This year, the Colorado Times Recorder team covered the happenings in a handful of Colorado’s contested school districts. Since 2021, when the “parents’ rights” movement erupted in school districts around the country, the task of educating the nation’s children has often played second fiddle to a host of cultural and political grievances. Last night, after four years of storm, stress, and slipping scores, voters finally got to choose whether to continue the crusades or get back to basics.
For the most part, they seem to have chosen the latter. Below are the districts we covered, and what happened when the votes were tallied last night.
District 49 (El Paso County)
Last month, my colleague Heidi Beedle covered the right-on-right clash between conservative candidates in El Paso County’s District 49. The district’s board is currently in the hands of conservatives, under whose leadership it has waded into quagmires like the ongoing lawsuit against the Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSSA).
This year, two members of the board’s conservative majority bloc were up for reelection, Jamilynn D’Avola and Lori Thompson. While Thompson only had to face more progressive challenger, Chris Harrell, D’Avola was forced to fight on two fronts. To her left, she had Holly Withers; to her right, she had Ivy Liu, a former member of the board who has unsuccessfully sued the district since her controversial tenure in office.
As of this writing, that three-way race in D49 is close — between D’Avola and Withers, at least. Liu is currently sitting on just 14% of the vote tally, while Withers (43%) narrowly leads D’Avola (42%) by 32 votes at the other end of the scale. In the district’s other race, Harrell is narrowly losing to Thompson, with only 88 votes separating them as of this morning’s count. If Withers maintains her lead over D’Avola, the board’s conservative majority will flip.
District 11 (El Paso County)
Heidi also covered the happenings in Colorado Springs School District 11, where teachers recently participated in a one-day strike – the city’s first since 1975.
The strike became a flashpoint in the district’s ongoing school board races, in which a three-person conservative slate and a three-person slate supported by the local teachers’ union are competing to fill three open seats on the board. On the day of the strike, union-endorsed candidates Charles Johnson, Michael Carsten, and Leann Baca Bartlett, stood with the striking teachers. At least one of their conservative opponents, Michelle Ruehl, took a different tack: crossing the picket line as a substitute teacher for $300.
As of this morning, D11 is looking at a split result: with more than 130,000 ballots cast in the vote-for-three contest, the six main contenders all banked between 15% and 17% of the vote. If current results hold, conservatives Michelle Ruehl and Jeremiah Johnson will join the board alongside union-backed challenger Leann Baca Bartlett.
Academy School District 20 (El Paso County)
In neighboring Academy School District 20, Heidi wrote about the dominance of culture war topics in the race to fill three seats on the board of the state’s 10th largest school district. At a forum in late September, candidates discussed transgender student-athletes, removing or restricting “controversial” library materials, and other issues under the “parental rights” banner.
The four conservative candidates – Susan Payne, Holly Tripp, Eddie Waldrep, and Cynthia Halverson – were in lock-step with the current board, which has already moved to restrict rights for queer students and joined the multi-district lawsuit against CHSSA. Their opponents, a moderate slate consisting of D20 parents Renée Malloy Ludlam, Brandon Clark, and Jennafer Stites, distanced themselves from current board policies.
Voters in the district, it seems, don’t mind the current board’s policies. As of this writing, three of the conservative candidates (Payne, Tripp, and Waldrep) look to have secured seats on the district’s board, uniformly defeating the challenger slate. On a night when school districts around the state swung one way, El Paso County determinedly swung the other.
Garfield Re-2 (Garfield County)
Last month, I wrote about the school board races in Garfield Re-2, where right-wing activists have complicated the normal functioning of the district for the last two-plus years. During that time, the board attempted to adopt the controversial American Birthright social studies standards before facing enormous community backlash, saw the recall of board president Tony May, and the eventual resignation of May’s like-minded successor, Britton Fletchall.
With only two of the board’s seats up for election, control of the majority is not in question. What was up for grabs in this year’s Garfield Re-2 elections was a chance to begin the journey back towards normalcy.
