Conservative interests mostly failed in their efforts to take over school boards in Colorado this month, echoing a trend across the nation.
A Colorado Sun analysis of candidates supported by the Colorado Education Association versus those responding to a conservative voter guide indicates the candidates backed by teachers prevailed more often than those supporting conservative issues. Union-backed candidates scored victories in 72% of their contests.
Conservative candidates fared best in smaller districts and heavily Republican areas, including Colorado Springs 11 and Academy 20 in El Paso County and Woodland Park. But candidates backed by the CEA and local unions won in districts from Gunnison to Greeley 6 to Cherry Creek and Douglas County.
Voters clearly want school boards to turn their attention back to “the more central” issues in education, including student safety and student achievement, since they rebuffed many candidates backed by conservative groups that have played into culture wars and harped on parent rights, said Jonathan Collins, assistant professor of political science, public policy and education at Brown University.
“A relatively systematic rejection of candidates backed by those groups in different states says that, OK, well we want to get back to the basics when it comes to education,” Collins said.
The CEA backed candidates in 30 districts, while Transform Colorado issued voter guides for 29 districts. They didn’t necessarily overlap.
Summit Cove Elementary School students board school bus following the last class of the day amid cold temperatures, Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022, in Dillon. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)
Transform Colorado is affiliated with Truth and Liberty Coalition, a nonprofit created by wealthy Woodland Park-based televangelist Andrew Wommack. The group’s voter guides, distributed online and at churches, didn’t endorse candidates. But they published responses to questions on hot-button issues including gender, race and sex education — all issues couched in a conservative parent rights movement across the country in which parents insist they should have the ultimate say over what students learn in school.
Because the voter guides didn’t suggest voting for or against candidates, Transform Colorado didn’t have to report its spending.
The biggest super PAC spender was Better Leaders, Stronger Schools, funded primarily by nonprofit Denver Families Action and former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry. That committee spent nearly $1.3 million supporting three Denver Public Schools board candidates running against union-backed candidates, which accounted for 38% of the $3.3 million in total spending by super PACs on school board races statewide. All three of the candidates supported by Better Leaders, Stronger Schools won.
Small donor committees affiliated with various teachers unions contributed about 25% of the nearly $2.6 million raised by school board candidates across the state through Oct. 25, a Sun analysis shows. Those committees may accept donations of up to $50 per person and donate up to $25,000 to a candidate.
The three super PACs that supported union candidates accounted for 32% of the total super PAC spending on school board contests statewide. Students Deserve Better and Inspiring Excellence were funded by member dues, local teachers unions and a nonprofit also funded by member dues. Another group, Better Schools for a Stronger Colorado, funded primarily by Oklahoma philanthropist Lynn Schusterman, also supported some union-backed candidates.
“We don’t try to hide our spending at all,” said Amie Baca-Oehlert, president of the Colorado Education Association. “And 100% of our political dollars come from the hard-working educators in our public schools.”
Conservative voter guide misled some candidates
Baca-Oehlert said many candidates opposed by the union “have just real extreme ideologies, values, beliefs.”
The candidates endorsed by CEA were selected by local union affiliates, who looked for candidates who support an “inclusive,” “accurate” and “honest” approach to teaching history, and who promote school environments that are also inclusive and welcoming, Baca-Oehlert said.
At least two union-backed candidates were quoted in the voters guide giving answers that seemed more in line with candidates the union opposed.
Among them were registered Democrat Melinda Carbajal, who was elected in 27J Schools in Brighton, and registered Republican Bret Meuli, who won a school board seat in Cañon City Schools — both of whom responded to the Transform Colorado voter guide.
Carbajal said she was caught off guard when surveyed over the phone for the voter guide, and said she regretted her answers, saying they do not reflect her actual views. Nor did the questions highlight issues that drove her campaign. Carbajal called the questions “incredibly inappropriate” for board candidates and said she regrets participating at all.
“My job is to set direction for a district that meets the needs of every single student within the system, and how we feel independently politically is not what’s best to serve all students,” Carbajal said. “So putting that aside (is) really important.”
For instance, when asked whether teachers have the right to refer to a student according to the pronoun corresponding to the student’s biological sex at birth, the voter guide noted that Carbajal refused to answer.
