Whew. Quite a busy 24 hours here in the Studio. Getting the cartoon on ESPN’s site, plus drawing multiple cartoons for various clients kept me pretty busy. An example. Average day at the Rocky Mountain News= 3 roughs, 1 final cartoon. Average day these days: 4 to 8 roughs, 5 finished cartoons plus color.

Thanks for the support yesterday. I appreciated it so much.

BTW. I’m not done with the Brady Quinn trade yet. stay tooned.

That’s long been the conventional wisdom about the state’s school finance system, which doles out state aid to districts based on their enrollments.

But, a lengthy new study finds lots of nuances in declining enrollment, such as the conclusions that consolidation of small school districts is not necessarily an answer, that declining districts aren’t necessarily suffering financially that there’s little difference in academic performance between declining and growing districts.

The study warns, however, “To date, declining school districts have been able to adjust costs to meet the decreases in funding; however, a number of costs for school districts are ‘fixed’ and reducing costs further becomes increasingly more difficult. If the declines in enrollments continue, it may be necessary to consider other options such as modifying the funding formula, increased cooperation across school districts and/or consolidation, where feasible.”

Here’s a snapshot of the findings. The study is very detailed, and filled with charts, so the Findings and Highlights is worth a read.

Trends and funding

Even though enrollment statewide increased from 2002-03 to 2007-08, enrollment declined in 109 of 177 districts. (One district, Vilas, was not included because of statistical anomalies created by its online program.) The majority of declining districts have fewer than 1,000 pupils and are in rural areas or small towns.

The percentage of at-risk students have increased in all districts over the six years, but declining districts tend to have higher percentages of such students than growing ones.

Districts have some financial flexibility in adjusting to decline, but transportation costs are the least flexible.

Adequacy of funding

The study found that 2004-05 Colorado school funding “was substantially below the base costs for most levels of school district enrollment,” based on two external funding measures. Based on those, the report concluded “the state does not provide the resources believed by professionals in education necessary to meet student performance expectations. Given state budget issues, this gap is likely to continue to increase.”

The report also noted that additional costs are likely to be required in the future to implement the Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids.

Declining enrollment districts have been able to keep pace with or exceed spending increases by the growing peers – except in the Denver metro area, where declining enrollment districts have lagged in spending.

District consolidation

Contradicting what may be conventional wisdom, the authors said analysis and review of other studies did not “do not identify obvious cost savings or increased academic opportunities from an across the board or formula driven consolidation of school districts. At best, on a case‐by‐case school district basis, the data reviewed identifies some very limited opportunities for cost savings or increased academic opportunities from the consolidation of school districts.

“Benefits from consolidation may exist when school districts are geographically close and there is substantial student movement between the districts (i.e., incoming or outgoing), especially if one of the districts is experiencing declining enrollment.”

Student performance

There is no statistically significant difference in student performance between declining and growing districts, regardless of enrollment or location. Reading and math CSAP scores are correlated to per-pupil spending, more so for math.

School choice

Because of districts’ fixed costs, loss of students to charter schools has a financial impact on districts, and “School choice results in traditional schools educating the more expensive students as the study finds the percent of students at‐risk or with special needs is higher in traditional schools than in charter schools.”

Background and what’s next

The study was ordered up by the 2008 legislature, at a time before state revenue collapsed and some lawmakers hoped a study would provide evidence that could be used to increase funding. The study was delayed a year and was done by Pacey Economics Group of Boulder, a economics study firm headed by Patricia Pacey, who is a member of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education. The study was paid for with $200,000 from the State Education Fund.

The report gets its first legislative airing Wednesday morning at a joint meeting of the House and Senate education committees.

Declining enrollment is a little lower on the legislative radar screen this year because the state revenue crisis will force budget cuts of 6 to 8 percent on all districts in 2010-11, regardless of whether they are growing of shrinking.

There are some minor discussions of school finance reform going on in the legislature. One pending measure, House Bill 10-1183, would authorize a study of alternative school finance systems. Another, Senate Bill 10-008, would commission a study of using the average daily membership method of counting enrollment. A third proposal, House Bill 10-1015, would have created a pilot program under which declining districts would get stable state aid for five years while they developed efficiencies. (Declining districts now can use an averaging system to ease reductions in state aid.) HB 10-1015 didn’t gain any traction and was killed at the request of its sponsor, Rep. Karen Middlefield, D-Aurora.

