In the battle for two of the hottest school board races in Colorado, dollars are starting to flow in, just a little more than three weeks before Election Day.

In Douglas County, an independent expenditure committee for the Colorado Republican Party has put in more than $20,000 into two advertising buys supporting the conservative education reform slate known as Elevate Douglas County. The ad buys were made earlier this week with Purple State Communications of Denver and reported to the secretary of state’s campaign finance database. So far, it’s the only school board race where the state party has purchased advertising.

First campaign finance reports for the candidate committees are due Oct. 17. The Elevate slate of four candidates has yet to report any donations of more than $1,000, a requirement of school board candidates passed by the General Assembly last year. Under House Bill 16-1282, in the 30 days before an election, school board candidates must report all contributions of $1,000 or more within 24 hours of receiving those donations.

Douglas County Parents, a campaign finance committee that backs the “Dream Team” of four opposing candidates, has taken in more than $67,000 in contributions since August 1, almost entirely from individual donors. The largest to date was $575.

Unlike for state House and Senate or other statewide races, donors can make unlimited contributions to school board candidates.

The Douglas County race is likely to be the most watched school board race in the nation. At stake is the survival of the district’s controversial voucher program, which was declared unconstitutional by the Colorado Supreme Court last year. However, the U.S. Supreme Court this year ordered the state court to reassess its ruling in light of a June decision in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Pauley, which challenged a Missouri government decision to deny a grant to a church for playground material.

The school board race in Jefferson County is certainly not as intense as it was in 2015, when parent groups and teachers’ unions launched a recall of three conservative education reformers and backing a “clean sweep” slate of five candidates.  And it looks like the unions, at least in Colorado, are spending to make sure their candidates win re-election; given that there are only two contested races on the five-seat board, the pro-teacher board will remain in the majority after the election.

In the past month, the Colorado Education Association’s public education committee has contributed $16,500 each to the three incumbents running for the Jefferson County Board of Education.

The incumbents – board chair Ron Mitchell, who is running unopposed, Brad Rupert and Susan Harmon – won the recall seats in the 2015 election and must now run for full four-year terms in this November’s election.

The $49,500 in contributions to Harmon, Mitchell and Rupert constitute more than half of the money the CEA has put into school board races around the state since September 1.

The local teacher’s union, the Jefferson County Education Association, has also contributed to the three incumbents, at $4,000 each. Whether the National Education Association, which put $150,000 into the 2015 recall, will be involved this year likely won’t be known until after the November election.

This of course does not include advertising or other advocacy from “social welfare” groups that do not disclose their donors, nor are they required to report expenditures to the state. In 2015, the Independence Institute and Americans for Prosperity Foundation collectively spent more than a half million dollars in advertising to support the actions of conservative education reformers on both the DougCo and JeffCo school boards. Social welfare groups, a non-profit designation under the Internal Revenue Service, do not have to disclose donors so long as they spend 49 percent or less on political advocacy.

The first campaign finance reports for 2017 school board candidates are due Tuesday, Oct. 17, with a second report before the November 7 election due on November 3.

Committees that back school board candidates are on a different reporting cycle and are already filing contribution and expenditure data every two weeks, which began in September. The next committee reports are due Monday, Oct. 16.