As school districts like Jefferson County Schools perpetually struggle to restore staggering learning loss to pre-pandemic levels, Colorado’s unique district accountability system — which engages parents and community members in the process — seems equipped to help. But what happens when those tasked with holding government accountable are led astray from their mission?

Under Colorado law, each school district must have a district accountability committee (DAC), primarily constituted by parent and community volunteers. Unlike parent-teacher associations, a DAC’s job is to help ascertain the root causes of lagging student achievement and develop a unified improvement plan for the district.

In theory, these accountability committees empower parents to effect real change in their kids’ education — directly holding districts accountable as an independent committee of the board. State statute establishes the basic roles of the DAC. Individual school boards directly grant their specific authority.

Colorado law requires that DACs review new charter school applications before a school board considers it — a way for communities to initially help vet nontraditional public schools. However, since renewal applications would extend a charter based on the original contract’s terms, the state’s mandate doesn’t extend to charter renewal applications.

JeffCo has 16 charter schools, many of which have long waitlists — indicating parents widely embrace this educational option. While some school boards permit their DAC to evaluate renewals, both Superintendent Tracy Dorland and Chief of Schools David Weiss acknowledged in a Sept. 6 board meeting that it isn’t the school district norm.

Regardless, when four charter schools were up for renewal last school year, JeffCo’s DAC offered recommendations for the very first time.

Here’s the thing: The school board never authorized their renewal recommendations. A majority of the DAC went rogue — exploiting supposed “ambiguity” in district policy to give authority unto itself that is neither in statute nor district policy.

“Last year was the first year the DAC Charter Subcommittee weighed in on renewals,” Weiss, a district liaisons to the DAC, told the board. “In our cursory review, it’s not really clear to us when the DAC was charged with weighing in on charter renewals.” Somehow, the DAC bylaws were changed two years ago, but “I’m not 100% sure when that ended up in those bylaws.”

Weiss did not respond to my emailed questions last week.

The DAC went further, establishing “categories that we really wanted to weigh our review of all the charter schools,” the charter subcommittee’s chairman, Jeff Baucum, told the board in March. “We came up with governance, academics, operations, finances, sustainability,” he said, as well as ways to score and apply those metrics.

That’s not how this works. When a school district and a charter school negotiate a renewal, they can only consider very specific things stated in state law and/or the charter contract, such as finances and enrollment numbers, not other things like academic performance.

Early this spring, the DAC voted to oppose renewing Doral Academy, an arts-focused school that recently completed construction of a new building at no financial liability to the district. A DAC minority approved a dissenting opinion, and the school board ultimately voted to extend Doral’s contract by up to two years.

Let’s be clear: JeffCo’s DAC unilaterally interfered in the charter school renewal process. They never consulted the school board; they generated their own evaluation criteria — and no one even seems to know how or when the DAC gave themselves this power. Charters reportedly don’t even have the DAC’s rubric.

Charter renewals hinge on contractual compliance. By creating their own criteria, the DAC proved it lacks expertise and resources for in-depth contract evaluations — unlike district staff, who take deep dives within individual departments. Moreover, Weiss confirmed during the Sept. 6 meeting that when the DAC first got involved with renewals, there wasn’t a single charter school representative on its charter review subcommittee.

“You could imagine, when staff and DAC have two different recommendations about the same school, it can get challenging for districts,” Superintendent Tracy Dorland conceded on Sept. 6. District staff “understand the ins and outs, they understand the contracts that the board and the district has with the charter school.”

Let’s be real: A charter school can’t genuinely be held accountable to its contract — the purpose of the renewal process — if the DAC is crafting its own ad-hoc rubrics out of whole cloth, while making itself out to be the crucial “community voice.” This strips away consistency, clarity and transparency — critical drivers of true accountability.

JeffCo’s DAC supposedly benefits from the knowledge and expertise of Evie Hudak, a former state senator who resigned in lieu of recall and has a legislative history of opposing charters and school choice. Hudak advises and helps lead JeffCo’s DAC as a non-parent member. She wrote the state’s school accountability law, yet she previously encouraged committee members — parents who rely on her as an ex-legislator — to ignore that same statute. “While there’s the law, there’s no DAC police,” Hudak once advised.

When the DAC rejected Doral Academy’s renewal, Hudak reportedly voiced her support. Where was she when the DAC went rogue on charter renewals? What advice did she provide this time?

In JeffCo Schools, the DAC seems systematically set up to fail — frequently receiving guidance that undermines their commitment to fair and equitable oversight. This risks compromising the committee’s credibility while eroding the trust charter schools and parents have placed in their school district — harming Colorado’s kids in the process.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and host of “The Jimmy Sengenberger Show” Saturdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on News/Talk 710 KNUS. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on Twitter (X) @SengCenter.