Leadership Institute Offers Colorado School Board Coalition Building Event

Feb. 19, 2026

The Leadership Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on training conservative activists in politics and public policy, is hosting a Colorado School Board Coalition Building event in Colorado Springs on February 20, 2026. Founded in 1979 by Morton C. Blackwell, the Institute aims to increase the number and effectiveness of conservative leaders. The event will feature Leadership Institute faculty members Leigh Vlasblom, Dana Hunter, and Ken Pope. Colorado Leaders for Academic Success has advertised this event on their website.

Who are the Leadership Institute Faculty Leading the Training?

Leigh Vlasblom is the Director of the School Board Leadership Program and a school board trainer for the Leadership Institute. Leigh Vlasblom is also a former Central Bucks County, Pennsylvania, School Board Vice President; her term ran from May 2021 through 2023. While serving on the Central Bucks School Board, Leigh worked with the PA Family Institute and the Independence Law Center, which is a conservative, faith-based public-interest law firm headquartered in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It functions as the legal arm of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, a non-profit organization. ILC had an influence in a growing number of school districts across the state, where the religious liberty law firm offers free drafts of policies aimed at reforming school libraries, adding sex-based distinctions to athletics teams and governing who can use which gendered bathroom. The ILC has gained significant attention for its work with several Pennsylvania school boards, including Penn Manor, Warwick, and South Western, where it often provides pro bono legal counsel.

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Dana Hunter became a Leadership Institute Training Specialist in early 2025. In this role, she is part of the Institute’s School Board Leaders Program, which trains and equips conservative leaders for service on local school boards. Her responsibilities include curriculum & training: Developing and delivering training programs for conservative and libertarian-minded leaders. Ms. Hunter is also a former Central Bucks School District Board President and a central figure in several high-profile, controversial decisions. She approved a $700,000 severance package for the superintendent before leaving office in 2023, which was criticized and legally challenged. Her leadership saw the board enact policies banning Pride flags in classrooms, restricting transgender athletes, and implementing a strict library policy that led to book removals labeled as book bans. Additionally, the district paid about $1.75 million in legal fees to defend against anti-LGBTQ discrimination allegations during her tenure.

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• After controversial library policy, Bucks County school district passes textbook ban on some sexually explicit material
• Guest Opinion: Defense of hate at Central Bucks school board meeting is indefensible
• Democrats who swept Moms For Liberty off school board fight superintendent’s $700,000 exit deal

Ken Pope is the former CEO and a current Senior Fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He is also the CEO of The Coalition for Empowered Education. In 2024, Ken Pope attended the National Association of Scholars’ zoom event, “A Discussion on Model K-12 History of Communism Standards.” The discussion is currently available to view on the National Association of Scholars YouTube page (see image below). The event focused on the Model K-12 History of Communism Standards, created by Civics Alliance in May 2024.

Here in Colorado, we remember the Civics Alliance/National Association of Scholars because David Randall, the Executive Director of the Civics Alliance and Director of Research of the National Association of Scholars, attempted to convince the Colorado Board of Education to adopt the Civics Alliance’s American Birthright Social Studies Standards.

Ken has also appeared on The Right Idea podcast, titled “Exposing Teacher Indoctrination in K-12 Education with Ken Pope. ” Another right-wing education activist accusing teachers of indoctrination.

Since the Florida Department of Education has adopted the History of Communism model/standards, several historians have expressed concerns and criticisms.

• AHA Sends Letter to Tennessee Senate Committee Registering Concerns with History of Communism Education Bill
  • The interpretation presented in SB 1890 has little grounding in historical reality. The bill includes a misleading and factually incorrect reference to “the increasing threat of communism in the United States . . . throughout the twentieth century.” In fact, membership in the Communist Party USA was always small and declined precipitously after 1956, the year that Nikita Khrushchev denounced Joseph Stalin’s role in the Great Terror. It would be more accurate to note that the international threat of communism grew substantially during the Cold War, but this legislation barely mentions the decades-long competition between the US and the Soviet Union and instead suggests that American communism was largely a domestic issue. This is not good history. It will not provide a strong foundation for student learning.

• New Florida Curriculum on Communism is a “Dangerous Recasting” of McCarthyism
  • This new unit is a dangerous recasting of McCarthyism as patriotism and dissent as ‘un-American.’ Florida’s new standards impose a single, rigid set of beliefs such as criticizing communism, when education should champion the exploration of diverse perspectives. A classroom should be a place where ideas meet, not where ideology reign

• Communism, American Exceptionalism Latest Flashpoints in State History Standards
  • In Florida, newly adopted social studies standards on communism instruct educators to teach students about the “repackaging of Marxist ideology” in contemporary political discourse and the “dangers of propaganda” in modern media. Historians have said the standards present a skewed picture and minimize the consequences of McCarthyism in the United States.

• Florida’s anti-communism curriculum faces criticism
  • Florida’s proposed anti-communism curriculum faces criticism from some historians, particularly for its treatment of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who pushed a communist panic in the….

• Critics warn Florida’s new teaching standards rehabilitate aspects of the anti-communist Red Scare
  • The standards soften decades of criticism of former U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led a political movement to root out what he labeled communism in government, the Civil Rights Movement and artistic communities in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The public inquisitions, ideological loyalty tests and firings of that period are often viewed as a shameful chapter in U.S. history.

• Florida’s New Social Studies Standards: A Deepening Crisis for Critical Thinking and Honest History
  • Even more concerning, the redefinition of “McCarthyism” suggests that labeling anticommunist efforts as harmful is inappropriate, an attempt to sanitize one of the most notorious examples of government-driven suppression of speech. One standard states that instruction will include that “using ‘McCarthyism’ as an insult and shorthand for all anticommunism” is communist propaganda at work, implying that such criticisms are biased or illegitimate.

• Florida revives McCarthyism, anti-communism with classroom guidelines
  • Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania professor specializing in the history of education, made that comment regarding Florida’s proposed social studies standards on communism. stated the curriculum presents a “highly biased picture” that echoes Cold War-era rhetoric and feels “antiquarian”.

• Teaching standards, hijacked by the right | Editorial
  • At the high school level, the Florida standards devote 30 pages to communism, and not nearly so many to any other subject. One ulterior motive that critics rightly suspected is apparent in this language on page 148: “Identify propaganda and defamation utilized to delegitimize anti-communists and anti-communist movements.” Examples include “using ‘McCarthyism’ as an insult and shorthand for all anti-communism.” And “slander against anti-communists, such as red-baiter and Red Scare.”

Final Thoughts

Public School parents are busy working and raising families, and usually assume that school board directors remain nonpartisan and keep their personal politics out of school board decisions; however, that is unfortunately not the case for several Colorado School Boards. Should one of your school board directors attend this training, it is imperative that they attend school board meetings and question any policies and curricular decisions they may support.

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