If incumbent Garfield Re-2 school board member Tony May is recalled in the August 27 special election, New Castle resident Scott Bolitho, a 4th generation Garfield County native, could take his place. Bolitho comes from a family of educators, including his grandfather who was principal at Glenwood Springs Elementary for decades. KDNK’s Amy Hadden Marsh sat down with Bolitho to talk about why he’s running, district issues, and more. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Amy Hadden Marsh: What specifically, Scott Bolitho, made you decide to run for a seat on the RE2 school board?
Scott Bolitho: It was kind of a progression of things. After Tony was elected and became president of the board, a little while after he was serving, I felt like there was an agenda that was being brought into the school board, more of a political agenda than anything else.
The topics that he was promoting, the curriculum he was promoting and then the fact that he really didn't want to hear from anybody in the community engagement process or anything else really disturbed me. So, during the open forums that were being held throughout the district for the American Birthright Standards, you saw 95 to 98 percent of the people who made public comment or who filled out the survey that was done were very against the American Birthright Standards. But that didn't matter to Tony, and he said so. So we felt like that just was not a proper way to handle things.
There were other things that he was doing, you know, in board meetings, with staff interaction, things like that, that just for my values and my principles, it didn't sit well with me.
So, over the course of time during this whole process, especially during the [American Birthright Standards] process, I had people coming up to me and asking me if it were a possibility, would I be willing to run in a recall election to replace him on the board. So I did a lot of soul searching. I’ve never done any campaigning before and I just felt like, you know, this is something that I could do. A lot of other people have stepped up in different areas and so I thought, well, this could be my turn to do the same thing.
What do you think is the role of a school board and what would be your role as a school board member?
A school board, in my opinion, should be looking at things from a 30,000-foot level. And as they do that, they oversee the policies, the strategic plan, and help implement those things. But they hire the experts to do that. None of us on a school board, the current school board, I think would admit it, and most school boards around, they're not teachers. They are not people who have been in education and did not make that their profession.
So the school board is an overseer of what's going on and kind of a steward of the children, a steward representing their community and then setting policy procedures, things like that. So that the administration has a strategic plan to run on and educate our children. It's not to bring in anything that's controversial. It's not to bring in an agenda or anything like that.
So my role, I think, as a member of the school board is to, number one, fit in with the school board, learn from them, be collaborative, and then work with the superintendent and her staff to see what they want and then support them and not be in their face and trying to tell them how to do their job as far as day-to-day kinds of things.
Boards can direct management. There's no doubt about that. But not on a day to day basis and not in something that the board is just not an expert in. So I would love to learn. I would love to get to know people. I would love to spend time at the schools as much as that would allow from my own current job.
I feel like the board needs to be at that 30,000 foot level, do the upper management, do the policies, procedures, strategic plan and go from there.
Your opponent said in his ballot statement that the RE2 community faces issues such as teacher pay, state underfunded preschool programs, school safety and trust in our schools. How important to you are those issues?
Well, I'd have to agree with him on those. Safety is one of the things that you want your children and parents to feel good about. I would agree with the pay scale. I think the teachers in our area need to be paid more. It's just, how do you do it?
That's a critical area in any school district. We all know that teachers don't get paid enough. There's no doubt about it. So what do you do to make them feel that they are valued? It may not be in direct pay. It may be benefits. It may be different things like that. It may be education that you can help them with.
One of the things I'd love to do, and I know that the collaborative solutions group worked hard at this already, and that was trying to come up with a new budget that would help increase the pay. And they did that. They got a raise this year. I'd love to see how we could do something again and do something more.
But you've got to work within the constraints of your budget. And that's just a fact. So in the strategic plan, you want to retain your current teachers and pay them so that they don't go somewhere else.
And then the other thing is you need to attract new talent. And obviously one of the best ways to do that is to have a good pay scale and be competitive in the marketplace.
Underfunded preschool and the other things regarding pay, you know, the state is also facing their own budget crises, right? And so the budget has to come from the state in order to fund our school districts.
Yes, we do have to work on the trust in our schools. And right now people do not trust the school board. There was a survey that was done within the school system and the community. And in both surveys (done by the same consultant), the school board scored very, very low in the trust aspect of the school board, both the staff and the community as a whole. And, I think that really stems from what we went through over the last year or so with whole American Birthright Standards and the overall impression that people got from Tony [May] and not wanting to listen to the community or listen to his teachers and his curriculum directors.
Are there any other issues in the school district that you think need attention?
Those are the things that I would concentrate on as a school board member.
You can only do, I think, so much as a school board and then you have to trust the process and trust the people you've hired to make everything else go on a day-by-day basis - your finances, your student health, not only the student achievements and scores on tests, but your student health.
Are they socially, emotionally, and physically okay and ready to learn? Are your teachers being supported the way they should be supported so they're healthy in those ways too? If they're not, then they're not going to deliver their best. And if they don't deliver their best, your kids suffer. And so if your teachers are engaged, energized and healthy and ready to go, it's only going to make your kids better.
Anything else you'd like to add that maybe I missed?
I guess one thing I would like to say is that this recall election is based on a broad-based, bipartisan group of people.
What do you mean by that?
Well, it's not radical people. I met with this one guy for over an hour and he told me that it was the teachers and staff of [the Garfield Re-2 School District] that were behind this whole recall. And that's just not true. I've heard that Voces Unidas, and PFLAG [Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays] have endorsed me. And that's definitely not true. I don't know a single person in those organizations. They have not approached me and I have not accepted any endorsement from them. And I won't. I'm standing on my principles. I'm standing on my values.
It's definitely not a political movement. It's not a teacher movement. It's just a do-the-right-thing movement.