• Links to the study, a summary and reports on individual districts

The basket tied-handle arch bridge carrying the West Corridor light rail will cross over the Sixth Avenue Freeway right above the path of a former freight rail spur that until 1988 crossed the freeway at grade with a signalized crossing. Courtesy RTD.

By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

“Roll Out the Barrel” is a polka standard, but Roll Out the Light Rail Bridge is anything but standard in construction.

Late next month, metro residents will get to see a first-of-its-kind construction method in the United States.

The signature steel-arch bridge for RTD’s West Corridor light rail over the Sixth Avenue Freeway will be rolled into place, literally, over the highway from its temporary perch on a platform at the Denver Federal Center. This innovative construction method promises to save time and money for the traveling public and taxpayers.

The bridge is called a basket tied-handle arch; it resembles the curved handle of a wicker basket with the two sides angling in toward each other and meeting or “tied” at the top of the arch.

This temporary platform on the Denver Federal Center serves as a stage to build the arch; it will be launched over Sixth Avenue in April to connect with the pier at right rear, on the north side. Courtesy RTD.

The rollout will be on rolling jacks, with the 280-foot bridge sliding across and into place from end to end – there will be no center pier in the freeway median to hold up the span, as the cables string from the arch provide support for the clear-span bridge. It will be wide enough from side pier to side pier to allow future widening of the freeway and the Simms-Union interchange ramps that pass beneath the bridge, along with the north frontage road.

The late Dennis Cole, who was RTD’s project manager for the West Corridor construction, once described it as “like the Egyptians built the pyramids.”

The installation will require a full closure of Sixth Avenue between Kipling Street and Simms-Union for a weekend in April. The Colorado Department of Transportation, RTD, West Corridor contractor Denver Transit Construction Group and bridge-building subcontractor Edward Kraemer & Sons collaborated to get the installation ready for a weekend after the height of ski season travel and before the start of the heavy summer driving season, to minimize the impact on traffic.

But the unusual method of installation also minimizes the need for recurring lane closures that would have been required under more standard construction methods that would have had workers out over the freeway for months.

The bridge superstructure has been going up piece by piece on the south side of the freeway on the Denver Federal Center. The U.S. General Services Administration, which operates the center, and Lakewood officials worked closely with RTD to get the transit agency to adopt this signature bridge style.

RTD’s initial design for the bridge was a traditional Warren truss-type span. Lakewood and the GSA lobbied for the arch style. Courtesy RTD.

Initially, the design called for a standard Warren Truss-type bridge here. RTD believed it would be less expensive.

But the city and the GSA, with plans to develop the federal center into a mixed-use commercial area, wanted something more memorable than that. Together they ran estimates showing that the basket tied-handle arch would be less expensive. RTD was persuaded and the swap was done.

“The entire steel arch structure is fabricated from weathering steel and the arches incline inwards toward each other to form a ‘basket-handled tied arch’ style of bridge,” RTD says in its latest West Corridor newsletter. “The tensioned cables are 2 3/8” inch diameter galvanized steel and are arranged in a crossed-cable pattern that provide an important piece of the structural integrity as well as being visually attractive.”

After it is connected to the side span already in place over the north frontage road, Kraemer’s crews will begin installing the concrete decking.

RTD photo shows Kraemer’s construction reaching the apex of the arch.

More Transportation News from Kevin Flynn's Inside Lane

Get on the Inside Lane with longtime journalist Kevin Flynn, and get more news and views on Colorado's transportation system than you can get anywhere else. Slower traffic keep to the right, we're on the Inside Lane!
Visit Kevin Flynn's Inside Lane

This will be the fourth and final game of the season series between the Avs and Blues. The Avs have won the previous three by a combined score of 16-5.

St. Louis Blues 32-27-9 73 points Last 10 games 7-3-0
4th place in Central Division
10th place in Western Conference

The Blues will be playing their first home game since February 13th. After the Olympic break the Blues have been on a 6 game road trip, on which they’ve gone 4-2.
Play at home has been a problem for the Blues this season. Their record at the Scottrade Center is 12-16-5.
Leading scorers for the Blues are Andy McDonald, who has 44 points and T.J. Oshie, who has 41.
Chris Mason is the Blues top goalie. His record is 24-19-8.

