Public Education
Advocate & Activist

A thoughtful and passionate advocate...

for teachers, school system staff, students, and their families. I work and have worked at many levels in this advocacy over the last three decades. I have volunteered locally in the schools and school district committees in my current hometown of Fort Collins, CO, where my kinds attended schools through their graduations from high school. At the state level, I have served as the chair of the Democratic Party’s education policy advocacy sub-group. I also served as the first board chair of a group now known as Advocate for Public Education Policy (A4PEP) nearly a decade ago; I am proud to claim that A4PEP has sometimes been referred to as “my brainchild.”

Much more recently, I have been helping qualify a state ballot initiative to provide adequate funding for public education and healthcare in Colorado, as well as canvassing extensively for my preferred gubernatorial candidate in the 2026 election cycle. Throughout my time in Colorado, I have advised policy makers at all levels on education policy and politics, as well as led workshops and other forms of professional development internationally.

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A brief history of my volunteer and advocacy work in the public school system

I have played the following volunteer roles in Poudre School District (PSD), in education, and in the larger community:

(a) parent of two PSD graduates who attended the Lab School for Creative Learning, Lincoln Middle School, Poudre High School, and Polaris Expeditionary Learning School over the courses of their student careers;

(b) classroom volunteer;

(c) board member and past president of the Fort Collins Food Co-op;

(d) board member and past president of the Colorado Association for Bilingual Education;

(e) member of the site-based management team at the Lab School for Creative Learning in Fort Collins;

(f) representative to the PSD District Advisory Board for the Lab School for Creative Learning;

(g) member of the Foothills Unitarian Church Board of Trustees in Fort Collins;

(h) Democratic Party candidate for State Board of Education representative, in Colorado's 4th Congressional District (in 2006);

(i) member of PSD’s Equity and Diversity Advisory Council for most of two decades;

(j) member of the City of Fort Collins’ Air Quality Advisory Board;

(k) chair of the Democratic Education Initiative (the advocacy group affiliated with the Colorado Democratic Party);

(l) co-founder and initial board chair of a statewide non-profit organization now known as Advocates for Public Education Policy (www.a4pep.org). I am currently a member of A4PEP’s Advisory Committee;

(m) Board member, Colorado chapter of the Partners of the Americas (www.partners.net); and

(n) Advisory board member, Mother International Institute of Education (www.miied.com.au) , an organization dedicated to providing postsecondary educational opportunities to Afghan young women.

I am a supporter of teachers, school system staff, students, and their families at all levels: locally, statewide, nationally, and internationally.

--Tom Griggs, Ph.D., Associate Professor Emeritus
Foundations of Education &
Bilingual/ESL Education
School of Teacher Education,
University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO

Former Visiting International Professor
Universidade Federal dos Vales
do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri (UFVJM)
Diamantina, Minas Gerais, Brazil