SKIING GREEN A Denver ski company is striving to be an eco-friendly force on the slopes P10
FREE
February 21, 2019
DENVER Since 1926
DENVER, COLORADO
A publication of
Denver teachers end strike after deal Adjustments to compensation system bring educators back to classrooms BY MELANIE ASMAR CHALKBEAT.ORG
So Grossnickle began making snow globes for companies. Lewis later explored the couple’s more artistic side with globes for art shows as well as their Etsy shop. “I kept looking for snow globes that I imagined, and I couldn’t find any,” Lewis said. “There was nobody we could find making snow globes for grownup art.” The magic happens at the back of the couple’s workshop in northeast Denver.
The Denver school district and teachers union have reached an agreement in their long-simmering dispute over teacher pay, ending a strike as it entered its fourth day. The tentative deal gives teachers significant raises and a more traditional pay system, while keeping incentives for teachers at high-poverty schools that the district believes are essential. The tentative agreement was announced shortly after 6 a.m. on Feb. 14, after the two sides emerged from behind closed doors after some nine hours of huddling separately. They had begun the bargaining session at 10 a.m. Feb. 13. Union members and the Denver school board still need to approve the deal, but this brings a close to the first Denver teacher strike in 25 years. “We didn’t want to have to go to the strike,” lead union negotiator Rob Gould said after the tentative agreement was signed, “but the ability to utilize our last tool in our tool belt to get the district to listen to our needs — we used it, and I think it’s a victory for our teachers but more importantly, for our students.”
SEE GLOBES, P7
SEE STRIKE, P6
Cameron Lewis gently shakes one of the finished snow globes. She said that she and Reid spend months testing the glitter inside the snow globes to make sure they work well in the liquid solution. KAILYN LAMB
‘Pushing the envelope’ Hilltop couple makes snow globes into works of art BY KAILYN LAMB KLAMB@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
Snow falls outside the window of Hilltop residents Cameron Lewis and Reid Grossnickle’s workshop. But there’s a bit of snow inside, too, in the confetti and glitter swirling in the collection of snow globes —
some now decades old with yellowing water — that line shelves in the entrance of the pair’s packed workshop. Many of the globes celebrated milestones of corporate companies, some no longer in existence. Making snow globes was a career that unexpectedly landed in Grossnickle’s lap. He and Lewis originally made cubes with liquid and sculptures inside. The pair were at an art show in Las Vegas in the ‘90s when someone asked if the art could be set in globes instead.
THE BOTTOM LINE PERIODICAL
“I think that you’ll see in the Democratic budgets that come out of the House over the next few years real emphasis on funding that will help develop housing for homeless folks.” U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette | Page 2 INSIDE
VOICES: PAGE 8 | LIFE: PAGE 10 | CALENDAR: PAGE 9 | SPORTS: PAGE 13 VOLUME 92 | ISSUE 16