Colorado Avalanche 39-23-6 84 points Last 10 games 6-4-0
2nd place in Northwest Division
6th place in Western Conference

Blues goalie Chris Mason allows goal vs Minnesota

Peter Budaj is scheduled to get the start in goal for Colorado. His record is 4-4-1. Craig Anderson, who had started 24 consecutive games, will get a very rare night off.

NOTES
-Stephane Yelle and Cody McLeod were both injured in Sunday’s game against Dallas and are questionable for Tuesday’s game.

Bruce Wilkie is a Colorado semi-native, having moved to Denver in 1971. He has worked with pro and college hockey teams since 1975 and now covers the Avs for thehockeywriters.com.

Chauncey Billups is a profound leader for these Denver Nuggets.

With Adrian Dantley again heading the Nuggets’ bench, Chauncey took up the role of Big Shot Floor General in directing Denver through another treacherous road game.

Down by double-digits midway through the 3^rd Quarter, Chauncey took charge.  He orchestrated a forceful Nuggets comeback that culminated when Denver took its first lead with 4:05 left in the 3^rd.  Billups shouted instructions to his teammates (mostly the thick-skulled Johan Petro) occasionally taking it to the rim himself to drive home a point.

In a game dominated by the referees, the Nuggets put together an excellent game plan.  Early on, it was Houston benefiting from a crew that called every contact.  By the 4^th Quarter, the Nuggets were driving through moving Rockets for big foul calls.  But after giving up a 104-93 lead early in the 4^th, the Nuggets had to work against both Houston’s aggressive defense and a biased officiating crew.

The Nuggets and Rockets each shot a solid 80% from the free-throw line, but it was the vast disparity in attempts that did the Nuggets in on Monday night in Houston.  The Rockets took 35 shots from the charity stripe while the Nuggets, despite an aggressive offensive game, only took 20.  Worse, Chauncey got hit with so many ticky-tacky calls that he fouled out with 0:28 left in a game that came down to the final 3 seconds.

In the end, Billups’ commanding presence wasn’t enough to overcome the driven Rockets.  Houston sits outside of the playoff field in the Western Conference by 5 games even with the tight win over Denver, and the Nuggets could afford to lose a game after a very successful road trip.

Still… it would have been nice to see Denver get a fair shake from the refs in Houston.  This has been a consistent problem over the last four years, and George Karl had to spinning in his armchair with frustration.

Carmelo Anthony paced all scorers with 45 points, including consistent production throughout the final quarter.  Slashing, undersized Point Guard Aaron Brooks dropped 31 for the Rockets.

Articles similar to this:

• March 8, 2010 — Nuggets’ Karl: surgery today, chemo tomorrow… coaching Friday? (0)
  Amazingly, Karl says he will try to make it back to the…
• January 28, 2010 — Nuggets in rhythm without Carmelo, take 8th straight (0)
  Of course Denver is much better with a healthy Carmelo …
• February 26, 2010 — Chauncey, Carmelo fill Coach Karl’s shoes in 15-point Nuggets win (1)
  While Chauncey took it upon himself to fuel the offense…

More Sports Coverage from ProSportsColorado.com

Get news, opinion, and analysis on all Colorado's Pro Teams from ProSportsColorado's group of contributors..."a view from the cheap seats."
Visit ProSportsColorado.com

Editor’s note: This story was reported and written by the Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network. Read about the reporting team here.

If your image of a rapist is a hooded stranger in a dark alley, think again. The face of most rapists is one their victims recognize.

In almost all sexual assaults – 90 percent, according to the U.S. Justice Department – the attacker is someone the victim knows.

And that means the rape prevention programs of the past 30 years – rape whistles, walking in pairs, staying out of dark alleys – haven’t really made a dent in the number of assaults on campus.

That’s because efforts haven’t focused on how most rapes happen, says Davian Gagne, gender violence prevention coordinator for the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“If somebody is blowing a whistle, it’s probably going to be in somebody’s residence in a bedroom, and the likelihood of somebody intervening in that situation is pretty slim,” Gagne said. She was hired in 2008 as part of the university’s response to the high-profile sexual assault case involving Lisa Simpson and the university football recruiting program.

Gagne has been focused on a new prevention tactic being introduced at schools around the nation. It’s called “bystander intervention.”

The idea is to teach people to be aware of a bad situation as it develops and to intervene. For example, it might be stopping a friend who’s had too much to drink from leaving a party with a potential attacker.

