Three conservative members of the Jefferson County school board in Colorado may face consequences for seeking unpopular changes to the AP U.S. History course last year.
Critics of the school board on Tuesday submitted more than double the number of petition signatures needed to order recall votes for three members of the school board in the November election, according to the Denver Post.
“The message is clear, the people of Jefferson County want to hold this board majority accountable and demand a recall vote on November 3,” Tina Gurdikian, one of the co-founders of Jeffco United For Action, the group that organized the petitions, said on Tuesday, according to Chalkbeat Colorado.
“They really are driving away our teachers by showing a great amount of disrespect for them,” Wendy McCord, Gurdikian’s co-founder at Jeffco United For Action said of the school board, according to the Associated Press. “They are dismissive of students and parents who have concerns and try to express them as well.”
The board members — Ken Witt, Julie Williams and John Newkirk — have been criticized by students and parents for their attempted changes to the AP U.S. History curriculum.
After the College Board released a new framework for the course, which was unpopular with conservatives across the country, the newly-elected conservative faction on the Jefferson County board of education attempted to alter the College Board’s changes. The JeffCo board set out to form a curriculum review committee that would make sure that the AP U.S. History course presented “positive aspects of the United States and its heritage” and did not “encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.”
Following massive student protests in Jefferson County, the board ultimately canceled its review of the AP history curriculum.
Jefferson County residents have also recently expressed disapproval of the board’s raise for the school district’s superintendent and their salary negotiations with teachers, according to the Denver Post.
Now that the petitions have been submitted, the clerk has 15 days to verify the signatures, and then the petitions face a 15-day protest period. If the petitions are protested, the Jefferson County school district would have to fund a costly special election. Otherwise, the recall elections will take place in the November general election.
School Board President Ken Witt, one of the members who faces a recall, won’t protest the petitions and said he is not worried about the potential for a recall election.
“I’m disappointed that there is a distraction, but we’re going to remain focused on what we heard loudly from voters (in 2013),” Witt told Denver television station KUSA.
Colorado, unlike Wisconsin, seems to like recall elections. Was it not in Colorado that gun nuts pushed out a few state senators a couple of years ago?
Reminded of the ultimate outcome of the federal court suit against the Dover Area School District’s policy requiring the teaching of intelligent design after the judge decided that the policy violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Wikipedia entry on the Kitzmiller case states: “All eight of the Dover school board members who were up for re-election on November 8, 2005, were defeated by a set of challengers who opposed the teaching of intelligent design in a science class. (The ninth member was not up for re-election.) The school board president subsequently stated that the board did not intend to appeal the ruling.”
well–I’m a product of JeffCo schools. There are definitely quite a few very right-wing elements there, but my sense is on balance they are highly outnumbered. I’m hopeful that these 3 will be voted out decisively.
“…we’re going to remain focused on what we heard loudly from voters (in 2013),” Witt told Denver television station KUSA." Wonder what they heard from that thin majority in 2013. ‘We want revisionist history?’
Whatever they think they heard in 2013, they’re hearing something else this year. Just imagine voters changing their minds.