Parents protest curriculum changes in Jefferson County.
An all-out war has broken out in Jefferson County, Colorado,—or JeffCo, as it's called—as residents ready to vote on whether to eject three conservative school board members who have "championed charter schools, performance-based teacher pay and other education measures supported by conservatives." Supporters of the recall vote have drummed up $250,000 ($15,000 of it from a teachers' union) while the drive to save their jobs, led in part by the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity, has already spent around $500,000 on TV ads and plans to spend hundreds of thousands more on print ads and mailers favoring the conservative trio. Jack Healy
reports on the Nov. 3 school board election that has grown increasingly nasty.
Voters here are almost evenly divided among Democrats, Republicans and independents. In November 2013, voters broke with union-supported candidates to elect a slate of school board hopefuls running as conservative reformers.
But as those members passed new measures giving money to charters and hired a new superintendent, a backlash grew. Critics accused the board of secrecy and of trying to turn the 86,500-student district into a petri dish for conservative educational ideas. Board meetings turned into shouting matches. Upset parents spliced the live-streamed meeting video — an innovation of the new board — into outrage highlight reels. ...
In September of last year, thousands of students walked out of school when [Julie] Williams [one of three conservatives] proposed shifting the focus of the Advanced Placement United States history course toward patriotism and away from “civil disorder” and “social strife.” It was a moment when festering disputes among parents, students, teachers and the board leapt into the national news. Even though the curriculum was never changed, many voters around the district say they are still upset.