Republicans already outnumber Democrats on the Douglas County Board of Education 6-1 – not that that’s ever mattered before since school board elections have traditionally been non-partisan.
But county Republican party officials broke that custom this summer when they endorsed four candidates for the four seats up for election in November, in an all-mail-in-ballot election. And the four GOP-favored candidates just happen to be the ones NOT endorsed by the Douglas County teachers’ union, the Douglas County Teachers Federation.
Dan Gerken, Doug Benevento, Meghann Silverthorn and incumbent John Carson are running together as a conservative bloc, under the banner of more parental choice, more charter schools, more transparency in district spending and less autonomy for district administrators. This has a lot of folks nervous, and wondering just what changes such a bloc would bring to county schools should they all win.
Carson, by the way, was the sole board member to vote against taking the district’s $395 million bond request to voters last year. That bond issue ultimately failed.
Rumors are flying that with such a majority, the board would convert all county schools to charter schools, thus diminishing the power of the teachers’ union; and appoint ex-Congressman (and current president of the State Board of Education) and right-wing darling Bob Schaffer to succeed departing superintendent Jim Christensen.
Meghann Silverthorn, one of the GOP-endorsed candidates from Parker, scoffs at such notions.
“It’s just not true,” she says of the charter-only and Schaffer-related allegations. “If Mr. Schaffer wants to apply, we’d consider him, but I don’t know what his qualifications are. I think that since Mr. Schaffer is a conservative person, people are trying to whip up some fear that he would change the curriculum to promote creationism or be anti-science somehow. That’s just not true.”
Silverthorn, by the way, has degrees in aerospace engineering and political science and works as an analyst for a Department of Defense agency. “One of my personal issues is math and science achievement,” she says.
Disputing the facts
But her chief objection to her opponent, incumbent Emily Hansen, is Hansen’s vote to exclude charter schools from getting any bond money had the bond issue passed last fall. “She doesn’t seem to be keen on including charter schools in everything,” Silverthorn says. “I don’t agree with her at all on that.”
Hansen, the lone Democrat on the board, insists she has nothing against charter schools and nothing against transparency in spending, another frequently-cited talking point among the GOP-endorsed candidates. GOP officials are miffed by the school board’s refusal to endorse a controversial bill introduced in the State Legislature earlier this year by Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch. The bill, which was gutted in committee, would have required school districts to post their checkbooks online for public scrutiny.
Hansen says she feels that focusing on choice and transparency diverts voters from more important issues. “My greatest concern is that that state’s fiscal picture isn’t good,” she says. “We’re looking at a billion dollars the state needs to cut from its budget, and 43 percent of its budget is in K-12 education – and Douglas County makes up 8 percent of the 43 percent. That’s a very large number. Having experience and knowledge about what we’ve already cut, and knowing what the values of the whole community are, those will be important things as we faces this challenge. It’s a big mess, and frankly, it will take some leadership to stand up and make tough choices.”
“It’s frustrating to me to be arguing about whether we support choice when we obviously do, and arguing about things like transparency,” Hansen says. “I know that’s important, but to make that a point in an election when the issues are so much bigger, it’s frustrating. These others are good at keeping to their talking points and staying on message, but they’re not really addressing what’s coming down the pike.”
Hansen also bemoans the partisan feel of this election, and the implication that if the four GOP-endorsed candidates are running as a slate, then their four opponents must also constitute a slate. “And we’re not running as a slate,” she says. “We’re independent candidates who just happened to get the endorsement of the professional education organization. They’ve turned that into a partisan thing.”
“In a place like Douglas County, you’re going to get a heavily Republican school board regardless of how this shakes out,” Hansen says. “But what I hear from moderate Republicans is that they’re not happy about the things that are happening. They’re frustrated because some candidates were pressured out of the race. It’s almost like they don’t give party members credit for being able to choose on their own.”
Hunting RINOs
Sue Catterall, running against incumbent John Carson, is even more blunt. “Party affiliation is irrelevant,” she says. “The race is supposed to be non-partisan. I believe people should be making their decisions on school board candidates based on their educational values, not their party affiliation.”
But county party chairman John Ransom sees nothing wrong with the party involving itself in school board elections, and he will recommend the practice continue.
“The short answer on why we did it is because it was the right thing to do,” Ransom says. “The longer answer is more complicated. There’s an increasing feeling in the community that both the school administration and members of the school board – more so the school board – are out of touch with the needs of the community. They haven’t done a terrible job, by any means. We have good schools. But a lot of that has to do with the fact of the demographics of Douglas County, which support high achievement in education.”
Ransom holds particular disdain for board president Kristine Turner, whom he accuses of pandering to whatever group she appears before. “She hasn’t kept her promises and we don’t know exactly what she stands for,” Ransom says. “We’re not comfortable with the way she’s governed as board president.”
Privately, party officials are said to be targeting moderate Republicans they believe are RINOs: Republicans In Name Only. They put Turner in that category.
Ransom says he thinks the primary issue in the campaign ought to be school choice, and he accuses the existing board of dragging its feet on approving new charter school applications.
“We certainly support neighborhood schools,” he says. “But if we introduce more choices for parents, we believe that ultimately student achievement goes up. We selected candidates that we believe not only believe that philosophy, but will support it with actions. And the candidates we’re not supporting will not.”
Comments like that leave candidate Kevin Leung scratching his head. Leung, a businessman and longtime Republican and school district activist, believes his conservative credentials are impeccable. Yet the party endorsed one of his opponents, Dan Gerken, a leader in the Mitt Romney presidential campaign in Colorado in 2008.
“I’ve been a Republican since 1993. I’ve been a delegate to the county Republican convention three times. But I was branded as not as good a Republican as my opponent,” Leung said. “It’s funny. I own a small business that was named Colorado Retail Business of the Year in 2007. I’m a fiscal conservative. Two of the candidates endorsed by the party are lawyers who never ran a business, yet they claim they are the fiscal conservatives. One of them doesn’t even have kids in the school district. It’s bizarre.”
Leung and Turner have issued a joint press release calling on their fellow Republicans to buck party officials.
“We Republicans do not need our party boss to tell us what to do and who to vote for,” says the release. “For our party boss to use our resources to take sides in a non-partisan election without adequate input from the rank and file members only helps our enemy to make a case that ‘our party is out of touch with the sentiments of our citizens.’ … The party boss will promote our opponents heavily using all available resources. However, we want to let you know that you have other Republican choices in this race.”