Viewpoint: Lucky Thirteen on D70 School Ballot

Thirteen names will appear on the ballot in November asking for your vote on five spots for the Pueblo County School District 70 Board of Education.

?In this week’s issue of the View, we have done our best to let the candidates speak up on issues we felt were germane to the election.

?The 13 candidates who want to be on the board of education received a five-question email from the Greenhorn Valley View at 7:37 p.m., Saturday, using emails provided by official documents.?Two of those emails bounced back:?Frederick Quintana (District 2) and John Christenson (District 5).

?Christenson was contacted and the questions re-emailed to and received by him on Saturday at 2:37 p.m.?A voice mail was left for Quintana on Saturday, early afternoon, asking for a good email address and was never responded to.

?All candidates were given until noon on Monday to respond to the email.?By noon, six candidates had made contact with the newspaper.?Several of them didn’t answer the questions we asked.?Three more came in by late afternoon.?We added them to the story.

?Paulette Fry and Marla Spinuzzi Reichert (District1); Frederick Quintana (District 2); and Stephanie Cordova-Catalano (District 3) did not take the time to respond.

?As you read the story it will be obvious that, in several cases, the candidate sent?responses, but decided that our format (perhaps because of a lack of time or too much going on in their lives) didn’t mirror what they wanted to tell us.?If it was possible to discern an answer to our questions from what they sent us, we did.?If it wasn’t possible, it was noted.

?The candidates fall into two primary camps.?Those who work or have worked for District 70, and those who don’t.?It seems to me that we need new blood on the board for District 70.

?My ballot would read John Christenson (District 5); Cathleen Culhane Howland (District 3); Anne Ochs (District 2); and Dr. Aaron Wilson (District 1).?District 4 is the hardest for me to decide on.?I believe I would vote for DeLuca.?Boyd seemed more status quo, although some of DeLuca’s responses were troublesome as well.?

?For the 2021-22 school year, there are 24 D70 public schools serving 9,861 students in Pueblo County.?That number is divided into five high schools, nine middle schools, 20 elementary schools, 10 pre-K schools and three charter schools.?The number of students dropped from over 10,500 last year.

?The numbers I am using come from the site: Public School Review.?The district’s average testing rank is 6/10 which is in the top 50% of public schools in Colorado.?The average math proficiency score is 28% (versus a Colorado average of 35%), and reading proficiency was 45% (compared to the Statewide average of 47%)??

?Minority enrollment is 43% (majority Hispanic), which is less than the Colorado public school average of 47%.?There are 5,606 white students (57%); 3,621 Hispanic students (37%); 485 two or more race students (5%); 66 Asian students (1%); 48 black students; 30 American Indian students; and 5 Hawaiian students.

?Among the areas, D70 is considered one of the best districts in the state. This designation includes graduation rate (top 10%), most diverse schools (top 1%), and size of school compared to the community size (top 1%).?The graduation rate has increased to 92% from 83% over five school years.

?There are 506 teachers in the district with a student-teacher ratio of 19:1

?The revenue per student is $9,278 in this district; much less than the state median of $13,813.Viewpoint: Lucky 13 on D70 School Ballot