PCA teacher running for seat on Poudre School District Board of Education
Thomas, 41, is running for the District D seat, representing northwest Fort Collins. Jim Brokish, who currently holds that seat, does not plan to run for reelection. Tom Griggs, who spent most of his professional career teaching teachers, and Coronda Ziegler, a student success manager at Colorado State University, have also announced their candidacy for the District D seat.
Board of Education members must reside within the district they represent but are elected by all voters within the school district's boundaries.
Thomas taught for 13 years at schools in Boulder, Denver and Fort Collins after getting started on his career in education in a Head Start program in the Seattle area, Thomas told the Coloradoan on May 30. His experience ranges from preschool through high school, primarily in science, mathematics, construction and welding.
Thomas took a break from teaching for several years to be a stay-at-home father — he and his wife, Kristen Rasmussen, have two children — and renovate their Fort Collins home before accepting a job two years ago at Poudre Community Academy, one of two alternative high schools in Poudre School District.
Concerns over the poor condition of the building that houses PCA prompted him to run for the school board, he said. Thomas waited until the school year was over to announce his candidacy, fully aware of a PSD Board of Education policy that automatically puts district employees running for seats on the school board on an unpaid extended leave of absence until the election. Were he to win the District D seat, that policy reads, Thomas would deem him 'automatically and voluntarily resigned as a District employee' upon taking the oath of office.
'I really love PCA; I don't want to leave it,' Thomas said. 'I made the decision to think about running in January, when we had to walk across the street with all of our students to use the bathroom, because our bathrooms had stopped working for the third time this year.'
More: Poudre School District raising pay for teachers, classified employees
One of Thomas' primary concerns, he told the Coloradoan, is ensuring the district uses money from the 2024 debt-free schools mill levy to properly maintain, repair and improve its school buildings and other facilities. He would like to help the school district explore the use of solar and geothermal energy in its facilities.
Thomas would also like to see the district speed up the implementation of its new elementary school literacy curriculum through professional development opportunities for teachers and expand its use into middle and high schools.
'I'm really happy with what the district is doing at the elementary school level, which is a big change,' Thomas said. 'It has not been implemented as fully as it needs to be; professional development has not been provided as extensively as it needs to be. We need to make it happen a lot faster than what's going on right now.'
In addition to serving on the Colorado Education Association's Board of Directors, Thomas said he worked on multiple political-action campaigns and helped two candidates with their races for seats on the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education while living there while his wife, now a climate scientist at CSU, completed post-doctoral work at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Two candidates in other districts have also announced their candidacy for Board of Education seats in the November 2025 election — Sabrina Herrick in District C (northeast Fort Collins) and Andrew Spain in District E (northern and western Larimer County, including Wellington, Red Feather Lakes and Poudre Canyon).
Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, x.com/KellyLyell, threads.net/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Mike Thomas running for seat on PSD Board of Education
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