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DENVER - After being initially denied by the teacher's union, two schools started Wednesday as the first public schools with autonomous powers in the history of Colorado.

The freedom granted to Bruce Randolph School and Manual High School may even be unique across the country.

Part of Principal Kristin Waters' job at Bruce Randolph is to watch over the lunch crowd. But with the newly granted autonomy, she suddenly has new duties, like figuring out salaries and budgets.

"Now the real work begins," she said. "What my challenge is now, though, is figuring out how much everything costs."

She has to determine out teacher workloads and class loads because the Denver Public School District can no longer do it for her.

"I don't know where to begin because it's all so new and figuring out how that looks," said Waters.

Waters and the principal at Manual, Rob Stein, now have full control over the budget, who they hire, and what the instructors teach in the classrooms.

"So, this gives me an opportunity in a competitive market for talent to interview people as they come," said Waters.

"There's a lot of discussion that principals need to be CEOs. They need to be in charge of their corporation so to speak. And, they need to have latitude on site to make decisions and have more control over budget," said Stein.

The two principals have these additional powers because on Tuesday, the Denver Classroom Teacher's Association removed its objections to the schools' autonomy and granted them a series of waivers giving them the power they wanted.

"What may be perceived as our reluctance, we really see as more of a thoughtfulness," said DCTA Vice President Melissa Verdeal.

Verdeal says the union initially said no to the idea of giving Bruce Randolph and Manual more powers because it wanted to examine the idea further.

"I think the most critical part is that when discussing a waiver of this magnitude, one of the considerations that we have is what's good for all of our people," said Verdeal.

"Staying how we have been, that's not getting the performance that we need. So something does need to change, so maybe this is the way for everyone," said Waters.

The waivers granted by the DCTA also give Bruce Randolph powers over the school calendar and allocation of a teacher's time.

More schools are now also expected to ask for autonomy from the district.

Waters believes it will be good for her school.

"Now, to not have that barrier and to be able to, 'Hey, here's an idea let's go with it,' and not have to ask 10 people for approval," she said. "It's going to be new for everybody and I think that's going to be the hardest piece."

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