We don’t really use little red schoolhouses anymore, and the educational environment has gotten more complex as well. That’s what we have the State Board of Education for!
The Colorado State Board of Education is the elected oversight board for the Colorado Department of (K-12) Education. There are nine members of the Board – one at-large (statewide) member and one representing each of Colorado’s eight Congressional Districts. Members are elected to four-year terms, and members are term-limited after two terms.
For this guide, I will only write about the race for the Boulder-area Congressional District 2. The district spans Boulder County, along with Larimer, Gilpin, Grand, Clear Creek, Summit, Eagle, Jackson, Jefferson, and Routt counties. There are only two candidates in this year’s CD-2 race, and the candidate with the most votes will win.
What Does The State Board of Education Do?
Readers might have time to visit the State Board’s website to pore through tons of information about what the Board does, or maybe not. But for starters, the Board oversees the Colorado Department of Education (CDE), which is one of the largest departments in State of Colorado government if only in terms of sheer, staggering numbers. In a nutshell, CDE’s state budget appropriation for 2024 was about $7.5 billion, and the current statewide system includes 179 school districts, 1,927 schools, 55,197 teachers, 4,341 administrators, and 883,264 public school students.
For a really abbreviated CliffsNotes version of the State Board’s responsibilities:
- Makes rules, regulations, and policies that govern the Colorado Department of Education, public education including pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, adult education, and public libraries
- Appoints the Commissioner of Education (the head of CDE) and the Director of State Board Relations
- Employs personnel of the Department of Education
- Accredits public school districts
- Distributes federal and state funds
- Regulates educator licensing
- Appoints advisory committees
- Submits recommendations for educational improvements to the General Assembly and Governor
On a more political, less technical note, Board races are politically partisan, and issues the Board addresses sometimes wind up being debated along partisan lines. In the past, partisan debates have taken place over how to present information regarding sexuality or political ideology in relation to civics courses. For example, here’s a link to a story about Board discussions over social studies curriculum, and a conservative proposal for the state to adopt a conservative set of social studies standards called “American Birthright” that the Democrats on the Board rejected.
But the paragraph above is not to suggest that the Board is nothing but a partisan free-for-all. Read more on the Board’s website to your heart’s content, and you’ll find that most discussions really pertain to the bullet-point topics I listed near the top of this section, and a lot of discussions are pretty dry.
Kathy Gebhardt, Democratic
Kathy Gebhardt
Kathy Gebhardt is an attorney and education law professor who is making her first run for the Board of Education. If she wins, she would replace the current and term-limited CD-2 Board member Angelika Schroeder. Gebhardt became the Democratic nominee in this race by defeating Marisol Rodriguez in the June 2024 primary election. She won two elections to the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education (school board), in 2015 and 2019, and served two years as the school board’s President. She was born and raised in Boulder, and lives here today.
For a quick and incomplete snapshot of Gebhardt’s other relevant experiences:
- Service on the Colorado Association of School Boards (CASB) Board of Directors, including time as President
- Service on the National Association of School Boards (NASB) Board of Directors
- Chaired NASB’s Action Committee
- Member of the Boards of Great Education Colorado and Colorado Lawyers Committee
As an education attorney, she was co-lead counsel on at least three significant Colorado cases:
- Lobato v. State of Colorado, which challenged the constitutionality of Colorado’s school finance and was in the court system from about 2005-2013.
- Dwyer v. State of Colorado, which challenged the constitutionality of the state’s “Negative Factor,” which was invented during the “Great Recession” and allowed Colorado to fund K-12 public education at levels lower than the formula established and inserted into the state Constitution with Amendment 23. The Negative Factor is now known as the Budget Stabilization Factor.
- Giardino v. State of Colorado, which challenged the state’s capital construction funding structure.
