Adams County 14 School District has been the little dog in a fight with big dogs for over a decade. It has 5200 plus students in a district with Suncor Oil and Gas Refinery as its oversized neighbor. It’s in the middle of a school board election that may determine whether the district maintains its independence from the big dogs.

Transform Education Now (TEN) is an education advocacy nonprofit in Denver allied with 50 Can, a national charter school education advocacy entity. TEN has partnered with RootED, now Denver Families for Public Schools since January 2025. RootED received piles of cash from City Fund, an ed-reform investment group, for numerous projects in Denver Public Schools supporting charter chains in the district. City Fund gets its cash from high end millionaires and billionaires such as Reed Hastings of Netflix and Bill Gates and Melinda Gates. The Waltons also pitch in.

In contrast, Adams 14 has a budget of just under $100 million in taxpayer dollars for students. The district doesn’t have spit in a bucket to influence education policy. Adams 14 schools are under-resourced. Over 80 percent of its children qualify for Free or Reduced Lunch, a mark of low family income. Over 90 percent of its students are minority. More than 50 percent of students are English Language Learners. Fourteen percent are students with disabilities. These numbers of children with challenges far exceed other Colorado districts. 

In addition, the district’s industrial neighbor, Suncor Refinery, has periodically spewed its poisonous pollution into the air and water, affecting children’s respiratory and neurological health. These factors are some of the variables in play affecting Adams 14. 

Given these challenges, one would hope, as the idealists we like to think we are, that the Colorado Department of Education would smother Adams 14 with helpful assistance to ensure the kids could have every possible break a wealthy state like Colorado can provide.

That’s not how the big dogs played. RootED and TEN, along with the Colorado Department of Education under former Commissioner Katy Anthes, wanted to dismantle Adams 14. In the Education Department’s view under Anthes, Adams 14 should have been divided up among neighboring school districts. Adams 14 had “underperformed” for too long and its students’ academic achievement would only improve if the children attended “high performing” schools.

That plan didn’t cut it with Adams 14 or its allies in surrounding districts. Not to be deterred, Anthes and her partners at RootED and TEN decided to implement a transportation program through a COVID era grant to empty Adams by transporting students to schools in Denver. 

Anthes announced her “transportation” grant program in May 2022 and selected its providers in June. Patrick Donovan, former leader of RootED and current president of Denver Families for Public Schools, who also sits on the board of directors of Colorado KIPP with former Commissioner Katy Anthes, won the grant along with Nick Hernandez aka Martinez of Transform Education Now.

These two men, with support from Colorado Department of Education, had access to a $3 million grant. They didn’t spend that much because they only managed to recruit 48 students after expensive marketing campaigns. In 2022-23, RootED found 15 students to transport via UBER-like services to schools in Denver. In 2023-2024, 33 students attended these alternative schools. 

As of this article, CDE has shared $694,132 in spending to send a total of 100 Adams 14 students to Denver schools in 2024. That’s about $7000 per student, but this amount only represents 2024. The dollars could easily double based on further research, with Root ED and TEN eating up at least half the budget. The Colorado Charter School Institute digested the other portion. None of the transported students were evaluated to determine whether their academic development improved through the program. We know no more now than in 2022 as to whether the project achieved “high performance” results for its student participants.

Fast forward to the 2025 school board election in Adams 14. Two candidates are supported by Nick Hernandez aka Martinez and his TEN enterprise. One candidate, Leona Pacheco, is a Parent Fellow at TEN. Her granddaughter was one student who left Adams 14 and received rides to her charter school choice. Pacheco is an advocate for bringing charters into Adams 14. She supported the effort of University Prep, a charter group in Denver, with Nick Hernandez aka Martinez on that charter’s board, to bring its program to Adams 14. The Adams 14 board voted it down.

Brandi Valdez, a parent active in Adams 14, has also received TEN’s endorsement. Both Pacheco and Valdez have had judicial judgments against them. Valdez was convicted in 2007 of drug felonies. Pacheco has a standing restraining order against her issued in 2019. Neither has complied as of this article with campaign finance registrations required by the Secretary of State.

Adams 14 voters will have to decide if these candidates are qualified. Will they support the hard work of the current district administration to keep the district intact while strengthening students’ education experience? Or will the two try to pick the district apart, piece by piece?

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.