When Marcia Neal began debating whether to defend her seat on the Colorado State Board of Education in November, she found more reasons to run than retreat.

Right off the bat, she said Tuesday in an interview with The Durango Herald, was the need to keep those pesky Democrats from possibly turning a 4-3 Republican board majority into the mirror opposite or worse.

Opposition to Common Core, a national model curriculum for elementary and secondary education, and opposition to such measures as Amendment 66, last year’s ballot issue that would have increased tax revenue for public schools by 17 percent, also were factors, Neal said.

Still another reason is to impede as much as possible federal influence in education, including special eduction, Neal said.

Neal is locked in a primary battle with Barbara Ann Smith for the Republican nomination to face Democrat Henry Roman, a longtime educator from Pueblo, in November. Smith and Neal are from Grand Junction.

Smith raised at least eyebrows in March when, while visiting Southwest Colorado to announce her candidacy, she said had bought an assault rifle.

The seat on the seven-member board represents the Western Slope and the tail of a reverse-J-shaped district that hooks upward to include Pueblo.

“I very much support rural schools,” Neal said. “The other seats on the Board of Education represent 78 percent of the state population, money and students, located along the Interstate 25 corridor.”

Neal warned against entangling alliances with the federal government. The feds promise the moon but the money to support programs tends to never arrive, she said.

“They promise, but they don’t deliver,” Neal said.

When federal money is available, the Washington bureaucracy wants to run the show, Neal said.

At the state level, the Board of Education hires the commissioner of education, which is the only member of the governor’s cabinet that doesn’t answer to that office, Neal said.

“Education doesn’t tend to be political,” Neal said.

Legislators make laws, which the Board of Education can’t change outright, but can knead and shape in some ways, she said.

Neal, a retired high school history teacher, said the first question she hears at meetings with constituents is how she stands on Common Core. She shares national concerns about the standards but is more worried about possible top-down management, she said.

Neal also is concerned about throwing money at education.

“More money doesn’t mean better education,” she said.

daler@durangoherald.com