School districts exist to educate students, but such a large public-facing organization much also be equipped to handle myriad issues that affect kids, their families and the district’s employees. In her role as senior legal counsel and executive director of the office of general counsel at Denver Public Schools, Michelle Berge tackles many of those issues including legal questions involving immigration, workplace harassment and discrimination, and teacher compensation.
“It’s such a fascinating office,” said Berge, who joined DPS as deputy counsel in 2013 and took over as head of the office earlier this year. “You think about most in-house counsel, you wear a lot of hats; here, you get a lot of the standard stuff, as well as touching on pretty exciting social issues and feel like you’re making a difference.”
DPS is among the fastest-growing urban school districts in the country, with more than 200 schools and 90,000 students. Last year, Berge acted as the district’s lead negotiator in contract discussions with the teacher’s union, a particularly challenging role in a state that spends significantly less per pupil than the national average. The negotiations over the district’s master agreement with its teachers — finalized in September 2017 — lasted for more than 100 hours and included a 20-hour session on the final day that stretched until 4:30 a.m.
Among the many challenges that role posed was having to handle rumors — right up until the contract was signed — that the teachers might strike. “We finished at 4:30, I went home, I showered, I came back to work at 5:30 a.m., and the superintendent and I did a webinar for all of our school leaders that morning,” Berge said. “Everyone thought there would be a strike if we hadn’t signed the deal. We said, ‘It’s OK; no one’s striking. We have a deal.’ … It was the first and only all-nighter I’d ever pulled — it was quite the experience.”
This year, Berge has been back at the negotiating table to discuss the district’s teacher compensation system. For now, she helped arrange a deal that’s dependent on the passage of a statewide ballot initiative in November that could boost school funding by $1.6 billion. “We put on the table that if this ballot measure passes, we will put another $36 million into teacher compensation, effectively doubling what we get from the taxpayers,” Berge said. “We’re hopeful that it passes; if it doesn’t, then we have to continue to talk through it.”
These negotiations are so important, Berge said, because employing quality teachers is critical to the district’s vitality. “The [Denver Board of Education] recognizes that our talent pool is the heart of our success that we can give our kids,” she said. “Our ability to recruit and retain strong teachers is huge.”
Berge and her office don’t only deal with employment matters, though. She’s also been pulled into issues that stem from the tenor of the immigration debate happening at the national level. Schools have long been considered places that are safe from immigration enforcement, but Berge said this year it seemed necessary to restate that policy and commitment on the part of the district. Berge said calls to a sort of community complaint line from DPS families who have questions on this topic have increased significantly. With that in mind, Berge penned a resolution for the board that explained Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not welcome at any school in the district.
“I need our families to know that when you drop your kids off, they’re safe here; we are not sharing information,” Berge said. “If ICE comes to our schools to ask questions about immigration, then there’s a protocol where the call comes to me. I will do everything in my lawful power to assure that immigration is not coming in to affect our school learning environments.” Berge said all the school secretaries have been trained on the matter; she also said she’s had to move to quash subpoenas requesting information from the district. “They can find their information somewhere else,” she said. “We won’t provide it.”
Berge also recently revamped the district’s discrimination and harassment policy. At the beginning of August, she and one of her colleagues trained every school leader on the new approach. “We’re trying to improve our systems to both capture claims of discrimination, investigate them, and then also provide effective remedies.” Berge’s office took on the work in part as a response to specific crises that occurred last year, including a scandal involving an East High School cheerleading coach forcing a teen into a painful split and allegations of a student groping another student at South High School’s homecoming bonfire.
“From all of that swirling last year, we need to figure out how to do this well, and we need to do this right. The consequences are high for all sides, for the employees, for the students, for everyone,” Berge said. “The group we put together was really thoughtful about the approach, and it was really exciting to present to all of our school leaders and have them say this was so much better.”
Working in public service in some capacity is something Berge had in mind for quite some time. After college, she took a job as a legal assistant at the Oregon Public Defender’s Office, supporting two or three attorneys who handled dependency neglect cases in a largely Spanish-speaking unit. “I had conversations with women who had been victims of domestic violence and kids who had been victims of sex abuse,” Berge said. “I had that feeling of how can I do more in this world.”
Her experience in Oregon led her to enroll at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. She then spent five years in private practice at Reilly Pozner, working on cases involving prisoner rights or immigration. But in 2013 Berge jumped at an opportunity to return to the public sector at DPS. These days, in addition to tackling high-profile issues, Berge’s duties also include managing the department, which is comprised of seven attorneys and three support staff.
“I love this place,” Berge said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
— Chris Outcalt