Studies have shown if roughly a third of the population becomes aware of something, that becomes a tipping point for changing attitudes and behaviors in a culture. So Gagne has been working to reach that point, and begin shifting attitudes and actions long before any whistle could be blown.

It hasn’t been easy. Fully funding the program, which would train everyone from the Chancellor, to faculty, staff and students, would cost about $260,000 — money the university doesn’t have. And not everyone on campus sees the need, she adds.

But Gary Pawlas does.

Pawlas, an instructor of mechanical engineering, worked with Gagne and others to develop a sexual assault and sexual harassment prevention program for engineering students.

“I wanted to make sure it was a safe environment for everybody that we had,” Pawlas said.

He was halfway through the workshops when he ran into a former student who told him the kind of story that reinforced his view. She had just quit her job because she said she was being sexually harassed at work.

Pawlas said he’s surveyed workshop participants and found a third said the sessions were helpful, which is around the 30 percent tipping point Gagne cited as necessary for changes in a culture.

“I’m hoping that out of this we can get some awareness at least going, so somewhere in the back of their brain they’re going to say, wait, this isn’t right,” Pawlas said.

That kind of awareness might mean a bystander steps in next time one of his former students encounters harassment at work.

“Part of this,” said Pawlas, “is trying to change the attitudes and protect people one tiny step at a time.”

Editor’s note: This story was reported and written by the Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network. Read about the reporting team here.

In the fall of 2008, University of Colorado students who’d sought help from the school’s Office of Victim Assistance told counselors they’d been the targets of date-rape drugs used at the same fraternity in Boulder.

“There was definitely a pattern of women being drugged at a particular fraternity,” said Davian Gagne, who leads gender violence prevention at the office.

But the school’s therapists said they are barred from telling police or anyone else any details about the alleged crimes – which have never been publicly acknowledged until now.

Neither the university nor the police could investigate “because we didn’t tell them” the name of the fraternity, said CU Victim Assistance director Mary Friedrichs. “And we can’t.”

Friedrichs said state law, and the therapists’ code of ethics, prevent her from giving police or the public the details of the alleged crimes. And the university has no jurisdiction over the fraternities because they are not officially part of the school.

The law and the ethics code say all licensed therapists must keep what clients tell them confidential, unless the client wants that information shared. If therapists had to disclose details of a sexual assault to police, Friedrichs said, then victims might never come forward.

“It’s not that we want perpetrators to get away with it,” Friedrichs said.

Mary Friedrichs

But law enforcement officials say that’s exactly what could happen if CU and other schools across the state – and the nation – don’t find a way to both protect victims and prosecute criminals.“That becomes a real problem,” said Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett. “It’s frankly up in the air how we will resolve this.”

An “epidemic” of campus sexual assault

Across Colorado – and nationwide – counselors and police officials are conflicted over how to both protect the victims of sexual assault and prevent more people from becoming victims. The tension is emerging amid major changes in the way universities in Colorado and elsewhere try to prevent sexual assault and how they publicly report crime on campus.

All this is happening in the context of what some experts call an “epidemic” of sexual assault on campus. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that one in 28 college women is the target of rape each school year, and that eventually, one in five women is the victim of a sexual assault or attempted sexual assault during her college years. Only one in 20 ever reports the crime.

An investigation of sexual assault on college campuses in Colorado found that across the state, the number of assaults that colleges reveal to the public is often just a fraction of those that are known to campus officials.

Federal law requires each college that receives federal aid to report to the public the number of sexual assaults and other serious crimes on campus. This is called the Clery Report.

But at three of Colorado’s largest universities, counselors report neither details nor the aggregated number of alleged sexual assaults they learn about from clients.

The most recent data show:

• The University of Northern Colorado in Greeley reported four sexual assaults, but school officials knew of more than twice that many.
• Colorado State University in Fort Collins reported two sexual assaults, but knew of at least three times more than that.
• CU reported 9 sexual assaults, but officials there say about two dozen more students reported recent sexual assaults to school therapists. It is not clear how many of those assaults may have occurred off-campus.

So because the majority of victims go to counselors instead of police, the crimes against those students remain hidden – unless the victims themselves tell police.

This is not true at all colleges. For example, at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, the number of sexual assaults listed each year in its public report includes both those seeking assistance from counselors and reporting directly to police.

At other schools, there is often confusion over who is supposed to report what.

