Voter guide: What to know about PSD school board District B race between Havelda, Kastein
Incumbent Nate Donovan is term-limited and cannot run for reelection, leaving the District B seat on the Poudre School District Board of Education up for grabs.
Challengers Kevin Havelda and Kurt Kastein believe they each have unique and needed perspectives to bring to the volunteer school board.
Havelda, a lawyer, worked as a classroom teacher at an alternative school in post-Katrina New Orleans and helped found a charter school in Brooklyn, New York, before going to law school. His legal work is primarily on employment law, often with a focus on education.
He is relatively new to Fort Collins and has a child in kindergarten in a PSD school this year.
“I think more than any time in recent history, this board needs a litigator on the board,” Havelda said. “Someone who’s going to ask tough questions, I imagine like a deposition style. So, OK, this is the document, this is the data. How do you get from A to B and how do you explain that?”
Kastein, an engineering director with Intel Corp., holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees and served two terms on Fort Collins City Council from 1999-2007. He has lived in Fort Collins for 29 years and has three grown children who attended PSD schools.
“I know I’ll be good at the job, because I have experience in engineering, experience in government leadership, years behind me of living here in the community and understanding how we do business here,” Kastein said.
Here’s a closer look at where they stand on some of the key issues facing PSD and public education as they seek a four-year term on the district's seven-member governing board:
Mental health supports
Both candidates agree on the need for mental health support for students in PSD schools. Where they differ is on the extent to which those services should be provided. Havelda believes no child can learn if they don’t feel safe and know their basic needs are being met. Kastein is concerned schools are taking on more than they should, and that those additional efforts are detracting from their primary mission of educating children. At some point, Kastein said, the schools need to pass those with significant mental health issues on to community partners and other agencies who specialize in that area.
HAVELDA: Mental health and wellness “has to be a paramount concern. I believe that because (of) my own time teaching in some pretty rough schools in New Orleans and Brooklyn. The kids would come to me hungry; they were food insecure. They didn’t know where they were going to sleep that night. Before kids can learn, they have to feel safe, they have to feel a sense of belonging in the community. And that’s fundamental, and I think that comes first. That’s Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in education.
“We’ve got to take care of our kids' mental health and wellness, especially coming out of COVID, and our more vulnerable populations. Before they can even focus on the academics, we have to take care of the kids.”
KASTEIN: “Kids are hurting; they need help. There’s a lot of reasons. There’s money to fix it. But I’ve never heard a discussion about, ‘OK, how far do we go with this?' Where does the responsibility of the schools stop and the parent kick in or the guardian kick in or some other agency kick in, because school just can’t simply be all things to all people. …
“Eventually, the parent has to be counted on to take responsibility for those things, and unfortunately that’s where it lies. What about a physical ailment? If a kid is hurting physically, the school has a role in an emergency situation to get him to the right care, take care of him, get whatever it is to help that kid out. But when he goes home, the parents have got to find a doctor to take care of him.”
Parental rights
This is an area where the two candidates’ views vary significantly. Havelda argues that parents always have the right to get as involved as they choose to be in their children’s education, and that PSD provides plenty of opportunities and access for parents and guardians to review curriculum, speak with teachers and administrators about concerns and to opt their students out of lessons or material they find objectionable.
Kastein believes parents need to be involved in all aspects of their children’s education. They should have the opportunity to “opt in” rather than “opt out” of what he considers particularly sensitive material, including student surveys and sex education curriculum that threaten the “innocence” of younger children.
He also would like to see a more thorough review process in place involving parents and teachers to determine which books should be placed in school libraries and making sure they’re in age-appropriate locations.
Both candidates said they believe it is wrong for parents to push their values onto others through public education.
HAVELDA: “I dispel and I don’t agree with the notion that parents need more rights or they’re losing their rights or their rights are shrinking. I don’t believe that to be true.
“Nor do I believe that we, as parents, should expect to send our children to a school and have them learn only things with which we agree. I think that is a fallacy, and we need to disabuse ourselves of that notion. Public education is for the public, and we’re using our tax dollars to educate our children to prepare them for a world that is way too big and way too complex to start restricting book choices and start restricting what they can learn and what they can’t. …
“As a parent, I want to know what my kid’s learning and if there’s something that I disagree with, especially if my kid is too young to learn about a certain topic, then that’s a conversation I have at home with my spouse, and I talk to my student about it. I don’t think the burden should be placed on the schools and the leadership to try to accommodate everyone’s sensitivities and needs as far as what they believe to be, especially with social constructs and especially in our social studies curriculum. Watering down our history to accommodate certain people’s world views is not the goal of public education. I will stand by that until I die.”
