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When I served on the Greeley-Evans School Board, I saw the best of our community. I saw city officials, county commissioners, chamber members, business leaders, residents, and school board members come together around visions and ideas.

At the time, we were looking for ways to invest in our town’s future. Together, we traveled to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to learn about the Kalamazoo Promise and find out how we could give every child a college scholarship upon high school graduation.

We learned that to generate funds for their ambitious project, Kalamazoo had built a downtown hotel surrounded by supporting businesses. We spoke to local leaders and learned from their project, and then adapted Kalamazoo’s success right here at home — implementing G Town Promise. We passed a bond issue and a mill levy override. We rebuilt Greeley West and completed long-overdue improvements. I was — and still am — so proud of my community and our commitment.

This is why I find the current Cascadia Project and how our local elected officials are approaching it so concerning.

Greeley’s government has been pushing full steam ahead on a $1.1 billion hockey stadium project, with taxpayers footing the bill. Unlike the Kalamazoo Promise, Cascadia has no guarantee of investment in our local people or community. The hockey team is privately owned, and its financials are unknown. Our local town council has not asked Martin Lind, the team’s owner, to make any investment or agree to any terms to stay in the area or give any benefit back to our town. Unlike the public-private partnerships we created with the Kalamazoo Promise, Cascadia appears to be a taxpayer-funded public giveaway to a private CEO.

Our elected officials have not done due diligence to find out why Lind’s current stadium in Loveland is not working out. As far as we know, they haven’t traveled to Larimer County – far closer than Kalamazoo – to learn from them or get the answers to the numerous questions that have been raised about the Cascadia Project. At recent town council meetings, Greeley citizens have had many questions. Citizens have asked how much water this massive facility would need, if the town will need to invest in roads to handle traffic, or if school district boundaries will be altered. Answers are few and far between.

Bringing community together is hard work. When I served on the school board, we disagreed on some things, but we shared a goal to make Greeley better for our residents. Together, we turned District 6 (which I represented) around and developed internships and opportunities for kids.

The focus of our town’s leadership today appears to be less about investing in the people of Greeley and more about landing the Cascadia. Nonetheless, community members have repeatedly been showing up to question this move, to challenge the process, and to ask about both spending and community benefits.

It is not wrong for community members to ask how they will benefit from the Cascadia Project — in fact, it is right. After all, it is our money that will be footing this enormous bill, and our government needs to get us the best deal. We are asking if Greeley residents and businesses will beneift with jobs and contracts from the Cascadia Project; if Greeley residents (especially those who are low or middle income) will be helped with affording access to Cascadia; and if a Community Benefits Agreement could help ensure Greeley residents are truly at the table as decision about this project are made.

It is the job of an elected official to listen to the community, but that is not what residents are experiencing in Greeley. The city appears to only listen to Lind, who does not live here. I’m shocked at the number of unanswered questions around the project, the lack of transparency, and the disregard for community input. I’m surprised by the partnership with a for-profit entity that does not rise to the level of community commitment that I have previously experienced in our town.

Rhonda Solis is a long-time Greeley resident and former District 6 school board member and State Board of Education member representing Congressional District 8. 

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Think back to your own school days. How much learning, friendship, and fun would have been lost if you had been allowed to bring a small television set to school and watch it all day long, even at lunch and recess? It may seem like an absurd question — a television set? at school? — but it is precisely the reality that students today are experiencing.

Since the early 2010s, U.S. middle and high schools have seen a startling increase in mental illness and psychological suffering among their students. The acceptance of smartphones in schools has fueled cyberbullying, conflict among students, and had a cumulative, enduring, and deleterious effect on adolescents’ abilities to focus and apply themselves. This is especially harrowing as nearly half of American teens say that they are online “almost constantly.”

This isn’t just about mental health and school safety. Globally, test scores have been dropping since 2012. Earlier this year, new data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that reading and math scores in the U.S. have dropped to their lowest levels in decades.

Now Colorado school leaders have a chance to do something that can truly help kids.

This spring, Gov. Jared Polis signed House Bill 1135 into law, requiring schools to develop and implement a policy on student phone use during the school day. It’s a step forward — and it couldn’t come at a more urgent time. School leaders are beginning to shape those policies now, with an implementation deadline less than a year away.

