It seems we suffer from two pandemics in America: one caused by a virus and the second caused by political ideologues on both sides. Parents and concerned community members have fought hard to protect our students during the first pandemic, and it is now even more critical that we come together to protect them from the second.

We are registered independents who have always believed that the courage of one’s convictions should drive one’s vote — not party alignment and certainly not blind idealism that ignores real-world issues, especially when it comes to our children.

That is why we are seriously concerned about the performance of the Summit School District Board of Education. Our school system’s administrative offices are a revolving door fueled by mishiring at the highest levels and exorbitant, six-figure payoffs slipped to those whose contracts were not renewed — all while standardized test scores have dropped for five straight years in math and literacy. Summit School District is below average and hasn’t met minimum standards for two years. All this in one of Colorado’s wealthiest counties. This is a not a teacher problem, and it’s not a resources problem; it is a leadership problem.

Any organization, public or private, with this kind of performance can only be fixed by a change of leadership. If the board’s current members do not want to put our children first, why are they on it? If it is simply to espouse some “-ism,” then they are in the wrong place. We need leaders who will not sacrifice our children’s futures on the altar of politics.

We can and must do better. We cannot abandon Summit’s students to fall farther behind their peers, held hostage by a school board that, for whatever reason, continues to fail them time and again.