KASTEIN: “I have questions about comprehensive sex education coming from the state, and how that gets implemented, how it has gotten implemented in PSD and what ability parents have to say, 'I’m not ready for that for my kid.'
“It’s about protecting their innocence, and yet everybody has their own opinions about these very private, sensitive matters. At the end of the day, a lot of it comes down to sexuality, really. And parents and kids have different opinions, and we need to respect each other’s rights there without forcing our views on someone else like, ‘like, you need to believe this,’ and those are super hard conversations and let me tell you there is no one that wants to have those conversations. …
“But I guess I feel like I can be a bridge-builder there. I know that there’s lots of different opinions, and they’re pretty sensitive topics, but I’d like to help. And I don’t think public schools are doing very well at that in general, and PSD has challenges.”
Transparency and communication
Improving transparency and communication is a significant concern raised by both candidates, even before details on a controversial school consolidation plan that has since been put on hold came out earlier this month.
Havelda said the district sends out plenty of emails on a wide range of topics other than those that are most important, like the school consolidation plan. And the communications that do go out, he said, are one-sided, notifying staff, students and their families of decisions that have been reached without offering them an opportunity to provide input. Those people being left out of the conversation might have had some better ideas and solutions if they had been given the opportunity to provide them.
Kastein would like to remove many of the restrictions the current school board has put in place to limit community comment at its meetings. He’s opposed to making commentors sign up well in advance of the meeting for a limited number of slots, and he would like to see board members acknowledge the speakers, to make sure they know their voices are being heard. He’s also in favor of moving public comment closer to the front of the agenda, so community members don’t have to wait 60 to 90 minutes or more to speak their mind.
He believes the model used by the Fort Collins City Council, where people can raise their hand to indicate they want to make a comment at the start of the meeting and additional public comment during discussion of particular agenda items is allowed, is a far better system.
HAVELDA: “Parent groups I’m involved with, conversations I’ve had this past week, the meetings I’ve been at, and all the school leaders and teachers I’ve spoken to, they don’t feel like their voices are heard at all when it comes to big-ticket items, and that’s a problem.”
KASTEIN: “I’ve been attending meetings for a year or so, and from the get-go it was just obvious to me that the public input and participation process is very poor. So, parents come, they complain about lots of different stuff. The common theme is that you’re not listening. Some people would say, ‘You’re not listening.’ Well, we actually did, and we can’t do what you’re asking. That’s one thing. But to not be heard and not to have an audience to really work through serious issues is super frustrating for people and they just lose heart, so that has got to be fixed.”
Candidates running on slates
School board elections in Colorado are nonpartisan, but candidates often align with one another during their campaigns.
That is certainly the case this year in PSD.
Havelda is running on a slate that also includes Conor Duffy in District F and Jessica Zamora, the lone incumbent running for reelection in District G.
Kastein is running on a slate that also includes Andrea Booth in District F.
Havelda and Kastein both emphasized that they believe they can work effectively with whoever is elected to the board, as well as the incumbents not up for reelection, and welcomed the opportunity to work together for the common good.
HAVELDA: “I don’t mind running on a slate. I think that every person thinks differently about every problem, and I think that’s how I would approach problems in the school district. Not from the lens of a registered Democrat, but from the lens of someone who’s being thoughtful, considerate and compassionate. Diverse opinions are a great thing. …
“I’m going to work with whoever’s elected. The voters, I do trust. They’re going to make the decision that reflects their values and what they want their board members to speak to. I do trust that process.”
KASTEIN: “I’m OK with that (being part of a slate), it’s natural. … We need to question each other, we need to understand philosophies, we need to hear from the public, we need the dialogue in the public eye. And I will lead by example for that. I feel like I have a lot to offer people, because I’ve been around. I know how it works. People will say I’m level-headed and reasonable and I don’t attack. I’ll challenge, but know I’ll do it in a respectful way.”
Correction: This story was updated at 9:55 a.m. Oct. 19 to note that District G candidate Caleb Larson is not running on a slate with any other candidates.
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: What to know about PSD school board race between Havelda, Kastein
