Author: Paula Noonan

Paula Noonan Douglas County citizens may vote on the most politically fraught propositions related to their governance since 1861 when the county was formed by the Colorado Territorial Legislature. The propositions, set in motion by the county’s three commissioners in March, will determine whether 380,000-plus residents turn to county home rule as their governing structure.…

Paula Noonan Flouting Colorado’s state statutes has become a too-frequent occurrence among our elected officials related to our so-called Sunshine Laws. The Colorado General Assembly has had its sunshine problems. It’s apparent now a school district has also broken the sunshine rules, probably more than once. Jessica Capsel, a resident of the Elizabeth School District,…

Paula Noonan President Donald Trump this week issued a “Make American History Great Again” Executive Order 911 at a press conference at the White House Rose Garden. The EO sets out Trump’s K-12 American history standards. “I’m declaring a total history emergency. It’s a five-alarm fire — so terrible, the worst.” Trump explained the EO begins…

Paula Noonan Elizabeth School District is trying to ban 19 books from its school library shelves and a federal judge is having none of it. The books represent everything radical conservatives and the Trump administration don’t like about diversity, racism, sexual gradations and gender identity. Dan Snowberger, superintendent of Elizabeth School District, says the books…

Paula Noonan Dipping a toe into how history is taught in today’s schools is perilous as President Donald Trump issued this executive order recently: “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The order challenges comprehensive history in favor of Patriot History. Patriot History stresses American exceptionalism, progress and heroism. Its K-12 curriculum comes from the…

Paula Noonan Two events converge in Colorado’s K-12 education world: the Trump administration is dissolving the Department of Education and the legislature is re-doing the state’s education accountability system. With President Donald Trump’s action, federal mandates related to standardized testing and federal education program funding are up in the air, if not yet up in…

Paula Noonan Senate Majority Leader James Coleman has a grand idea. He wants to allow charter schools to open in locations in what he calls “education deserts.” This label is ascribed to low-income neighborhoods that are “deserts” because they lack charter schools. Who knew? These “deserts” were identified in a 2018 Miami of Ohio University…

Paula Noonan President Donald Trump is conducting a reorg. National Dems may eventually get to a re-do. State agencies will need a re-up. That is, in blue-state Colorado, as Trump attacks federal agencies protecting our safety and welfare with insufficient pushback from the minority party, our state agencies led by a Democratic governor will have…

Paula Noonan Since chaos is the new world disorder, it’s a great opportunity to turn messes into solutions. Most agree our nation’s health care system is untidy. In Colorado, funding for public education at all levels has been in a jam for years. The legislature must reconcile the state’s income with its outgo. There’s about…

Paula Noonan School finance, proposed constitutional amendments on school choice, and bad faith union contract negotiations headline today’s education world in Colorado. Colorado’s kids got the short school-funding straw for 15 years starting with the Great Recession in 2008, and school district employees did too. In 2022, Denver Public Schools’ union, Denver Classroom Teachers Association…