Colorado, like many jurisdictions in the U.S., is leaving the specifics to local districts. This means that policies could range from “put phones in your backpacks during instruction time” to “bell-to-bell phone-free campuses.”  While HB 1135 is certainly a step in the right direction, I urge Colorado school districts to go beyond partial limits and adopt bell-to-bell phone-free school policies like Boulder Valley School District has already done. Limiting phone use only during instructional time still allows for students to rush to their phones between classes, at lunch, and during recess, costing them valuable opportunities to connect with one another face-to-face.

Moreover, research from the National Education Association found that 73% of teachers in schools that allow phone use BETWEEN classes report that phones are disruptive DURING class. In contrast, of the several policies examined, only the phone-free or “away for the day” policy produced good results: only 28% of teachers in such schools said that phones were disruptive during their classes. It’s only when students have 6-7 hours away from their phones that they fully turn to each other and to their teachers. Otherwise, teachers will continue to be responsible for enforcing phone policies when students come back from breaks, which is a role they are eager to relinquish.

In a divided country and a world of diverse nations, we have seen education policy on this subject move at astonishing speeds elsewhere. Why? Because parents and teachers around the world have seen the damage done to students’ attention, education, safety, and mental health when they spend much of the school day on their phones texting, scrolling and posting on social media, watching videos, and playing video games.

A 2024 survey of school principals showed that they were similarly alarmed by the effect of smartphones on students, with 88% stating that they were making children tired and distracted, and 85% believing it was amplifying violence and bullying in schools. No wonder that, in 2023, a major Unesco report considered the overwhelming evidence that excessive phone use was correlated with lower school performance and poorer mental health and called for the ban of smartphones from schools.

Walk around most school hallways today and take in the silence, notice the eeriness. In contrast, whenever schools adopt a bell-to-bell policy the reports from teachers and administrators are always the same: “we hear laughter in the hallways again.” Also, bullying, disciplinary problems, and absenteeism decline. School becomes more fun.

Colorado has more than 880,000 public school students. Imagine the impact if, over the next year, districts committed to bringing conversation and laughter back to their schools’ hallways.

Social media is designed to steal the attention of kids and teens who are at pivotal stages of their mental development. Our kids are owed their attention back. Our kids deserve the learning, friendship, and fun that we recall from our own schooling experiences. And, for now, the one place where we can truly safeguard that is schools. We need to give our kids a break from the noise and the drama. We need to and Colorado can.

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and the author of The Anxious Generation. 

Government leaders need to get off wrong side of history and gain new perspective

In the book “Mark Twain” by Ron Chernow, I found the perfect explanation for why many people conformed to “the terrifying power of the environment to shape and distort human behavior.”  He was referencing the justification of slavery by so many otherwise good people, including clergy, but it explains so much more.

I grew up in the 1940s and ’50s in what is now referred to as a “red state.” And I must admit that I was a racist, believing that whites were intellectually superior to Blacks. My parents didn’t use racial slurs and were kind, but they erroneously judged Black people harshly. Sadly, that was more liberal than many locals felt.

I was an adult when I moved to a more neutral environment and was gradually exposed to reality.

But this is not about racism per se. It is about sequestered groups and communities that seldom are exposed to other views of the world.

That Chernow quote is the best explanation I’ve found to understand how good, kind people can accept the travesties taking place.

Yes, immigration is broken, but we turned our heads for years and took advantage of the workers. Send back the criminals and the more recent arrivals, but have empathy for those who have been here for years, raising families, serving the communities, and often serving in the military.

We have known there has been waste in all government departments for decades. It must be corrected — but not with a chainsaw and mindless, inhuman, vindictive overkill.

Congress and other branches of government must be more informed by their awakened constituents than they fear the president.

David L King, Erie

Reconsider red-light cameras for safety

I recently traveled to Miami, and my GPS device warned me of red light cameras at traffic lights while I was driving. It turns out that many lights have cameras (at least in Miami Beach, where I was staying). They actually work as cars stop before the light turns red, rather than racing through as we often see here.

Why? Because drivers know a camera will catch them if they don’t stop. I would like to see more of those here, and think the accidents they help prevent outweigh the arguments that these cameras are a threat to civil liberties.

