Kim Ursetta walked into a classroom at Rachel B. Noel Middle School in far northeast Denver recently and found a substitute teacher sitting dully behind a desk.

Ursetta, who is president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, looked around the room and exchanged glances with her school tour guide, student adviser Rudy Bustos.

They saw a boy in sunglasses walking around. A girl with a paper airplane on her desk. Clumps of talking students ignoring math problems on the board.

"I feel bad for these kids because this very class had the same thing happen last year - their math teacher left," said Bustos, who quickly began putting the mostly minority students to work. "This isn't closing the achievement gap, this is widening it."A second classroom, a similar story. Two new math teachers left Noel in the first three weeks of this school year, abandoning their students to the whims of the district's sub list.

Ursetta, who holds a master's degree in educational equity and who has passed the rigorous national teaching boards, shook her head as she climbed into her silver minivan to drive to another school.

"That's where new teacher support is really crucial," she said. "We have to make sure we're providing a high-quality mentoring program."

Leading change

Next month, in the continuing evolution of the role of the Denver teachers union, Ursetta and DPS Chief Academic Officer Jaime Aquino will fly to Ohio to learn about a peer assistance program for teachers.

The program, a partnership of the Columbus school district and its teachers union, puts master educators in charge of helping struggling teachers, new and veteran.

It is one way to address high teacher turnover at Noel and across DPS. And it is one more step afield of the traditional bread-and-butter issues - wages and benefits - that once occupied the Denver teachers union and others across the country.

But Adam Urbanski, a national advocate of refocusing unions on student achievement, said unions must change - or die.

"Teachers will do well only if students do well and no community will long tolerate a disconnect between the two, nor should they," said Urbanski, who co-founded the national Teacher Union Reform Network.

So more unions are partnering with their traditional bargaining foes, school districts, in exploring school reform, professional development and alternative pay.

Denver, where teachers approved the country's first wide-scale merit pay plan, known as ProComp, is seen as a leader in that effort.

"It's a flagship union," Urbanski said. "Many teacher unions across the country admire their courage."

Monday, Denver school board members approved another union- district reform initiative, the creation of teacher-led schools.

Teams of teachers, or teachers and a principal, can pitch up to 20 school makeovers for fall 2007.

"To give teachers permission to think outside the box based on what they as professionals know works for kids is very exciting," Ursetta said about the initiative.

Then she took a swipe at the district.

"It's not very often teachers are allowed to think outside the box," she said with a smile. "They have so many mandates."

Partners or no, the relationship between DPS and the union remains less lockstep and more uneasy dance.

"The kids have to come first," said Superintendent Michael Bennet, who meets every other week with Ursetta. "We need to constantly re-examine our relationship to make sure it is serving kids."

That's easier to say than it is to define.

Bennet, for example, is talking to Teach for America officials about coming to Denver. The program, a sort of domestic Peace Corps, places recent college graduates in impoverished schools for two-year stints.

But Ursetta questioned whether it would create a "continual revolving door" in some schools.

Blending old, new ideas

Talk to teachers in one of DPS' union strongholds, Abraham Lincoln High School on South Federal Boulevard, and it's clear they differ on union priorities.

For Marsha Burger, a veteran English teacher, "it's monetary issues because we're not comparable to the other districts still."

She said that is putting students first.

"We can't do an effective job if we're broke, unhappy, overburdened, overwhelmed," Burger said, "it transfers to the kids."

A few classrooms down, social studies teachers Ryan Marini and Brinton Kaufman see it differently.

Kaufman, in his sixth year of teaching, describes himself as "very passionate about the union."

Still, "It seems to me that most of the emphasis and bargaining concerns teacher needs," he said. "Maybe too much emphasis is put on improving our lives and not making school better for students."

Marini, also a strong union advocate, said he'd like bargaining to focus on issues that link student and teacher needs, such as cutting class sizes.

"That's the only thing that gives me a little, uneasiness I guess, about the union," he said. "Money is always first."

Memories of a strike

Ursetta is used to the conflicting views of teachers: "I call it walking the tightrope."

Growing up near Pittsburgh, her own background reflects the steel town's bare-knuckles unionism.

"I always remember my dad telling me, you never cross a picket line or you'll never get a job again," she said. "That's how it worked back there."

So when Denver teachers struck in fall 1994, a month after Ursetta began teaching at Munroe Elementary on the city's southwest side, she didn't hesitate.

The bilingual elementary teacher wrote Huelga! - Strike! in Spanish - on a sign and joined the picket line.

"We settled at 4:20 in the morning," Ursetta said, reminiscing recently about another year's tough settlement. "I was on such a high. I went home and sat on my front steps, wide awake."

But new teachers tend to focus less on labor action and more on what they get for the $413 to $676 annual dues.

Not too far ahead

"Why are they so expensive?" asked Amanda Lueck, a first-year teacher at Horace Mann Middle School in northwest Denver. "What does it pay for?"

So Ursetta talked about teacher training sessions put on by the union, about being a voice for teachers, about the opportunity for teacher-led schools.

She seems to be balancing well on the tightrope as she enters her second year as union president.

But Tony Lewis, who studies education leadership as executive director of Denver's Donnell-Kay Foundation, said Ursetta must tread carefully.

"Kim's working with an administration that is anything but traditional and still trying to satisfy her membership, which is a challenging place to be," he said.

"What happens is you get a little bit far out in front of your membership," Lewis added, "and you're gone."

Leading the teachers

Kim Ursetta is a bilingual elementary teacher and president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, the union representing about 2,900 of Denver's 4,100 teachers. Some background:

• Age: 35

• Childhood: Grew up in Slippery Rock, Pa., 45 miles north of Pittsburgh. She moved to Denver after attending a program at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley in summer 1993.

• Education: Master's degree in educational equity and cultural diversity, 2003, University of Colorado at Boulder; bachelor of science degree in elementary education and bachelor of arts degree in Spanish, 1994, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.

• Employment: Began teaching at Munroe Elementary in southwest Denver in fall 1994 and moved to nearby Newlon Elementary in fall 2001. She was elected union president, a full-time position, in spring 2005.

• Family: Four children, ages 4 to 10. All attend Academia Ana Marie Sandoval Dual Language Montessori, a Denver public school.

• Other: She is one of only 37 Denver Public Schools teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

A changing focus

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association no longer is focused solely on issues such as salary and benefits. To the dismay of some members, it is beginning to emphasize alternative pay, professional development and teacher-led reform. Some examples:

• ONGOING (approved by the union, funded by voters)

ProComp: Denver drew national attention when its teachers agreed to participate in the country's largest pay-for-performance plan. Dollars are tied to working in tougher schools and increasing student achievement.

• ON DECK (approved Monday by the Denver school board)

Beacon Schools: Teams of teachers, or teachers and a principal, can submit proposals to reform Denver schools, with up to 20 expected for fall 2007. It's about "promoting school innovation," according to the memorandum of understanding between the union and district. Based on the successful Boston Pilot schools.

• FUTURE POTENTIAL (what's being considered)

Peer mentoring: Teachers helping teachers, from newbies to veterans. A DPS leader and union leader will travel next month to Columbus, Ohio, to learn more about a program in which principals and teachers can refer struggling educators to a peer assistance center.