LET’S TALK ABOUT IT…
Do Kids Deserve Bright Futures?

What is the proper role of our public schools? What should we expect them to provide in exchange for the hundreds of millions of dollars of tax-payer funds?

Based on how our local districts prioritize their resources, it seems they believe we expect schools to feed our children, diagnose and treat any and all mental health issues our children may exhibit, and inculcate our children with values, building them to become ‘better humans.’ While a child’s physical, mental, and spiritual needs are all important, tending to those needs is the proper role for parents. The proper role of a public school is to provide a basic education to students—the famous reading, writing and ‘rithmatic. To best serve students schools should provide kids with the necessary education needed to ensure students can successfully live as free members of a free society when they reach adulthood.

A solid education is critical to a child’s future success, so we were excited to see the recent headlines which declared Poudre School District to be a ‘top district’ 'continuing a long tradition of high performance’ on the most recent Colorado Measures of Academic Success benchmarks. We were glad to hear district Superintendent Brian Kingsley declare PSD to be one of the top school districts “in the nation.” But as we moved away from the celebratory headlines and looked into the publicly available data ourselves, we quickly realized the celebration was premature. What we discovered made us concerned for our community’s kids.