Thomas H. Brady, Wheat Ridge

Presidential struggles with truth-telling

Those of us of a certain age grew accustomed to presidential administrations’ intentional struggles with the truth a long time ago —  LBJ’s falsehoods about Vietnam; Nixon’s about Watergate and related matters; Reagan’s about Iran-Contra; Clinton’s about Monica Lewinsky; W. Bush’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction”; and, Biden’s… let’s just say his memory about stories he told failed him. But Trump takes the cake, hands down.

Fact-checkers have largely given up due to the huge volume of falsehoods. So please understand we want to see the receipts on “obliteration versus heavy damage” and Iran spiriting away the enriched uranium prior to the bombing.

Public trust is built heavily on transparency and truth, so don’t be so surprised about the lack of trust in our elected officials and stop attacking journalists who are trying to get the truth.

John W. Thomas, Fort Collins

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Gov. Jared Polis’s pedestrian bridge is not without merit, nor does it have to be an assault on the historic district, as some critics have claimed. Adding an interesting and functional architectural feature and tourist attraction to a struggling part of the city is a good idea for an entire state that relies on tourist dollars.

The problem with the project, intended to memorialize the state’s 150th birthday, is that it jumps a long list of unaddressed capital improvement projects, and skimps on artistry and historic value. The state has a process for spending its limited dollars maintaining everything from the magnificent Gold Dome to ancillary storage buildings. While it is unclear if the money will come from some other source or not, it is true that all dollars are fungible. Cutting in line for a project only released to the public a few short months ago is very bad form.

We don’t blame the members of the Capital Development Committee for balking at the request for about $10 million toward the $28.5 million price tag.

Rep. Tammy Story, a Democrat who chairs the committee, struck a sound note when she wrote to The Denver Post: “This $29 million ‘art installation’ is financially irresponsible and completely tone-deaf.” Indeed, the state has some financial problems, and our economy is slowing.

But let’s not scrap the Colorado 150 Pedestrian Walkway. Rather, let’s tip the scales of the public/private investment more heavily toward donors.

Asking the committee for a few million dollars that will be used to leverage $20 million or $30 million in private donations is much more palatable than the current 60/40 split that has the state picking up most of the tab.

There is a price to cut in line of a carefully curated and considered list of projects, and the current plan to only raise $11 million for the project is not enough.

We appreciate that this state’s civic leaders are ponying up millions of dollars to invest in art, culture and, yes, pedestrian safety at one of the state’s busiest intersections — Colfax and Lincoln. We’d love to see this bridge completed with Colorado artists getting paid for their work.

The state’s Capitol complex is a true gem. From the steps of the Capitol looking west, visitors see a panoramic view that includes our iconic skyline, art museum, Central Library, Denver’s beautiful city hall and our majestic mountains. Adding an architectural marvel at the ugly intersection will only enhance the view of Lincoln Veterans Memorial Park and Civic Center Park.

Several times a year, these parks are filled with visitors coming for festivals and protests. And while our unhoused neighbors do spend time in the park, gone are the unsanitary and unsafe encampments that for a time after the Black Lives Matter protests and COVID shutdowns took over the area.

Tammy Story is right to question the appropriateness of spending public dollars on something that is nice-to-have while deferred maintenance and other needs go unmet.

And John Deffenbaugh, president and CEO of Historic Denver, is right in his call for the bridge to conform to the design principles of the Denver Civic Center Historic District.

“We welcome change and believe that with sympathetic design and under the right circumstances, preservation and progress go hand in hand,” Deffenbaugh wrote in a scathing letter that picked apart the design of the bridge as an affront to the “formal order, symmetrical balance, and neoclassical expression,” that dominates the district today.

We are shocked that the architectural firm employed for a portion of the $1.5 million already spent on design and planning didn’t take into consideration the district’s design guidelines, which have been in existence since 2009. Given this gross oversight in their performance, we are certain they will redraft plans that will mesh seamlessly with the neoclassic architecture that dominates the park. Imagine a marble bridge spanning from the Capitol to the City and County building in undulating waves like Colorado’s white water rapids.

These are not insurmountable obstacles, but Polis needs private donors and a visionary architect. Time is short before the state celebrates its birthday, and Polis leaves office. We wish him luck.

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