On May 30, I authored a guest column in The Aurora Sentinel decrying the racist rant of Aurora School Board Director Cathy Wildman, who during a school board meeting on May 16 lamented the supposed threat to public safety that immigrant communities have become in certain parts of the country.
As I wrote in my column, immigrants do not make America more dangerous, they make it more prosperous. There has been far too much rhetoric spewed by elected officials, from Trump on down to Wildman, vilifying and denigrating immigrants in this country.
When it happened in Aurora, where I live, and came from a school board member that represents one of the most diverse and immigrant-heavy student populations in the nation, I decided to speak up and shine a light on the ignorance.
I was not alone in my disgust. The rest of the Aurora School Board was so embarrassed by Wildman’s comments that they sent out a statement distancing themselves from Wildman, saying her comments did not reflect the views of the board.
After students and community members criticized Wildman at the June 6 school board meeting — not “right-wing” plants as Aurora Sentinel Editor Dave Perry alleged in his column — and Wildman refused to apologize — I wrote Perry to urge him to join me in calling for Wildman to resign.
I never heard back from Perry on my plea.
So imagine my shock when I opened The Aurora Sentinel last week to read what can charitably be described as little more than a cheap attempt to smear me as anti-immigrant based on fabrications and outright falsehoods.
In last week’s paper was a column by Perry attempting to dismiss my criticism of Wildman based on facts created out of whole cloth — attributing statements to me I’ve never made and associations with anti-immigration advocacy I’ve never had. I’m not going to list the litany of lies, but suffice it to say, the column would never have been allowed to run in any respected publication.
Perry’s overall argument was that because I’m a Republican I have no moral standing to decry racism. Unfortunately for Perry’s argument, Wildman is also a Republican — though our party registration is about the only political similarities we share. It’s not shocking that Perry declined to mention that.
What Perry also declined to mention was that the Aurora Sentinel endorsed Cathy Wildman during her 2015 campaign for the Aurora School Board.
Perhaps even more distressing, the Aurora Sentinel’s coverage of the May 16 school board meeting completely neglected to mention Wildman’s racist remarks at all.
Is it fair to ask whether Perry, as editor of the Aurora Sentinel, in addition to his opinion writing, chose to protect Wildman by not reporting on her offensive comments in the first place?
And that is ultimately the subtext to Perry’s scurrilous column last week. He is defending Wildman at all costs — but there is a cost to Aurora’s students by her continued presence on the board.
Aurora Public Schools is in serious trouble. Barely half of kids graduate high school, only one in 10 will graduate from college, and an overwhelming amount of those that make it to college require remedial classes to catch up — meaning they never received a proper education in the first place.
Aurora’s kids deserve better.
They deserve community leaders who respect them enough to challenge the status quo and seek to give them a world-class education — not leaders who denigrate their families.
The only reason Wildman is on the school board spewing her stupidity in the first place is thanks to her political benefactors at the Aurora teachers union, who spent upward of $100,000 to buy her seat in 2015.
When asked for a response on Wildman’s comments, the Aurora Education Association pointedly declined to make any reference to Wildman, instead spitting out a rote talking point about diversity and inclusion.
I think it’s about time Perry and the Aurora Education Association stop defending their colossal mistake and recognize the very obvious reality — Wildman is an embarrassment to Aurora Public Schools, and it is time she resigns.
Tyler Sandberg is a former campaign manager and staffer for Congressman Mike Coffman, and is now a senior project manager for EIS Solutions, a public relations and political consulting firm in Denver, Washington D.C. and Grand Junction.