She told The Sun that she disagrees with that approach to using students’ pronouns.
“We should respect people,” she said. “That’s the whole answer. We should respect people, so if someone comes to you and they have asked you to call them something, we should respect them.”
Another question captured only part of Carbajal’s perspective. The voter guide asked candidates whether biological males should be allowed to compete in girls’ sports. The responses showed that Carbajal disagrees with that kind of policy but offers no explanation as to why.
“My answer to this question to them was, we don’t have enough information or knowledge and the world is moving forward very quickly,” she said. “At this exact moment, I don’t have the information or knowledge to say, ‘Yes, I agree that that should happen.’ That doesn’t mean that in the future we won’t have the information we need to make that acceptable.”
Meuli said he responded to the voter guide as a way to start to gain exposure for his candidacy, but he said he would respond differently today for at least one of the questions posed.
The guide showed Meuli responded that he agrees that teachers have the right to refer to a student according to the pronoun corresponding to the student’s biological sex at birth.
Meuli, a retired teacher and administrator, told The Sun that he would agree “if the question was worded that a teacher will call a student by the pronoun that the parents agree for that child.”
“We need to have the parents involved in this,” he said. “We can’t just have a kid that has a need and needs additional support deciding that maybe this pronoun doesn’t fit me. After that conversation with hopefully professionals and the parents, then obviously we’ve got to make that kid feel like they belong in school, like they’re comfortable in school and that we recognize them. And sometimes, even though it’s maybe a little harder to accept, we have to accept them for who they are.”
Next year’s presidential election could shape future school board races
The broad victories of union-backed candidates were, in part, fueled by the “strong mobilization” efforts that unions have leveraged for more than a century, said Collins, of Brown University.
“Unions are structured in ways where they’re known for having a very strong grounding,” Collins said. “They’re known for knocking on doors. They’re known for connecting with people in communities, having a presence in various outlets within communities. The grounding, the opportunity to be in direct contact with and conversation with everyday voters, is something that has historically given union-backed candidates an advantage.”
“A lot of the culture war conversation is happening on the internet,” he added, “but union politics has always been about door-knocking and meeting people where they are.”
Tyler Sandberg, who described himself as a center-right political consultant and principal at Timor Strategies, said the union has “an organizing machine” of millions of dollars and thousands of members statewide.
That creates “a very unfair playing field,” Sandberg said.
Collins anticipates that school boards controlled by union-supported candidates will largely focus on how to better support teachers at a time they’re trying to help kids recover from academic setbacks caused by the pandemic.
Meanwhile, conservative boards are likely to continue “the war on diversity, equity and inclusion,” Collins said, with policies that threaten protections for LGBTQ students and restrict classroom discussions on race.
For instance, the Colorado GOP is hosting a luncheon this week with the president of Monument Academy and a lawyer representing the school to discuss its policy against promoting “gender confusion or gender dysphoria” among students.
Sandberg countered that “there’s a difference between restricting and age appropriateness.”
A sign supports Cherry Creek school board candidates Oct. 19, 2023, in Aurora. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)
Kindergarteners, for example, should be “learning how to tie their shoes and get along with everybody” — rather than delving into lessons on puberty or gender identity, he said.
He acknowledged that some school boards “take it too far” when crafting policies around instruction on sex and gender identity, but added, “voters don’t want that.”
Something else they don’t want: “politics of any kind in the classroom,” Sandberg said.
He is a proponent of teaching kids “how to think, not what to think” and believes students should study race and systemic racism. That includes long-term practices like redlining — discriminating against people of color in housing — which Sandberg said is a prevalent form of racism that affects kids and the schools they attend.
“I do believe that American history needs to be reflective of diversity and a wide variety of views,” Sandberg said.
Collins expects an “ebb and flow” of political infighting among school boards in the near future with the culture wars shaping school boards largely driven by “a spillover of frustration with national politics.”
“Now that we’re seeing momentum shift towards gearing up for a presidential election, then I think the attention has shifted in that direction,” Collins said. “And I think depending on what happens in 2024 in this presidential election, this will dictate whether or not we see the same kind of conservative political mobilization in the education politics area.”
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