Today is Election Day. In Colorado, it’s all about local elections — the ones that matter most because they hit closest to home. Nowhere more than in education, where school boards hire the superintendent and set the district’s direction.

Honesty and integrity should command these races. Instead, teacher’s unions skew the field. In Jefferson County, Colorado’s second-largest district, only 30% of teachers are members, according to associate HR chief Scott Barnes. Yet the district is unionized and bargains with union bosses.

You wouldn’t know it from how the Jefferson County Education Association behaves like it speaks for all teachers.

They’re also acting as if the four candidates they oppose are already on the board — when only one is. A glossy mailer from “Students Deserve Better” blares “NO CONFIDENCE.”

“The superintendent puts kids at risk. The Jeffco School Board stood by and did nothing,” the mailer declares. “Educators lost faith. Families lost trust. Students paid the price.”

Of those pilloried, only President Mary Parker currently sits on the board.

Union operative Ashley Stevens is the committee’s registered agent — bankrolled with $830,000 split between two outfits of the Colorado Education Association, the statewide umbrella for most local teacher-union chapters.

The mailer claims the four they oppose — Parker, Denine Echevarria, Samuel Myrant and Gloria Rascon — would extend the district’s “lack of transparency and accountability,” close more schools, slash budgets and ignore “those most affected.”

Meanwhile, the union brands its slate of Peter Gibbins and Tina Moeinian as the “Cleanup Crew.” Cleaning up whose mess, exactly?

Since 2015, every board member but former Director Susan Miller has been union-backed. Mary Parker rejected their endorsement this time, but she had it four years ago.

Jeffco’s mess is the union’s mess: dozens of child-sex-abuse scandals, “trusted adult” policies fueling a culture of secrecy, cratering student achievement, and failing to advocate full-time SROs on campuses like Evergreen High. Only 52.5% of K-8 students are proficient in English, with 42.8% math. And yes, union board members hired Superintendent Tracy Dorland.

This is deflection to hide the union’s own failures, settle bargaining scores and push politics.

They’ve also conspicuously left Michael Yocum out of their attacks. The JCEA first endorsed Yocum, 26, as “vetted,” then pulled support after revelations of his sealed juvenile sex-offense record — which Yocum admitted. Before that, his campaign was managed by union operative Katie Winner, who handles Gibbins’ and Moeinian’s campaigns. Do they still want Yocum to win? It sure seems like it.

Stevens is also registered agent for the union-financed group Common Sense Excellence in Cherry Creek Schools, which has another union-dominated board. Most of its spending has gone to Portland-based Compete Digital.

Union-backed candidates Terry Bates and Mike Hamrick use the same firm against Amanda Thayer and Tatyana Sturm. The company also handled marketing for Cherry Creek Schools’ tax increase campaigns via Citizens for Cherry Creek Schools Future — with Ashley Stevens as the registered agent.

Once the cream of the crop, Cherry Creek Schools relies on an antiquated reputation for “excellence” — yet only 48.2% of K-8 kids can read and write at grade level, while just 42.8% meet math proficiency.

That’s alarmingly close to the numbers for Denver Public Schools, Colorado’s largest district, where just 41.9% read and write at grade level and 32.9% are proficient in math. Yet, Denver’s union-majority board handed Superintendent Alex Marrero a cushy extension with extra job protections — months before they released his evaluation last week, scoring 73.5%. (That’s a C, kids.)

The DPS board has ducked serious school-safety improvements, flouted open-meetings rules and shattered public trust. Just last week, a six-figure investigation into Director John Youngquist — a respected former East High principal — over claims of mistreatment and racism turned into a bust. The report, released last week, proved nothing substantial, including no deliberate bias, and mostly faulted him for asking tough questions and insisting on transparency.

This cycle, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association dumped two major drama sources, Scott Esserman and Michelle Quattlebaum, to back DJ Torres, Monica Hunter and Amy Klein Molk — while still supporting incumbent Sochi Gaytán.

Gaytán fanned the melodramatic flames by calling the report steeped in “white privilege.” The big problem in DPS? “Rarely do we see white people having to be accountable to this pain…”

You can’t make this stuff up.

Bottom line: There are six union candidates on Denver’s ballot, not four — the newcomers they endorsed and the incumbents they installed before.

All three of these districts — Denver, Cherry Creek and Jeffco — are unionized with collective bargaining agreements. Douglas County Schools, on the other hand, has been governed by a refreshing non-union board majority — Christy Williams, Kaylee Winegar, Becky Myers and Tim Moore (and previously, Mike Peterson). They’ve decided against running for reelection.

Under their common-sense leadership, DougCo became the top-rated Denver-Metro district, restoring pandemic learning loss before other districts while pushing politics out of classrooms.

The current union-backed slate threatens to undo that progress — and they’re staying coy about their desire to revive collective bargaining in DougCo, even though only 20% of teachers are union members.

In fact, most districts aren’t unionized, as The Gazette editorialized last week, and union ranks keep shrinking.

Let’s be real: From swapping candidates to concealing facts, the union bosses’ playbook is deception. Voters would be wise to tune out their spin.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.