Chalkbeat Colorado’s Nic Garcia offers a post-game analysis of last week’s school board elections that serves as a primer for political junkies and campaign tacticians of every stripe. Garcia dissects the highly successful efforts of teachers unions to regain ground they had lost to education reformers in three high-profile school districts – Denver’s, Aurora’s and Douglas County’s – and the big takeaway is go hyperlocal, start early, and dig deep:

…teachers unions have during the past two local school board election cycles adopted and refined a playbook to counter the money and influence of their policy foes.

National, state and local unions spent more time engaging their members and other labor organizations, recruited and groomed better candidates most places, and devoted considerable financial resources to ensure wins. Unions also loosely aligned themselves with vocal parent groups in some districts, and pushed a variety of messages – both local and national, positive and negative – on doorsteps and in voters’ social media streams and mailboxes.

Add to those hardball tactics this helpful dynamic:

The time was ripe for such strategies to pay off. Civil rights groups and factions of the Democratic Party have ramped-up their criticisms of charter schools. And then there is the controversy over Donald Trump’s presidency and his tapping of billionaire Betsy DeVos as education secretary.

… And you have this outcome – sobering news for advocates of wide-ranging education reforms and school choice, which are all opposed by the unions:

Van Schoales, CEO of A+ Colorado, which monitors and critiques reform efforts in Denver and Aurora, said the election should be a wake-up call for reformers who favor strategies such as giving schools more autonomy and holding schools accountable for performance.

“The union did a much better job than they’ve done in the past,” he said. “This should be a message to folks that there is a lot of work to be done to engage the community” before Election Day about how the reforms are improving schools.

There’s much more to Garcia’s post-mortem, and it’s worth a read. Here’s the link again.