Paula Noonan

To catch you up, campaign committees from this 2026 election cycle already collected and shoveled out a lot of cash: $102.64 million. That’s contributions in all forms — dollars, in kind, loans, etc. — from December 2024 to now. Total expenditures just for advertising amount to $32.94 million. More to come for the general election. […]

To catch you up, campaign committees from this 2026 election cycle already collected and shoveled out a lot of cash: $102.64 million. That’s contributions in all forms — dollars, in kind, loans, etc. — from December 2024 to now. Total expenditures just for advertising amount to $32.94 million. More to come for the general election. […]

While we’re in an election campaign lull between now and Labor Day, we have time to consider the impact of $102 million in campaign contributions in the primary. In the general election, more money will fill candidate campaign coffers, and from the looks of things, ballot initiatives will get plenty of attention as well. The […]

Elected school boards and the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) have hit the headlines with fired superintendents, superintendent resignations, failures of oversight, and misdirected dollars. Cherry Creek School District’s superintendent was fired. Jefferson County Schools’ superintendent found a less stressful job. CDE let $100 million fly out the door to Education reEnvisioned BOCES (ERBOCES) for faux […]

Colorado’s political future will go the way of this election. Historically, the state has not had both chambers controlled by a supermajority. This election may change that. The primaries suggest how the general election may play out. Democrats had solid voter turnout and unaffiliated voters leaned toward Dems. The party pulled in 404,132 unaffiliateds to […]

Colorado’s legislature used to be a place where neither party was dominant. Dozens of seats were competitive and House and Senate majorities switched regularly. From 2010 to 2020, the House was predominantly Democratic with one two-year assembly under Republicans. The Senate had two assemblies from 2015 to 2018 under Republicans. John Hickenlooper was governor and […]

Falcon School District 49, aka El Paso County School District 49, has finally cut bait, thrown the fishing pole into the lake and sunk the canoe. The longtime enabler of the Education Reenvisioned BOCES’ (ERBOCES) schemes to fund private Christian religious schools using state-authorized public education dollars has come to an ignominious funding stop. D49 […]

Fourteen firefighters died in the Storm King Mountain fire west of Glenwood Springs in 1994 when 2,115 acres burned. In August 2020, the Grizzly Creek fire burned 32,631 acres along the Interstate 70 corridor east of Glenwood causing mudslides from flooding off the burned landscape that periodically closed the highway that summer. Debris, ash, sediment and […]

Déja-vu for 10 years. In 2015-2016, state standardized testing was fully integrated into teacher performance evaluation. The tests comprised 50% of teacher “performance.” The idea was to follow the General Electric “rank-and-yank” human resources model. At GE, the model went like this: top 20% of employees got raises and bonuses; the middle 70% got to […]

The Colorado Department of Education let $24 million fly from its checking accounts from January 2017 through June 2026 to CHE, aka Colorado Homeschool Enrichment. The details show how easily CHE and Education Re-Envisioned BOCES re-envisioned how to convert public money into homeschool enrichment programs including jiujitsu training, family funplex and dinner theater, among many […]