Barkley, Bryant and Knott are the Union’s Candidates | Guest column
Two sets of school board candidates are vying for votes to take (or maintain) control of Teller County’s largest school board and the foreseeable future of our county’s education system. Conservatives Cassie Kimbrell, Mick Bates and Dave Illingworth are fighting for reelection against registered Democrat Keegan Barkley and her two unaffiliated running mates, Seth Bryant and Mike Knott.
Their most recent campaign finance filing identified that Barkley, Bryant and Knott all claimed a non-monetary donation from a small donor political committee – that shares an address with the Pikes Peak Education Association in Colorado Springs. The donation, filed for “access to voter information platform vans to perform canvassing and communications scoping” indicates that these candidates may have not only received voter data from the union’s troves, but may also have plans to utilize union resources for door knocking, mailers and phone calls. This would be a level of outside influence that has never been seen in a Woodland Park election. It is now clear: the union is supporting candidates Keegan Barkley, Seth Bryant and Mike Knott. They are now the union’s candidates.
To understand what this affiliation would mean in terms of potential policies if the union’s candidates were to win this election, we need to look back at the stances the unions have taken over the last several years. They lobbied for emotionally and intellectually damaging remote learning and mandatory masking in schools. They advocate for the most radical things in education today: radical transgender ideology and critical race theory. This past year at their annual state delegate assembly, the CEA adopted a platform that states in-part that “capitalism is in opposition to fully addressing systemic racism (the school to prison pipeline), climate change, patriarchy (gender and LGBTQ disparities), education inequality, and income inequality.” The CEA also aggressively lobbied for radical gun control bills in Colorado, including the assault weapons bans, increasing the legal age to purchase firearms, and potentially unconstitutional red flag laws. They have also advocated strongly against school choice and charter schools. During an organization meeting held in Woodland Park earlier this year, a Colorado Springs PPEA rep who co-hosted the meeting with local WPEA President Nate Owen stated “Merit Academy … are flashes in the pan. Figure out how you are going to recapture your district”.
If this organization is supporting the union candidates, would they vote to continue Merit’s charter? Would they create barriers in front of parents who wish to send their kids there? Would they reinject the politics that the current board has fought so hard to remove? Would they reintroduce radical gender and race ideologies into our schools? Would they provide the union a long-term contract to ensure their influence on Teller’s children for years to come?
Barkley, Bryant and Knott owe the voters of WPSD Re-2 some answers: why would you take assistance from such an organization. What additional contributions and coordination can we expect? Why would we ever vote for candidates that are supported by the CEA and their affiliates?
Jameson Dion