graduate from high school, while only about 75% of students in gifted and talented programs in the Aurora public schools do.  When large percentages of gifted and talented students (usually defined as the 98th percentile or better on standardized IQ tests taken in elementary school), are failing, something is deeply wrong with the opportunities and quality of education that the school is offering.  About 30 high school senior aged kids from the Aurora public school each year who should be well prepared college students on a clear track to a good middle class life or better, are instead ending up as high school dropouts.  A mind is a terrible thing to waste.  The Denver Public Schools, in contrast, have programs that do an excellent job of serving low income gifted and talented students.

About 58% of students with limited English proficiency in Colorado graduate from high school, while only 41% of such students graduate in the Aurora public schools.

Likewise, those students who do graduate from the Aurora public schools are significantly less likely to attend college and significantly more likely to need remedial education than students graduating from other schools.

If the Aurora public schools were performing at levels in the vicinity of Denver or the State of Colorado with students facing comparable challenges, something like 15%-18% of Aurora public school students who graduate ready for college and attend college, rather than just 10%.

While the best team of teachers and administrators in the nation for a district this size with this mix of students would be hard pressed to match state averages in academic achievement, a merely par for the course and average team of teachers and administrators ought to be able to achieve outcomes more than 50% better on a host of indicators than the Aurora public schools is able to manage.

There is also no indication that the Aurora public schools is doing a particularly good job of preparing non-college bound students for the world of work, about 55% of students statewide and about 80% of students in the Aurora public schools. It is certainly failing the 45% of its students who fail to graduate.  There is no doubt whatsoever that the life prospects of high school dropouts in the United States are almost always bleak.  And, there are no signs that the 60% of its graduates who don't attend college leave with technical skills or have the academic competency of typical high school graduates who don't go to college in the state as a whole, or in neighboring Denver.  The Denver Public Schools, in contrast, has a wealth of alternative programs who non-college bound students.

Recognizing that there is a clear problem, of course, doesn't mean that the solution is obvious. Almost surely, there are myriad specific problems and not one overarching problem that explains the whole picture.  But, there is no doubt that dramatic change needs to be the order of the day in this troubled school district.

Old New Wisdom That's Still True And Other Miscellany

* Vox succintly restates what recent empirical evidence from the social sciences tells us about parenting:

Like any parent, I would love to believe that my awesome kids are a result of my awesome parenting. Sadly, expert opinion indicates it ain't so. Genes have an enormous influence. Peers and culture have an enormous influence. But parenting styles inside the home, apart from extreme cases like abuse or neglect, have very little long-term influence on a person's personality or success in life, at least that social scientists have been able to detect. . . . This isn't to say parents and parenting aren't important. Parents supply the genes, except in cases of adoption (or remarriage). They control, at least to some extent, the peers and environments to which children are exposed. And of course they crucially affect a child's quality of life at home, which, as I will argue shortly, is not some minor detail.

But it's safe to say that your kids' long-term fate will not be meaningfully affected by the speed and timing of potty training, the brand of educational videos you purchase, or the precise tone of voice in which you discipline. A large proportion of the Parenting Industrial Complex isn't about kids — it's about generating content for nervous parents who feel like they should be doing something.

I've made the point recently that there are a few other things that buck the trend of genetic determinism in parenting. Many of traits we associated with "good character" in children, the extent to which a child is comfortable physically touching others, the religious beliefs a child learns growing up (although not necessarily the way a child responds to those beliefs within that tradition), the language that a child learns, and the opportunities that a child has to learn new languages at an age young enough for that instruction to "take", do have something to do with parenting choices.

Also, just because refraining from "abuse or neglect" and escaping its frequently companion, poverty, is commonplace, doesn't mean that it is always easy when faced with a colicky baby or balancing the need to work long hours to be able to afford essentials and the need to be personally present with your children.

But, it is certainly fair to say that parents, especially affluent new parents with few children who grew up small families themselves, are prone to dramatically overestimate the role of parental nurture in how they turn out.

And, David Roberts, the author of this Vox article does have one other good caveat for us:

The alternative to viewing childhood as preparation is viewing it as life, to be savored and enjoyed. Life is just a series of moments, and it's amazing how many of them we miss, rush past, or disrupt because our minds are elsewhere, anticipating the future or dwelling on the past. But a moment of joy or connection is its own justification, not a means to an end.

* Another Vox retread that has long been well established, but mysteriously hasn't swept the nation despite being well established empirically is that: Giving housing to the homeless is three times cheaper than leaving them on the streets.

This miracle has been demonstrated over and over again, in Denver, in Southeast Colorado, in Central Florida, and in Charlotte, North Carolina, and in Utah, to name a few examples.  Yet, it is so contrary to what "everyone knows is true" that politicians and the public stubbornly resist implementing this fairly simple idea.

