Newsroom

Tom Boasberg

Since being unanimously appointed as Superintendent in January 2009, Tom Boasberg has led the district's efforts to accelerate its progress in student achievement and better serve the families of Denver. 

Over the past three years, the district has posted record enrollment increases, dramatically expanded the number of preschool and full-day kindergarten slots and cut the number of its lowest-performing schools by more than two thirds. Working with higher graduation standards, DPS last spring graduated 500 more students than two years ago, and it has gone from being the district with the lowest rate of student academic growth among major Colorado districts to the district with the highest rate of academic achievement growth for both students in poverty and middle class students.

Denver has sought to release the talents and entrepreneurial energies of the community's educators, fostering the creation of 40 new district-run and charter schools during Boasberg's term. To meet the needs of all the city's children, Denver has established three core equities for all its public schools - both charter and district-run - equity of opportunity, access and responsibility, and accountability. For its leadership, Denver was chosen as the host of the first national District-Charter Collaboration Conference last year.

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. A speaker of Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, 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