Newsroom

Tom Boasberg

In January 2009, the Denver Board of Education unanimously appointed Tom Boasberg Superintendent of Denver Public Schools. Formerly, Boasberg served as Chief Operating Officer for the district since April 2007.

As Chief Operating Officer, Boasberg led the district’s efforts to implement transparent student-based budgeting to allow school leaders greater flexibility over their school budgets and to significantly increase pay for teachers and principals who demonstrate growth in student achievement or work in high-poverty schools. Following the vision of the Denver Plan, he has also led efforts to expand full-day preschool slots from 500 to over 2,000, improve central services to schools, balance the district’s budgets after many years of cuts, and introduce new schools in areas where schools had been performing poorly.

Before DPS, Boasberg worked for eight years at Level 3 Communications, where he was Group Vice President for Corporate Development, responsible for the company’s mergers and acquisitions and strategic partnerships. Boasberg spent his first three years at Level 3 in Hong Kong as Senior Vice President for Asia Corporate Development and Head of the Asian Lines of Business, establishing and running operations in China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Prior to Level 3 Communications, Boasberg served as legal advisor to Reed Hundt, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. At the FCC, he was responsible for devising policies and rules to open up the US and international telecommunications markets to competition. He also played a leading role in the establishment of the E-Rate program, which provides over $2 billion a year to high poverty schools across the country to pay for telecom and internet services.

Prior to the FCC, he served for three years as Chief of Staff to Lee Chu-Ming, Chairman of Hong Kong's largest political party, working on constitutional and political issues relating to Hong Kong’s change of sovereignty in 1997. He helped draft Hong Kong’s election law and Bill of Rights and successfully advocated for fairer treatment of the Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong. He also worked as a junior high school English teacher in Hong Kong’s public schools and played semi-professional basketball in Hong Kong.

He earned his B.A. in History summa cum laude from Yale College and J.D. with Distinction from Stanford Law School.

Contact the Superintendent

Address:
900 Grant Street, Suite 701
Denver, CO 80203 

Phone: 720-423-3300
E-mail: superintendent@dpsk12.org