Two fresh faces and a familiar one are challenging two incumbents for seats on the School District 49 Board of Education in November. The five candidates came together for a forum at the school district’s Creekside Success Center to field questions from the community on Wednesday night.

Board President Lori Thompson and Chris Harrell are running for the board’s District 4 seat, while Vice President Jamilynn D’Avola, former board member Ivy Liu and Holly Withers are running for the District 1 seat.

The school district’s student board of representatives, in partnership with the League of Women Voters of the Pikes Peak Region, hosted the student-led candidate forum. This is the second election in which students participated in a candidate forum.

The forum included opening and closing statements from each candidate, questions from the student board, the audience and a lightning round of questions.

Candidates largely agreed on the importance of parental involvement in their children’s education, though the degree of the district’s involvement is where candidates differed.

Incumbents touted the changes in the district over the past four years, like the creation of a Parents’ Bill of Rights, the passage of a new policy requiring that parents are notified if their child requests a name change to align with their gender identity and that everything taught to students is transparent to parents.

In the years ahead, Thompson said the district could continue to focus on academic outcomes and working with dysregulated students.

“And we need to work on reducing bullying, we need to improve attendance. That’s an issue we did not touch on tonight and has become a big problem,” she said during her closing statements.

Withers and Harrell both emphasized embracing new ideas in the district, like developing students’ overall well-being and data-driven approaches to improve instruction and student achievement.

Harrell later added that the board should consider its entire student population when passing new policies and resolutions rather than making decisions that affect only a small number of students.

“I think that our board focuses a lot on things that generate political outrage, that do very little for our students,” he said.

“We spend a lot of time, a lot of effort focusing on things that don’t really help our students and, mostly, just seem to polarize the community. So, I think if we’re focusing our conversations on things that actually affect our students, boards will get much more boring and the students will benefit.”

Liu, separating herself from the other candidates, said the school district needed to focus on reviewing its curricula, which she said “has gone by the wayside in the last decade or so” and emphasize teaching American values in the classroom.

“We just need to be super-careful about what we’re feeding the young minds of our children, because we’re directly responsible for how they turn out and what kind of American they turn out to be (and) how much they love this country,” she said.

“So, I am very much in agreement in the fact that we need to teach the findings of our country, what was behind it and why America is one of the greatest countries in the world and that we’re to love it, not hate it.”  

When asked about student mental health, candidates emphasized the role of parental involvement and outside resources in addressing student challenges, while Liu and D’Avola said this type of support shouldn’t be the responsibility of the public education system.

“The education of our kids is the role of the classroom. The mental health of students is not what schools are for,” D’Avola said. “So, schools are not mental health facilities.”

While Withers and Harrell agreed that addressing these needs should be collaborative with parents, they argued that students’ mental health is part of their developing minds and should be a priority at school, where they spend a large portion of their day.

“At the end of the day, you as a teacher or teachers spend a lot of time with your children,” Withers said. “And they are trained to anticipate needs, they are cognizant of warning signs of abuse and everything of that nature. And I think that it’s incredibly important that, somehow, we foster mental health between the schools and the parents.”

Lightning round

The final series of questions in the evening was a rapid-fire succession with single-word answers on a variety of beliefs, stances and facts about the candidates.

Do you think that the district is on the right track?

Yes: D’Avola, Thompson, Harrell

No: Liu, Withers

Do you currently have any students in D-49 schools?

Yes: Harrell, Withers

No: Liu, D’Avola, Thompson

With Colorado law stating that sex ed is not mandatory to teach in schools, do you think sex ed should be taught at the high school level?

Yes: Withers

No: Thompson, Harrell, Liu, D’Avola

The Board of Education passed a policy that bans cellphones during instructional time. Do you support this policy?

Yes: Withers, Thompson, Harrell, Liu, D’Avola

No: None

Do you support student expression of gender and sexual identities in schools?

Yes: Withers, Thompson, Harrell

No: D’Avola, Liu

Whose opinion matters most when creating board policy and making district decisions: parents, staff, students, the community or yourself?

Parents: Liu, Withers, D’Avola, Harrell

All of the above: Thompson

The election will take place Nov. 4, and ballots will be mailed to voters Oct. 10.