* The same thing is true about the common American criminal justice practice about routinely incarcerating people charged with crimes pending trial if they can't post bond, which many poor arrestees cannot.

The Vera Institute of Justice developed powerful empirical evidence in the 1960s that the modern institution of bail was unjust and that releasing all but a handful of high risk poor criminal defendants awaiting trial did not pose a heightened risk to public safety, greatly reduced the cost of the criminal justice system for the municipalities that adopted this reform (supervision by pretrial services officers costs about a tenth as much as keeping someone locked up), and produced more fair criminal justice outcomes.

But, as the New York Times and other investigative journalists who have looked into the story have shown, bail remains an institution for unjust and expensive mistreatment of the poor, even in New York City where some of the first experiments with an alternative were wildly successful.  Consider this paragraph from the New York Times Magazine (via Vox):

[The Bronx Freedom Fund] bailed out nearly 200 [low-income] defendants and generated some illuminating statistics. Ninety-six percent of the fund's clients made it to every one of their court appearances, a return rate higher even than that of people who posted their own bail. More than half of the Freedom Fund's clients, now able to fight their cases outside jail, saw their charges completely dismissed. Not a single client went to jail on the charges for which bail had been posted. By comparison, defendants held on bail for the duration of their cases were convicted 92 percent of the time. The numbers showed what everyone familiar with the system already knew anecdotally: Bail makes poor people who would otherwise win their cases plead guilty

* Empirical research by educational psychologists and pediatricians had strongly established that high school students perform better if their school days start later.  Despite the existence of this proven, easy to implement, no cost way to improve secondary education, however, this remains the exception rather than the rule, with the lion's share of school districts sending elementary school children who are bright eyed and bushy tailed early in the morning to school late in the day, and giving high school students the early shift.

One rare promising example of a school listening to the empirical evidence, however, is the newest charter high school in the Denver Public Schools, Northfield High School in the Stapleton neighborhood, whose doors open this fall for its first entering class, which will also feature an extended school year with less summer vacation (another empirically proven way to improve school performance that has not overcome decades of tradition that no longer makes any sense in the modern world).

* I hadn't realized until stumbling upon an article on the reform of California's draconian "three-strikes and you're out" law that the 2012 ballot initiative that reformed it was largely the work of two men, George Soros and a California law professor, whose roughly equal combined $1.9 million of contributions to the total $2.7 million raised by the campaign as a whole (about $1.5 million of which paid for the process of getting approval for a petition and circulating it with paid petition gatherers to get it one ballot).

They accomplished what liberals in California's legislature, seemingly unanimous academic and newspaper editorial opinion, the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, the power of the Governor of California to commute criminal sentences, and scathing dissenting opinions by judges had not.  This measure bought the freedom of roughly 3,000 people who were unjustly imprisoned for life for minor third crimes (many of which would have been misdemeanors for first offenders), at a price of less than $1,000 each, in an act reminiscent of a wealthy man buying slaves to free them (something that still happens in places like Mali).

The fact that a couple of wealthy individuals could get 69% of Californians to vote for a citizen's initiative to fix a clear problem which the state legislature in a liberal state wasn't willing to take on points to how fundamentally flawed the legislative process can be.

* Op-Ed columnist George Will meanwhile calls attention to another set of deep flaws with our legislative process recalling Jonathan Rauch's 1994 book "Demosclerosis", which he accentuates with the example of Mohair subsidies supported by no rational policy argument to the tune of $5 million a year that managed to be reenacted for most of the time period since 1954.  Simply put, Madison's Federalist Paper No. 10 be damned, the inattentive majorities to which Congress theoretically responds turns out to be utterly incompetent at overcoming the will of attentive minorities. Individually, this senseless subsidies are a drop in the bucket, but collectively, they add up.

They are also canaries in the mine alerting us to flaws in the process that have the potential to manifest in more damaging ways elsewhere, and undermine basic civics assumptions about how our democratic system of government should work.  In short, it is proof, once again, that we have a system of government that is no longer state of the art or enviable as a world model of a democracy that works well, something that undermines our "soft power" on the world stage.

* Louisiana has lost 1,880 square miles of land to the sea in the last century, a trend that Hurricane Katrina accentuated.  Many of the remaining settlements outside New Orlean's new and improved levees will be gone after the next serious Hurricane to this the region (which may be a few years due to the existence of one of the strongest El Nino conditions on record in the Pacific right now, which suppressed Atlantic Hurricanes while enhancing Pacific Monsoons).

