Candidates for Poudre School District Board of Education differentiate themselves at forum

None of the candidates running for the Poudre School District Board of Education believe in banning books, and they all believe parents play a critical role in the education of their children.

Where they tend to differ, though, is in how parents should exercise that role and the value of supports in public schools, they explained during a candidate forum Tuesday night hosted by the League of Women Voters at the Fort Collins City Council chambers.

Candidates Scott Schoenbauer (District A), Kurt Kastein (District B), Andrea Booth (District F) and Caleb Larson (District G) pushed for a back-to-basics approach to educating children, scaling back or eliminating programs in schools that they believe get in the way of learning.

“I have an impression that the school district is moving into areas that are outside of the core mission of the school, which is academics,” said Kastein, a Fort Collins City Council member from 1999-2007. “And to the extent they do that, they pull resources from that very core.”

Not so, argued Jessica Zamora (District G), the only incumbent running for reelection this year. Having mental-health professionals in schools to help students who are struggling takes a huge load off teachers, allowing them to concentrate their efforts on instruction.

“We have to educate the whole child,” she said. “We cannot just do reading, writing and arithmetic. We have to help them with their mental health, we have to help them self-regulate. We have to help them deal with their relationships, because if we want them to be productive members of society and be able to contribute to our business community, they also have to be able to operate as a person in those institutions.”

Conor Duffy (District F) spoke primarily of the difficult decisions facing the district, given declining enrollment numbers that will lead to the consolidation of some existing schools, and the need to continue raising teacher pay in order to recruit and retain top talent. High rates of teacher turnover will have a negative impact on student learning, he said.

“Right now, I think the school district is doing a very, very good job,” Duffy said. “However, as we look forward, we are going to have these challenges that we are going to have to take on as a community.”

Candidates agreed that the high cost of living across the district is making it more difficult for teachers to live in the community in which they work. It’s an issue they can try to provide some help with by increasing pay and job satisfaction but one that ultimately can’t be solved by a board of education.

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Kevin Havelda (District B) was unable to attend the event because of a previously planned out-of-state family gathering to celebrate his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. He provided both opening and closing statements that were read aloud by moderator Lee Thielen but was not able to respond to the 10 questions or so posed to each of the forum’s six participants.

Some of the questions came from the live audience of about 35 — the forum was also livestreamed by FCTV.com and televised on Connexion Channel 14 and Comcast Channels 14 and 881. A replay should be available online by Wednesday afternoon, an FCTV worker said, and played on those channels at various times leading up to the Nov. 7 election. Candidates must live in the district in which they run, but they are elected by all voters in the school district.

Candidates were given one minute to respond to questions, and none went over by more than a few seconds. They were respectful of one another and frequently pointed out that every candidate cares deeply about the education PSD students receive despite having different ideas about how to best provide it.

All candidates spoke of the need for the school district and its governing board to be more transparent with the community. To provide answers to parents who raise concerns, so that they don’t have to keep coming back to board meetings to continually ask the same questions during the limited time available for public comment. To be more open about financial priorities and needs, so that if they have to go to voters to ask for a bond measure and/or mill-levy override, the community will understand what they are asking for and why. To restore trust among students, parents, staff and the community at large.

“I actually think our biggest challenge is our community engagement,” said Zamora, who has served on the board since 2021 when she was appointed to replace Naomi Johnson, who moved out of the district. “I think that we have a lot of things ahead of us: enrollment being one of them, parent involvement being one of them, growing our future generation of the workforce is one of them.

“But we don’t do any of those things in isolation. We have to be a community that prepares children to become productive adults. We have to be a community that decides how we want to utilize schools better.”

They also agreed about the value students with special needs bring to their respective schools and the need for more paraprofessional support for integrated services teachers and improved communication between those students’ parents, guardians and caregivers and school staff. Booth suggested making it easier for parents of those students to use the school choice option to attend schools outside of their attendance area.

Schoenbauer is running unopposed because incumbent D.J. Anderson missed a filing deadline to get on the ballot and discovered it too late to launch a write-in campaign. Anderson defeated Schoenbauer for the District A seat in 2019.

A question about whether the district should be banning books was unanimously panned by the candidates, as were other efforts by national organizations to influence local voters. PSD already has an evaluation process that allows parents to review reading material used in classroom instruction and available in school libraries that allows them to opt-out if they believe it is inappropriate for their child.

“I’m not for book banning; that’s crazy talk,” Schoenbauer said. “We need to get away from that kind of political discourse.”

Booth said she volunteers in a middle school media center once a week and said students aren’t seeking out books with sexually explicit material or other topics that might not be appropriate for their age.

More: Families of 5 children police say were abused by former bus attendant sue PSD, others

“Banning books? That’s just not relevant, in my opinion.”

Schoenbauer and Larson, a 2017 graduate of Rocky Mountain High School and the youngest candidate, both said concerns about the workforce readiness of graduating students prompted them to run for seats on the school board.

Kastein argued that his previous experience on the Fort Collins City Council, along with his professional work as a director of engineering with Intel Corp., would be a valuable asset to the board.

“I work with engineers that, for the most part, are smarter than I am,” he said. “I try with them to understand problems and then help solve them. I’ll bring that same problem-solving approach to the school board.”

Havelda, in the comments read by Thielen, noted that he has taught in both traditional public schools and charter schools and now works as an attorney specializing in education policy.

“I know first-hand that an excellent education can change the trajectory of a child’s life, especially those students who are most vulnerable,” his opening statement read. “I also know that our marginalized students and their families all too often do not believe that their voices are heard or have an advocate in a position of power. I’m running for them. I’m also running because I believe in the power of community and local government.”

Booth said she hopes to bring a “fresh perspective to the board” while “prioritizing academics and strengthening parent partnerships.” Among her major concerns are high rates of absenteeism, classroom discipline and ensuring teachers’ voices are heard.

Zamora said the board has become more proactive in the past two years, and she hopes to continue addressing issues in that manner rather than reacting after the fact to whatever the latest problem might be. She’s also a strong advocate for promoting student voices, reminding everyone that they are “really the experts at their own educational opportunities” and sometimes know what they need even better than their teachers.

Schoenbauer and Kastein both spoke of the need to ban or severely restrict students’ access to cellphones while they’re in school, arguing that they not only distract from learning but also are a source of bullying through the social media platforms available on them.

They, along with Booth, also said the district should work with local law enforcement agencies to ensure that there’s a school resource officer in every school, acknowledging that doing so would be a significant expense. PSD currently has SROs in all of its high schools and has others assigned to each middle school who also work in the elementary schools that feed into that middle school.

Duffy, Zamora and Larson also spoke of the need for SROs in schools, but not necessarily a separate one assigned to each building. The school resource officer “was one of the most well-liked staff members, especially by the kids that would have otherwise been in trouble,” during his time at Rocky Mountain High School, Larson said.

Zamora noted that the school district’s advisory board, which she served on, recently had a yearlong discussion about the value of SROs in schools.

“We came to the conclusion that SROs were necessary, but we needed a really clear delineation of what is the SRO’s role,” she said. “They were being used across the district in a lot of different ways.”

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: PSD school board candidates differentiate themselves during forum