Author: Paula Noonan

Paula Noonan The Broncos and Southwest Airlines fiascos in Denver on Christmas are lessons in bad decision-making that took years to unfold. The collapse of a professional football team with a storied history showed how bad choices taken at the top of an organization rain on the poor folks at the bottom who buy the…

Paula Noonan Thirty-four families received a potentially devastating message in September. Their mobile home park was up for sale. These Lafayette residents, some low-income single women, some working families with children, some retired seniors, were on the ropes. Then a marvel happened and now things look great to bring in the new year. Not long…

Paula Noonan The Colorado State Auditor hired the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) to perform an audit on the state’s “K-12 Accountability System.” The audit covers five years of testing data from 2014-2015 to 2018-2019. The data is in the “past due” category because of COVID-related impacts on education delivery during the pandemic. To be…

Paula Noonan Some will call this nit picking, or trying to find those annoying larvae in hair that morph into crawling, itchy lice. But picking nits removes those creepy insects off the scalp and reduces the head scratching that occurs when education policy reports arrive in the news. Two of these reports appeared recently, one…

Paula Noonan It’s common knowledge native Coloradans don’t want the state to turn into California, even though the two states are linked by our singular bond, the Colorado River. Coloradans’ scorn for Los Angeles, especially, is well known. It’s the city that sucks Colorado’s lifeblood through its unending thirst. But here we are, about to…

Paula Noonan The 2023 General Assembly provides the space for a K-12 public education reckoning. With new legislators from new districts, the time is right to bring fresh ideas to the worn-out table. The current system is a mess. It’s structured on SB10-191, a faulty student and teacher assessment platform sponsored by Denver mayoral candidate…

Paula Noonan Some very expensive ships sunk on Election Day. All told, various people and groups spent about $160 million on state candidate campaigns and initiatives. About $128 million of that amount came in donations of $10,000 or more. The largest single donation at $5 million came from Steve Wells of Wells Ranch LLP to…

Paula Noonan Colorado’s voters sent Democrats bright blueberries on Nov. 8. They blew Republicans a raspberry, also known as a razzberry or Bronx cheer. Pundits who said they’d “eat their hat” if unaffiliated voters didn’t go to the GOP get to “eat crow” instead. Not too tasty. GOP consultants who believed Colorado’s state Senate would…

Paula Noonan Colorado’s total election season expenditures reached $159.27 million as of Nov. 8 according to Secretary of State reports from candidates and various campaign committees. That amount covers candidates and ballot initiatives. It’s instructive to know who collected the money and who spent it. Coloradans should thank Wine in Grocery Stores for its transparent PAC…

Paula Noonan Reviewing the new state social studies standards and edits before the Nov. 8 election should be a must-do for every Coloradan to see the impact of revision on the study of human society. Ideas, documents, events, peoples, nations, regions, hemispheres and genocides are added or erased in the standards document by red text…