Dr. Brian Macaulay is a candidate for LPS school board

BY FREDA MIKLIN GOVERNMENTAL REPORTER

Brian Macaulay, M.D. is an emergency medicine physician who practices at the Veterans Administration hospital in Aurora. He is also a father of five children and has lived in Littleton for 14 years.

At a meeting on July 27 for neighbors to learn more about him, Dr. Macaulay told the 20 people who came to the home of Heidi and Greenwood Village City Council Member Paul Wiesner, “I’m running for the Littleton school board because, ultimately, I care about what happens to our kids in Littleton. I want all of our kids in Littleton to reach their highest level of achievement in their educational pursuits…We have over 13,000 kids here and we owe it to these kids to provide them with an outstanding education…If we do that, we’re going to build a strong community in Littleton… that we hope our kids come back to and our grandkids come back to.” He went on, “Education is foundational…in order for everybody to reach their highest level of achievement. We want our kids to be critical thinkers, independent thinkers.”

Dr. Macaulay told the group that only 48% of LPS students, across the district, are proficient or higher in math and 62% are proficient or higher in English, explaining, “We need to get back to focusing on the core mission of education.”

Also important to Dr. Macaulay is, “Respecting our parents as the primary educators with regards to our kids’ values, beliefs, identities… We should be having those conversations exclusively with our children. When another third-party comes in and talks to our kids about those types of things, I think that distracts and confuses them.” He continued, “We need full transparency and full accountability throughout the system. That’s the school administrators, that’s the teachers, that’s the parents, that’s the students. We all have to be accountable to each other and we have to have transparent curriculum so that we can see what’s going on.”

Asked if there are areas he would cut in the school budget, Dr. Macaulay said he had not delved into it at that granular level yet, but he had met with the CFO of the school district and found out, “There’s something like 12 special funds where dollars are pushed into these buckets,” including a capital projects fund and a debt repayment fund. He plans to look further into the budget to determine what resources are needed to accomplish the core mission of education.

Brian and his wife Ann are the parents of five children, the oldest of whom recently graduated from Heritage High School in the LPS district, where she was a competitive swimmer. The two youngest Macaulay children attend All Souls Catholic School and might follow their sister to Heritage. The Macaulays’ other two children attend Valor Christian High School and Denver Christian High School.

Two seats on the five-person Littleton Public Schools board of education will be on the ballot in November. All candidates run at-large in this non-partisan race.

One of the seats up for election is currently held by incumbent Lindley McCrary, current board treasurer and president-elect of the board of directors of the Colorado Association of School Boards. She is eligible for and expected to run for re-election.

The other board seat is held by Robert Reichardt, who is term limited on the LPS board of education and rumored to be contemplating a run for the Littleton City Council.

There are other potential candidates for the LPS board but none that we could confirm who have announced officially.