A4PEP Advisory Committee
John Myers
John L. Myers is an education policy consultant. He has worked with state policymakers in all 50 states on a range of State Education policy issues. His focus is on state school finance equity and adequacy. Myers expertise is in school funding formulas, teacher quality issues, education governance and community education policy. He has been a State Legislator, a Governor’s Policy Director and the Education Program Director for the National Conference of State Legislatures. Myers is a fellow at the National Education Policy Center and assists the Price of Opportunity project.
Don Perl
Don Perl holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence and a Masters Degree in Teaching Spanish. He has taught for 20 years in the public schools of Colorado and 16 years at the University of Northern Colorado. Keenly aware of society’s inequities, he has raised his voice for the underserved in countless ways.
Jan Tanner
Jan Tanner is a public education advocate. She has been a PTA member for almost thirty years where she learned the importance of advocacy. She was elected to the Colorado Springs School District 11 Board of Directors in 2006 and served until 2015. She served as a Director of the Colorado Assn. of School Boards 2007-2015 and was the Board President in 2014. She was asked to be an Advisory Committee member for A4PEP in 2020 and is proud to support their work.
Lorenzo Trujillo
Lorenzo A. Trujillo has a long history as an educator and advocate of children, youth and families. He served as the Executive Director of Humanities in Jefferson County Public Schools throughout the 1980s and, in Adams County Public School District 14 from 1996-2004, as a Principal of an alternative high school and In-House Legal Counsel for Truancy. In 2004, he became the Assistant Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School. In 2007, he served the Colorado State Legislature in chairing and co-authoring the Trujillo Commission of Online Education. His policy work in education led him to a task force of the U.S. Senate where he addressed Education of Latino Youth: Early Childhood Education, K-12, Access to Higher Education, and the Dream Act. His work as an attorney was pivotal in addressing attempts to commandeer language equity and access of non-English speaking children in our schools resulting in two favorable decisions by the Colorado Supreme Court and making sure children are tested in their primary language in academic subjects in proceedings involving the U.S. Office of Civil Rights and Department of Education. Dr. Trujillo’s work on truancy, suspension, and expulsion procedures in the schools resulted in statewide adoption of intervention policies and statutory revisions to keep our K-12 youth in schools.
Beckie Mostello
Beckie Mostello is a public education parent and a former school teacher in Jefferson County Public Schools, Colorado. She has advocated for supportive public education policy for several years and has volunteered with several campaigns to support public education.
Beckie has a B.S. in Elementary Education from Indiana University Northwest.
Phil Sorensen
Phil Sorensen is a retired secondary Science educator who did his teaching in Nevada. Phil is currently a UniServ Director with the Aurora Education Association and the Littleton Education Association, where he has continued his advocacy for public education. Phil and his wife Lauren, also an educator, have lived in Colorado since
2020 and have continued their education advocacy and activism here.
Paula Noonan
Paula Noonan is a long-time public education advocate. She led school bond
campaigns for Jefferson County Schools in the 1980s and 1990s. She joined the
Jefferson County School Board from 2009-2013. She has written numerous articles for Colorado Politics on public school issues. She is the owner of Colorado Capitol Watch, a Colorado legislature bill and legislator tracking online program.
Anna Noble
Anna Noble is a Ph.D. student in Education Policy at our Graduate School of Education
and a former science teacher in Denver Public Schools. She studies ideological
tensions in portfolio-managed school districts and is currently focusing on how different conceptualizations of "equity" relate to the politics of education reform, organized labor, and social justice movements.
Tom Griggs
Tom Griggs is an associate professor emeritus in the School of Teacher Education at the University of Northern Colorado. He has been a strong advocate for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse education in our state. His engagement in Colorado state education policy includes having served as past president and board member of the Colorado Association for Bilingual Education, a candidate for the State Board of Education, and chair and founding board member of Coloradans for Public Education Policy (the group that A4PEP derived from). He has engaged in a wide range of other education-related community service at all levels, from local to international.
Dr. Griggs won a Fulbright Distinguished Teaching grant to work in Brazil and has volunteered and consulted with education-related entities throughout Latin America. He spent a year as a Visiting International Professor at the Universidade Federal dos Vales de Jequitinhonha e Mucuri (UFVJM), in Brazil. He is a certified secondary level teacher in English and Social Studies and currently is a substitute teacher in Thompson and Poudre School Districts, in Loveland and Fort Collins.
As the beneficiary of a public education from his elementary through doctoral education and professionally since, Dr. Griggs has long been a close observer of our school system, both as a student and as an educator. He is both a supportive voice promoting the interests of our
children, their families, teachers, and schools, and a passionate believer in the critical importance of a viable, responsive, and effective public education system in a democratic society.
