Hugh McKean was elected to represent Colorado House District 51 on November 6, 2016. He has sponsored bills to improve transportation in Northern Colorado, help County governments in natural disaster recovery efforts, apply necessary corrections to statute where County Sheriff training requirements were concerned in addition to many other bills. One of the highlights of the session was co-sponsorship of HB1248 making available $90 million in loans for the Chimney Hollow Reservoir as part of the Windy Gap Firming Project, a vital water infrastructure project that will ensure water security for generations of Front Range Coloradans. Having lived in Loveland for over twenty years he is most proud of raising his children with a “western ethic”, teaching them self-reliance and personal responsibility.
If the last two years of COVID have shown us anything, it’s that it’s had a dramatic effect on our kids. Their schools have shut down, gone to hybrid classes and finally come back with in-person classes. The problem is that it has left a dramatic gap in learning. While Colorado students were already behind in reading comprehension and math and science scores the gaps increased, especially in minority neighborhoods.
Parents and teachers felt the brunt of the changes due to COVID. Teachers were faced with finding ways to communicate with their students and had problems getting the materials and technology rolled out in ways unfamiliar. We owe a debt to all our teachers who went over and above to help every student find ways to learn and grow, albeit through ways that were less than optimal.
The real heroes this past year were our parents. With kids in and out of school, asking for help with geometry and genetics, parents stepped up and stepped in. They modified their work schedules, made school spaces in their living rooms and struggled with wi-fi and bandwidth. What they really did was engage more than ever in the education of their kids. What a remarkable blessing in the middle of dark times. But they haven’t been lauded for their sacrifice by a whole lot of people, in fact parents have been told that they are not part of their kids educations, they’ve been told that they are domestic terrorists. That’s not OK. Parents need to be at the very core of the education and educational choices of their children. So many folks in Thompson School District already are but we need to make sure that we see that all across the state. We need to make sure that parents are given the information they need about curricula and also are given the whole breadth of educational options available to their children. The days of singular focus on college preparatory tracks and AP classes needs to end, kids need to know that there are equal paths to success, through academic rigor as well as vocational education and entrepreneurship.
Hard times sometimes reveal great truths. We have remarkable tools available to help our kids succeed and parents should be armed with that choice.