This is what democracy looks like, Denver style: UPDATED

Big report from Denver on the big money pouring into the city school board election. The same story is playing out there as elsewhere: privatizing interests pushing an elected board which has a (vocal) minority standing against them (and, as it happens, their second superintendent in a row).
Now from Mayor Hancock comes this:

“I’m very nervous,” he said of the impending election. “I don’t believe the current board of education and its level and tone of conversation reflects the values of our city. I have painfully watched board of education deliberations on television. And as a former legislator, I was embarrassed by the discourse that occurs. No protocol, no decorum, just absolutely disrespectful of one another and the superintendent,  and no one talking about kids. It was painful to watch.”

Now, I'll admit that I don't watch Denver School Board meetings, and maybe they are lacking in "protocol" and "decorum." I'm suspicious, however, that this is less about procedure and more about content in the meetings. In an elected body, people are going to disagree (one hopes). There are going to be split votes. That's actually the way it's supposed to work. It's when all your votes go 7-0 that one should examine if things are working.

 UPDATE: Here's the word from the ground troops on one of the campaigns facing that big money:

As many major campaigns as I’ve worked on, and as much experience Emily has in the public policy arena, we didn’t realize that local races had become this corporatized. Maybe we were naive, or overly idealistic, but the point is that something has gone deeply wrong in America when elections about our local schools have becomes yet another chess board for oligarchs...

 along with wanting her to win, I also want our family’s experience to be a small, microcosmic reminder about how high the stakes now are in every level of our politics. Big money is intent on owning every public institution from the White House to the schoolhouse. You need to know that if you ever think of running for office — and, as important, you need to remember it the next time you get your ballot.

And on that big money and where it's heading:

...a few years ago, insiders say, Senator Michael Bennet, then Denver Public Schools Superintendent, went to Republican oilman (now-University of Colorado president) Bruce Benson. What followed was unprecedented campaign contributions from large Republican donors into school board races in Denver. The big contributions changed the face of Denver's school board races.

Two years later, a so-called "grassroots" group based out of Portland, Oregon called Stand for Children came to Denver. It's first organizer, Johnny Merrill, was open about the intent of the group: to impact the Denver school board races, and that Bennet had invited the group to Denver.

Make no mistake about it: this group, with an avowed agenda to undermine teachers, is specifically designed to siphon dollars from Wall Street and the Chicago investment community into local races across the country.

In 2010, for instance, Stand for Children spent unprecedented sums in Illinois in legislative races last election cycle, outflanking the supporters of traditional public education, resulting in legislation that killed basic protections for teachers in the state. The group's executive director subsequently bragged that in spending such huge sums of money, "individual candidates were essentially a vehicle to execute a political objective" - one aiming to fundamentally undermine traditional public education. He also bragged that "luckily it never never got covered that way" as "the press never picked up on" what they were doing.

In other words, this organization fully acknowledges that it's whole r'aison d'etre is to secretly buy education policy. And now this very same organization has joined with the biggest of big money donors to dump massive amounts of corporate cash into the Denver School Board elections.

It's happening all over, folks. Pay attention.