Right now, it’s unclear if the voters of Garfield County have made that choice: in one of the two open seats, challenger Steve Beaulieu ran unopposed and will join the board regardless. In the district’s contested race, though, incumbent Megan Heil looks set to beat teacher-backed challenger Darlane Evans.
Montezuma-Cortez (Montezuma County)
I also wrote about the district-shaping drama in the Montezuma-Cortez school district last month. Located in the Four Corners region, hundreds of miles from the Front Range, one of the state’s poorest and lowest-performing districts has been rocked by scandal after scandal in recent years, with most of them stemming from superintendent Tom Burris.
Late last month, after Burris announced his resignation, the school board overruled the wishes of many public commenters and the results of a community survey and forced through a replacement for Burris. At the time of the contentious vote, 5 of the board’s 7 members were less than three weeks from either retiring or facing reelection.
Locals don’t appear to have taken kindly to the snub: last night, none of the incumbents seeking reelection won their seats. In one district, challenger Joshua Shumway defeated incumbent Leland Collins by nearly 20%. In the three-way race for one of the board’s other seats, incumbent Ed Rice came in last place, securing less than 31% of the vote. Other winners in the district’s races include Barbara Mate, Lara Blair, and Laura DeWitt.
Woodland Park School District (Teller County)
I also, unsurprisingly, wrote about the school board races in the Woodland Park School District, where I have been chronicling the almost-unbelievable unfolding of events for the last few years. Since an insurgent slate of far-right candidates aligned with evangelist Andrew Wommack’s local Charis Bible College took control of the board in 2021, the district – and the town at its center – has hardly known a moment of peace.
Under the control of a hyper-partisan board majority, the district’s legal expenses increased by more than 900%, it hemorrhaged students and teachers at a rate far above the statewide average, and engaged in a pattern of non-transparency which has led to a series of pressing financial questions in the district. Despite the many problems facing the district, though, this year’s local school board races were oddly calm – until…
Last week, with five days left until the election and while facing questions about the residency and eligibility of at least two of its members, the board attempted to lease its middle school building to the district’s only charter school on a 30-year contract which the district’s CFO said was riddled with problems. In the end, facing immense community pressure, they backed down from the plan.
On Tuesday night, voters in Teller County strongly repudiated the direction of the last four years, siding with the slate of candidates who promised transparency, accountability, and a return to normalcy. Carol Greenstreet, Laura Gordon, and Kassidi Gilgenast all won their races by double-digits. The trio will join Keegan Barkley — the only challenger who won a seat in 2023 — and Mick Bates, the last remaining member of the former majority bloc, on the board.
Douglas County Schools
In October, my colleague Suzie Glassman wrote about the Douglas County Republican Party’s unusual role in the county’s ostensibly nonpartisan school board races. In recent years, the conservative members of the DougCo school board majority have feuded with the leadership of the local Republican Party, with the former supporting a bond measure to fund the school district and the latter opposing the measure as a tax increase.
This year, four members of that conservative majority are eligible for reelection – but the local party started recruiting candidates to replace them in May. By launching a formal candidate selection process, the Douglas County GOP made it clear to the conservative incumbents that they would not receive party support if they sought reelection. As a result, none of them ran, and the party stamped four new conservative candidates with its imprimatur.
If current results hold, that series of events might lead to even more infighting in the local party: last night, all four of their handpicked candidates lost, and the four board seats formerly controlled by conservatives are now in the hands of the challengers — a striking reversal for what was once Colorado’s most vocally conservative school board.
Cherry Creek Schools
Late last month, our editor-in-chief, Jason Salzman, wrote about the surprising donations made by a member of Donald Trump’s cabinet to two conservative candidates running for seats on the Cherry Creek school board. In October, candidates Tatyana Sturm and Amanda Thayer each received $5,000 from Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, and his wife, Liz.
When Jason reached out to the candidates, neither took the opportunity to explain their connections to Wright or Trump, with Sturm telling him, “This is a nonpartisan race, so I don’t have any statement to make about that.”
In the final tally, both cabinet-backed candidates lost badly: Thayer fell to opponent Terry Bates by a 15% margin. As for Sturm, she lost her race against Mike Hamrick by 24%.
