For the past two years, the Cherry Creek School District has been among the more unique school boards around Colorado: it’s been all-female. And at a candidate forum for the upcoming election, one incumbent wants to keep it that way, despite objections that it lacks diversity.

 The board became all women after the 2019 election, with two Black women and three white women.

The shift began in 2017, when Kelly Bates and Karen Fisher were appointed by acclamation. The election was canceled due to lack of opposition in both seats. That’s pretty common in Cherry Creek, where in every election in the past decade at least one seat in the election has lacked more than one candidate.

Bates is running for reelection in 2021. She has two opponents for the seat, Jennifer Gibbons and Shumé Navarro, who has already attracted attention for suing the district because it would not let her participate in candidate forums without a mask.

Navarro won a temporary injunction just hours before the final candidate forum on Oct. 7.

Federal judge issues temporary injunction in favor of Cherry Creek school board candidate, but issue now moot

During that forum, Assistant Superintendent Jennifer Perry asked candidates to respond to a statement that appears to have come from an audience member: “Some have commented that the current board lacks diversity because there are no men on the board.”

According to the Villager, Gibbons disagreed, stating, “I don’t think there needs to be diversity with the sexes but I do think there needs to be a diversity of ideals … If everybody is joined on the same page … you don’t go anywhere. You need a healthy back and forth.”

Navarro responded that “I think a strong male presence is awesome. My life has been substantially just changed and just supported by a male influence. My dad has been my best friend throughout my whole entire life…I just think that presence that men bring to a group setting is amazing… I think that they belong at the table. I think that they have great ideas… As women we need to allow ourselves to hear them and not silence them with just whatever. I’m over that thought process.”

But it’s Bates’ response that has attracted the most attention.

“I believe that our board has a lot of diversity on it,” she began, based on the district’s video. “We have five women. This is the first time in the 70-year history of this district that we have five women sitting on the board. I think it speaks to the times that we are living in. I also believe that we have diversity.

“I don’t think that we need a man to be on our board just because he’s a man. I believe we have cultural diversity,” she continued. “We have two Black women who sit on our board. They come from very different backgrounds. We have people who live in all areas of our district. We are not all wealthy, white women who sit at home eating bon-bons all day. We are all a very diverse group. We all have our own strengths. We all have our weaknesses, but we all work together collaboratively ….

“So no, we do not need a white man sitting on our board.”

Navarro, in response, and according to the Villager, said, “No white men on the school board? That’s just terrible to say. Not inclusive or, at all.”

Bates told Colorado Politics she’s gotten a lot of criticism on social media over her comments. On NextDoor, for example, she said she was called racist and sexist. Bates said she’s also seen postings on social media that seek dads to run for the school board. There are two men in a three-way contest for the other seat up for election on Nov. 2, which is an open seat.

“We have five women who have done amazing things,” Bates said. “I’m proud of our record. We work on diversity and inclusion in Cherry Creek schools. Yes, I said it. We deal with this all the time. It was never meant to be racist or sexist.

“This has become — sadly for a school board election — very political,” Bates added. “Politics have been used against me and Kristin Allen, both endorsed by the union, and our opponents are using that against us.”

Up until 2016, the Cherry Creek School board was 3-2 men to women.

The ratio of men to women on school boards in Colorado’s biggest school districts leans toward women: Jefferson County’s board is three women to two men; in Douglas County, it’s four women to three men; in Aurora Public Schools it’s five women to two men, and in Boulder Valley, it’s six women, one man.

Denver’s school board is four men to three women, the only large school district in Colorado where men hold the majority.

In their most recent survey, the National School Board Association reported that school boards nationwide were evenly split by gender.

“The nation’s school boards reflect a better gender balance than either the United States Congress or the state legislatures in 2017,” the NSBA report said. “Only 19.6% seats in the US Congress and 24.9% of positions in state legislatures were filled by women in 2017 while 50% of the nation’s school board members were female. The number of females holding school board positions has steadily increased from 39.9% in NSBA’s 1992 survey to 44% in its 2010 survey.”

In May, The Hill, citing an analysis by Reflective Democracy, reported, “White men hold 62 percent of all elected offices despite being just 30 percent of the population, exercising minority rule over 42 state legislatures, the House, the Senate and statewide offices from coast to coast…” Colorado’s General Assembly appears to buck the trend; it’s made up of 55 men (43 white) and 45 women.

In the three-way race between Bates, Gibbons and Navarro, and as of Oct. 5, Bates has raised $63,834 to $6,375 for Gibbons and $4,604 for Navarro, including $2,600 in self-provided non-monetary donations.

Bates’ largest contributors are herself and other family members, at $39,000, and $11,250 from several teachers’ unions. Bates has also been hit with two identical campaign finance complaints, filed by her opponents, for failure to identify contributor occupations and for failing to register as a candidate within the specified time limits. She has until Oct. 21 to “cure” those violations or challenge the complaints.

However, Bates is among the candidates for school boards all over the metro area backed by an independent expenditure committee that has so far spent more than $206,000. Of that, almost $20,000 was spent to support Bates and Allen in Cherry Creek. The committee, Students Deserve Better, has yet to report even one contribution, through Oct. 15.