My family didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up, but I got a lot of love, encouragement and inspiration. I also got a good education because my folks were willing to sacrifice to make that happen. I got a scholarship to go to college; I got a shot to start a business doing what I love because I was surrounded by folks who believed in me.

This can be every child’s story when parents and a community stand for their success.

So many kids today are facing huge challenges; many won’t get those same shots I did or that you did. That has to change; it’s why I ran for regent.

I believe that education is the key to keeping the American dream alive.

But I’m worried. Today, that dream is out of reach for far too many young people. And we’re focusing on the wrong things to get it back in reach.

School board meetings are heating up across the country, driven by parental anger about everything from school closures to political propaganda being taught in class. It’s important to step back and ask what is driving the larger debate.

Why are school board meetings become the sites of heated confrontations between parents and school board members?

It goes back to the fundamental question of what drives decision making about our K-12 schools – adult politics or kids’ needs?

For far too long, and in far too many places, it is the politics of the adults in charge that seem to drive educational decision making. And that is becoming ever more maddening to parents who have watched their children suffer immeasurably in the last year.

Last December, Dr. Anthony Fauci proclaimed it imperative for Colorado to open its schools full time. It was not only safe, he said, but essential to ensuring kids were not falling further behind. What did many school districts do in response? They stayed remote. Why? Because the politics of the adults – the school employee unions – refused to let schools reopen.

The politics of the adults reigned supreme over the needs of our kids.

It’s playing out again with the growing debate about Critical Race Theory in schools. The political desire of some adults in power to teach what essentially amounts to propaganda is triumphing over kids’ needs to focus on the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic.

Our children have lost a year of learning that they’ll never get back. So why are so many school districts trying to incorporate teaching controversial, and often very factually flawed, views about race in America?

Why is the focus not on helping kids catch up so they can learn to read on grade level? Pre-pandemic, only 40% of third-graders in Colorado were reading on grade level, with that stat dropping below a third for black and Hispanic students.

Right now, our public schools leave millions of young people behind, especially those in poverty. This is not for lack of funding. Our government spending per student has more than doubled since 1970. Yet math and reading scores for 17-year-olds haven’t budged in four decades, and the achievement gap between poor and rich students continues to grow.

There’s no debate about whether our kids need to learn about our country’s troubled past and the long-term impacts of racism — they must in order to be informed citizens and help build a better, stronger country in the future.

But if we want to talk about systemic racism and systems that perpetuate inequality, why are we not focusing on the failure of our schools to teach kids of all races to learn to read?

That would be a focus on our kids’ needs instead of the politics of the adults running the schools.

And that’s the problem. Far too often, decisions in our schools are driven by the completely wrong impulse.

There’s a saying in education – kids need to first learn to read so that they can read to learn.

I agree that America has a troubled history with racism and inequality that continues today. Unfortunately, our schools are one of the largest perpetuators of that inequality.

We trap far too many black and Hispanic kids in failing schools, where they aren’t reading on grade level, and struggle to catch up once they’re left to fall behind in elementary school.

That’s not right.

Let’s get our education system back on track by focusing on what matters most – what our kids need, all of our kids, from every race, class and creed.

It’s time to refocus our attention on the kids, and away from the adults.

Heidi Ganahl is a businesswoman, entrepreneur, author and at-large member of the University of Colorado Board of Regents, to which she was elected as a Republican in 2016.