Incidentally, those Pacific Monsoons which have hit rural Indian hard, are also dragging down world gold prices, because rural India despite being relatively poor internationally, accounts for about 20% of world gold purchases (proportionate to its population but greatly disproportionate to it share of world GDP) because large gifts of gold are common their as gifts for weddings and other occasions. But, monsoon driven hard times have curtailed their purchases and thus curtailed demand for what is roughly speaking as a first approximation, a fixed world supply of the commodity.

* There are still crazy people in the world.

For example, there are people who get stories published in religious magazines in the United States, who claim with a straight face that having Rhesus (RH) negative blood is a sign that you are descended from the Nephilim (i.e. human-angel hybrids), described in passing in the Bible and at length in the non-canonical Book of Enoch which has had immense impact on Judeo-Christian mysticism or metaphysical lore that has made its way into popular culture. Despite the fact that the Nephilim of apocryphal Christian tradition were generally evil, the proponents of this theory try to fit an angelic origin of RH negative blood into a doctrine of white supremacy (although ironically a white supremacy that favors the European Catholics and Jews whom the KKK persecuted almost as severely as blacks) noting that:

Northern Spain and Southern France is where you can find some of the highest concentration of the RH-negative factor in the Basque people. Another original group were the Eastern/Oriental Jews. In general, about 40 – 45% of Europeans have the RH-negative group. Only about 3% of African descendent and about 1% of Asian or Native American descendent has the RH-negative group.

They also argue that angelic ancestry is associated with:

* Higher than average IQ
* More sensitive vision and other senses.
* Lower body temperature
* Higher blood pressure
* Increased occurrence of psychic/intuitive abilities
* Predominantly blue, green, or hazel eyes
* Red or reddish hair
* Increased sensitivity to heat and sunlight
* Cannot be cloned
* Extra vertebra

Needless to say, all of this is absurd and has no legitimate basis in either science or Christian or Jewish religious doctrine.

* Modern African Christianity, meanwhile, has latched onto to doctrines of demon possession and exorcism, deliberately de-emphasized in the Northern hemisphere branches of these denominations despite the prominent role that these doctrines play in the canonical New Testament, in which an exorcism ministry was one of the core activities of Jesus Christ and his apostles.

African Christians have also taken up the Old Testament injunction to kill witches with unfortunate gusto, a practice that European Christians largely abandoned after the 17th century as the Enlightenment largely banished the notion of witchcraft as being anything more than fiction among the elites that held the power to continue the practice.  (Persecution of suspected witches is also alive and well in modern Islam.)

* Crazy people are more frightening, however, when they have power.  For example, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore (who was re-elected by the people of Alabama to the post after being removed from it for judicial misconduct) thinks that the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage because Satan influenced them to do it.

* Our criminal justice system is quite impervious not just to uncommon insights, but to common sense too.  The prevailing view in the law of post-conviction review of criminal convictions is that "an innocent person convicted after a procedurally adequate trial" is not constitutionally entitled to release from prison, because "actual innocence" has not been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as a valid legal basis for a habeas corpus petition (a perverse position famously strongly supported by Justice Scalia).  I strongly suspect that Justice Kennedy and the four liberals on the U.S. Supreme Court might change that precedent if the right case presented itself (and President Obama's solicitor-general might not argue too strongly for a contrary result).

But, right now, this is a status quo that Congress in an effort to weaken post-trial review of death penalty sentences has enacted as policy in statutes like the habeas corpus reforms of Title I of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which has made post-trial review of state criminal convictions into an angels on pinheads procedural maze, even though the act has actually proved in practice to be more of a barrier in non-death penalty cases than in those where the death penalty is actually imposed.

This unfortunate legislation was one of a number of bad policies signed into law by President Bill Clinton.  It routinely compounds the harm done by state court trial judges when they make grave mistakes that unjustly ruin people's lives.  Concern about the possibility that his wife would also support those bad policies if elected President is one reason that some Democrats, rightly or wrongly, are concerned about a Hillary Clinton Presidency.  Maybe she has learned from experience. Democrats have been known to do that a bit more often than members of the other major political party.  But, it would be nice to have a nominee who was right on issue like that the first time.

* You would think that U.S. Supreme Court litigation specialists would be that the top of the food chain when it comes to pay in the legal profession and would have the highest hourly rates.  This might be true, and certainly, none of them are going hungry.  But if their rates are as high as they get, the "winner take all" economics of many other parts of the U.S. economy aren't as powerful in law as they are in many professions.

Top U.S. Supreme Court advocates charge $1,020 to $1,800 an hour. For a unique, national, premier specialty, this is a surprisingly small multiple of the roughly $250-$300 per hour charged by perfectly ordinary, run of the mill lawyers in the regional, not particularly high cost of living.  It is less than the effective hourly rates earned by many lawyers working on perfectly ordinary contingent fee cases, where it isn't unusual to see effective hourly rates of $500 an hour or more.