08-03-2025
Liberty Common teacher, administrator earns prestigioius Milken Educator Award
Chris Reynolds was sitting in the back of the gym with a handful of other teachers during an all-school assembly Friday morning at Liberty Common High School.
He had no idea, what was coming.
Then, in an effort to mimic a televised entertainment awards show, Colorado Commissioner of Education Susana Cordova, opened a sealed envelope and announced that Reynolds had won a Milken Educator Award, complete with an unrestricted $25,000 cash prize.
The awards were designed to be 'the Oscars of education,' said presenter Jane Foley, senior vice president of the Milken Educator Awards.
'We have a great Spanish teacher who was sitting behind me, and I was like, 'Oh gosh, it's going to be you,'' Reynolds said. 'I was kind of shocked when they said my name.'
Reynolds is the only Milken Educator Award winner in Colorado this year and one of just 45 nationally, Foley said. Besides Foley, a 1994 winner while she was teaching in Indiana, 10 other previous winners from five different states were on hand for the award presentation, including Scott DeVries, a retired teacher at Preston Middle School in Fort Collins who won the award in 1999.
More: Rocky Mountain High School science teacher receives Presidential Award for Excellence
All of this year's winners also receive an all-expenses paid trip to the Milken Educator Awards Forum from April 1-3 in Los Angeles, where they will have the opportunity to network with other educators 'about how to broaden their impact on K-12 education,' the Milken Family Foundation said in a news release. This year's winners will each be paired with a veteran Milken Educator mentor.
'I'm at a loss for words,' Reynolds told the assembly after receiving his award. 'My main thought is there's so many other deserving people in this building that could have and should have won this award. And so, I'm grateful to all of you that I get to work with all of you. I love my students.'
Reynolds is the assistant principal at Liberty Common High School, a charter school authorized by Poudre School District. He teaches an Advanced Placement course in microeconomics and also is the school's cross-country coach and former athletic director.
Reynolds taught economics, government, history and philosophy for 11 years at Mead High School before coming to Liberty Common four years ago, after the oldest of his two children was selected through a lottery to attend Liberty Common's elementary school.
'He's just been a perfect addition to the teaching faculty and now the administration,' said Bob Schaffer, Liberty Common's co-founder, headmaster and a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives. 'His training is classical, his commitment to the academic discipline of his coursework is pretty profound and pretty deep. He's an academic leader not just in his classroom and his department but for the entire school.'
Reynolds has a particular knack, Schaffer said, for helping students 'who have to put a little extra effort and work into getting across the finish line' to earn a high school diploma.
'He's a godsend.'
Foley travels the country throughout the school year honoring winners of the Milken Educator Awards, created in 1987 by philanthropist Lowell Milken. The goal, she said, is to honor teachers who are in the early to middle stages of their career for what they have achieved and the promise of what they can accomplish.
There are three goals, she said, in honoring the nation's top K-12 educators.
The first is to 'reward them and give them an incentive to stay in the profession,' Foley said. 'The second goal is to bring public recognition and acknowledgement' of the 'good that's happening in education.'
And the third, she said, is to get students in the audience to consider careers in education.
'We hope somebody will go home today and say, 'I'm going to be a teacher; I'm going to be a principal, just like Mr. Reynolds.'
Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@ and
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Liberty Common teacher, administrator wins prestigious national award
