SAVE THE KIDS

Comparing the 2026 CD7 State Board of Education Candidates

There are effectively 2 candidates. They differ dramatically

Karla Esser PhD, Democrat, Incumbent

Karla is lock-stock-and-barrel liberal education establishment with 35+ years in the US and German systems including running teacher training programs, and has been on the board for 6 years. If she is re-elected, epect her to continue leftist programs ad nauseum while cancelling grants for gifted and talented programs. Expect her to be supported by unions and others vested in the system.

Steve Barton MSEE, JD, MD, MBA, Republican

Steve is an electronic engineer and patent lawyer with a medical degree. He proposes saving the kids by reforms including evicting leftist politics from schools and introducing basic business concepts to schools while improving real science, math, and history education. Some of these reforms may require the board to request the legislature change Colorado laws. Steve’s proposals include:

Basic Reforms

• Involve parents, because they may have good ideas and can work with kids when they need extra help. Too many board rules exclude parents. The Democrat ideal of schools taking full charge of educating, feeding, and raising kids should be changed—Schools should have mindset of being a support and aid to parents in raising and educating kids unless parents have abdicated that responsibility.

• Grade school districts on parental involvement in curriculum decisions and textbook selection to force districts to involve parents.

• Remove requirements for personally-identifiable dossiers on students —district reports to the state should be statistical and lack personally identifiable information.

• Improve financial efficiency by scoring school districts on their administrator-teacher ratio, and streamline state board reporting rules and grant procedures to allow school districts to spend more on classrooms and less on administration.

• Evict politics from the classroom, prohibiting teachers and schools from sending political literature to parents.

• Prohibit granting credit or excused absences for political activities and demonstrations.

• Rename and reschedule “spring break” as “Easter break” and “winter break” as “Christmas break”.

• Require districts notify parents of student sex transitions, not hide them from parents as often done today.

Improve Classroom Experience

• Strictly limit classroom screen time and ban cell phones from classrooms. Yes, I contributed to older computer designs as an engineer, but that does not mean second and third graders should spend all day glued to screens.

• Boot boys from girls’ sports, locker rooms, and bathrooms.

• Reintroduce Christian morals like the “Golden Rule” and require Christianity be treated as well as other faiths.

• Improve security by arming selected staff or teachers- no soft targets.

Overhaul Curriculum

• Encourage districts to focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic in grades K-3 using traditional methods that work, like phonics and times tables. The proposed READ act rule does use a phonics-derived instruction method, but demands dossiers and micromanages implementation.

• Bring outsiders like engineers, scientists, nurses, doctors, businessmen, pilots, seamen, and veterans into schools to teach reality. This includes teaching students and teachers how astronomy and physics were reformed with math in the 14th-17th century scientific revolution, how math is used to calculate medicine doses and vector sums for navigation, how rapid multiply-and-add is key to artificial intelligence, what businesses do to make a profit and why they need profit, the many countries where socialism failed, and history as seen by those who lived it.

• Encourage discussion of the religious motivations in historical events that are now avoided, such as Henry VIII, the Spanish Armada, the Reformation, Mayflower pilgrims, founding of, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, settling of Utah, Cortez conquest of Mexico, the 100-year’s war, the Roman Empire, Islamic conquests of 622-750, the Crusades, the 1801-1805 Barbary war, adoption of the 1st Amendment, and the abolition movement of the 1850s culminating in the Civil War, These events are hard to understand stripped of underlying motives and many influenced US culture and set the scene for today’s international situation. The first amendment does not require avoiding facts!

• Ensure history courses cover the Revolution, the Civil War, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the vast consequences in middle east and elsewhere of the wars that followed as the current world picture emerged. Include failure of 1940-1941 “economic sanctions” that led to Pearl Harbor in 1941, etc.

• Require civics, including the US Constitution and bill of rights, in schools. This must include teaching about the right to, and importance of, a lawyer if arrested, and the vast changes brought about by the US Civil War and the 13th-16th amendments.

• Since today’s kids will be affected by technology throughout their lives, introduce Engineering as applying science and known principles to solve real world problems from Roman aqueducts through modern airplanes, roads, and automobiles to computers and artificial intelligence.

Upgrade Teacher Training

• Require math-based science for teacher’s licensure. Science needs to be taught using math, and math needs to be taught with real applications including science and business. The handwaving-level science typical teachers now take leaves them unable to do this.

• Require teachers to learn enough business to know what a profit is and what it takes to make one. Most teachers mean well, but many fall into leftist traps because they have never worked outside government and don’t understand reality. Further, basic accounting can make wonderful math problem sets with calculations of cash flow, property tax, social security tax, unemployment tax, sales tax, etc.

Paid for by Barton Campaign, Steve Barton, treasurer

Issues with Past Board Rules and Recommendations

I will be expanding this section as I read existing and proposed rules.

Board actions:

1. Usurp local board power by issuing highly detailed rules and policies regarding teaching methods, curriculum, graduation planning, bus maintenance and operations, and more — plus

2. Invade student privacy by requiring extensive reporting to the State including a detailed dossier on each student, from reading progress in early grades to individualized ICAP graduation plans. Reporting also includes detailed reports of district operations, and

3. Ignore parental wishes and cut parents out of decisions at curriculum level and regarding their students; they even advocate sex transitions be done without notifying parents..

All this requires lots of administrators in districts, plus more at the State level to review all the dossiers..

Examples follow:

Matt Alexander (Colorado House district 60 candidate and Fremont County RE-1 School Board member) gives a campaign speech where he describes leading local resistance to a State Board rule REMOVING parents and community inputs from curriculum selection. If elected, we could restore, even require, parental and community involvement in curriculum selection.

Amendments to rules implementing the Colorado READ act are posted at the Board website for consideration in August. The READ act recognizes students who cannot read rby 4th grade can have problems in later schooling and employment, and provides subsidies to school districts for extra tutoring for these students. The rules provide no parental involvement until parents are consulted just before holding kids back to repeat third grade. I believe parents should be involved earlier than this when their child has difficulty. There are also reporting requirements, including a dossier with test results on each child, see section 13.02. We’d love to slash this dossier both to reduce administrative costs of districts and the Department of Education, and restore privacy to students and families. If elected, I propose eliminating detailed per-student dossiers at all levels to improve privacy, and involve willing parents earlier especially when their children need extra help in reading (or math).

Parental involvement is crucial throughout K-12 schooling, rules should encourage frequent parental involvement. Further, privacy is important to parents and students.

The graduation standards require an individualized career and postsecondary plan (ICAP) for each student and progress along that plan be reported to the state yearly. Again, having to report plan and progress invades student privacy and requires multiple administrators at state and local levels.

Amendments to transportation (bus) rules are posted on CDE website. This usurpts local board power by micromanagement. They require extensive records and many sections are duplicative of commercial driver and other rules, thus essentially requiring additional administrators for compliance.