The courts did not find Colorado’s school finance system or the Negative Factor unconstitutional, but legislators and education advocates continued to fight for better school funding. The General Assembly actually finally paid down the Negative Factor in 2024, and total education funding has increased dramatically since Lobato was filed. The Giardino case helped lead to the Building Excellent Schools Today (BEST) program, which has helped fund countless capital construction projects at Colorado schools since its inception.
Campaign Website: https://www.gebhardtforcolorado.com/
Ethan Augreen, Libertarian
Ethan Augreen, a Libertarian write-in candidate for the State Board of Education, is from Longmont. He ran for Mayor of Longmont in 2023, finishing third, and launched a campaign for the Colorado state Senate (SD-17) in 2024, but withdrew from that race. He is a current member of Longmont’s Sustainability Advisory Board.
The Longmont Times-Call published the following bio information about Augreen during his run for Mayor:
- Professional background: 20+ years experience grassroots environmental/climate action, policy analysis, permaculture design, sustainable food systems, regenerative land management, AmeriCorps service.
- Political/community experience: Multiple leadership awards, state legislative lobbying experience, election judge, Student Senate presidency in college, free speech advocate, currently Libertarian Party of Colorado endorsed.
- Education: MA Environmental Leadership (Naropa); BA History/Political Science (Rutgers). He also told the Denver Post that he has a K-12 education graduate-level certificate and teacher licensure.
Augreen and Gebhardt did a candidate questionnaire with the Denver Post, which was published in early October. According to this questionnaire, he wants to promote educational choice, decentralize schools, and “reduce government overreach.” He also supports reducing the state’s reliance on standardized testing, favoring instead approaches that enhance critical thinking, innovation, problem-solving, financial literacy, civic engagement, and career readiness.
Campaign Website: https://www.ethanforfreedom.com/
Richard’s Take
Vote Gebhardt. This would be a really easy choice for me even if there was stiffer competition, since her extensive career in and around public education has been nothing short of stellar. There were those during the primary who might have worked against Gebhardt because they felt it was important to have a charter school advocate and/or a Board majority of charter school advocates, but that’s not the primary role of the Board in my opinion. Frankly, there were those during the primary who lost a small chunk of my respect for taking that position, hopefully temporarily, partially because they risked losing Gebhardt’s vast knowledge and talents while trying to place a far less-qualified (though seemingly very personable) candidate on an important educational body by abusing (legally) oodles of campaign money.
Gebhardt said repeatedly during the primary campaign that she’s not anti-charter anyway, and since Colorado already has 256 charter schools and about 134,000 charter students, it seems to me that high-quality charters will continue to operate and high-quality new applicants will be accepted. There has been some controversy over how the Board might be able to overrule decisions of local school districts regarding charters, and it’s a fair topic of debate, but speaking for myself as a taxpayer and a citizen of society, I do want reasonable standards for new charters – and the State Board of Education seems like a perfectly logical body to make such decisions when necessary. It’s a win-lose world, and while I want fair and logical decisions coming from elected bodies, nobody should expect a rubber stamp.
My most important consideration for the Board is to have members with deep experience in as many facets of education as possible, and trust me here if nowhere else, there are many. This includes budgeting, ability to understand and possibly question state legislative proposals, school security and facilities, curriculum and performance discussions, diversity (race, sex, economic, philosophical), and how to properly deal with data. That describes Gebhardt to a “T.”
A second major concern to me is to have a devoted Democrat on the Board, especially representing the Democratic stronghold of CD-2. Even though the Democratic Board majority is 6-3 now, it would only take flipping two seats for Republicans to gain majority control. Democrats and Republicans have certain extremely significant differences when it comes to public education, and I firmly believe that most Boulder-area education advocates do not want Republican values in areas such as use of public money for private education and moving toward conservative curriculum to take hold on the State Board.
I respect Augreen for running in this race and several others in the past, and actually support his broad concept of de-prioritizing standardized tests, but he just doesn’t match Gebhardt’s qualifications for this job. He’ll surely get a few votes but I have no reason to believe he’s the right choice for State Board in this district.