“We operate in terms of confidentiality in Colorado like therapists, but we are not therapists,” said Lisa Ingarfield of the Phoenix Center of Auraria, which serves students from the University of Colorado at Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver and the Community College of Denver. “And so that, I think, is where the confusion comes in about whether or not we have to report.”

“A woman was raped here”

The CU case highlights the potential consequences when suspected crimes go unreported, and suggests that more attention is needed, said Joanne Belknap, a CU sociology professor who studies sexual violence.

For Belknap, the conflict over reporting is a personal one.

In the late summer of 1980, when Belknap was a senior at CU, she stood in front of the iconic Old Main building on campus, staring down at the outline of a body drawn on the sidewalk. Next to the outline were these words: “A woman was raped here.”

That woman was Belknap.

Joanne Belknap

And though she had fought off her attacker before he could rape her, the sexual assault left her beaten and fearful. She had been hesitant to contact police. But her father did call police, and Belknap said a women’s rights group had apparently noticed the police report and drawn the outline to mark the scene of the crime.

“It made me feel validated in this way that nothing else had,” Belknap said. “I felt like, oh, somewhere this counted for something.”

So while the idea of making a police report might discourage some victims from coming forward, Belknap has found that the reports of others also sometimes help victims decide to make a report themselves – holding the same power as that outline she saw on the sidewalk.

Heather Horton also has seen the strength behind the numbers. As director of the Sexual Assault Response and Prevention office at Colorado College, she produces a public report each year on the number and nature of all sexual assaults involving students.

“I have had a few times where somebody saw the report and that’s part of what prompted them to come in and talk with me about their own experience,” Horton said.

Erin Jemison, director of the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault, agreed.

“One of the most healing things I’ve seen with a victim of sexual assault is when they realize that they are one of many,” she said, adding that victims then realize: “If this is happening to this many people, it’s not some specific thing that I did to make this happen.”

The U.S. Justice Department is about to launch a training program for college victim assistance officials. Already, at least one college in Colorado – the University of Northern Colorado – has decided its victim assistance office will begin adding its tally of sexual assault cases to what’s reported publicly, which is known as the Clery Report.

“Any time this crime remains hidden, then everyone else has no idea it happened – and then it can happen again,” said Sally Miller, Deputy Chief of Police at Sonoma State University near San Francisco, who is helping develop the curriculum.

The training will recommend that victim assistance officials use an anonymous form to report details of an alleged crime to police officials.

CU has such a form. It can be found on the campus police Web site. But campus police spokesman and commander, Tim McGraw, said no one has ever used it.

“We’ve had it up for five or six or seven years,” McGraw said, adding that officials across campus know about the form because the campus police do training and distribute information about it. Campus police have another form for anonymously reporting crime on campus, which has been used by victims.

Friedrichs says even if she encouraged her clients to fill out the anonymous form, it wouldn’t be helpful to police because they would still not have a witness to the crime.

Garnett, the district attorney, said law enforcement officials would, indeed, want to find any witnesses to the crime. But some information – even anonymous information – is better than none at all, he said.

“It could be a start,” Garnett said, adding that law enforcement could approach the case in the same way they might begin to investigate a drug ring or a gang.

An unnamed fraternity

For now, Friedrichs said she can’t reveal the name of the fraternity in question, or even say how many students reported they were victims of date-rape drug use there, though she says it was a small number. She said she has not reviewed her records to check how many reports have involved the unnamed fraternity, nor does she plan to.

That leaves law enforcement frustrated.

“If it’s confidential, law enforcement doesn’t know the extent of the problem,” Garnett said. “If we have a situation where there’s a belief that a particular fraternity or group of people may be engaging in a pattern of criminal behavior, that would be something we very much would be interested in investigating.”

Both sides are keenly aware of the stakes.

“This is a public health issue,” Friedrichs said. “It touches us all. Sexual assault is a very harmful thing. The trauma is deep and long – life-long. And it can be transmitted to future generations. The culture spends so much money on the impacts. All of us are impacted.”

After learning about the alleged predatory drugging, Garnett said he would bring up the issue in ongoing discussions with university officials about confidentiality.

Miller, the Justice Department trainer, says colleges and law enforcement must find a way to protect victims and prosecute criminals.

“Too many times, it’s just extremes,” Miller said. “One side says: You’ve got to report everything so no one else has to go through it. The other side says: Nothing should ever be reported unless the victim wants it. I tell people you have to have a balance. Come to the middle. How can we get the most information out to help the most people?