Many of you may remember the ongoing battle with the Jefferson County, Colorado school board - most widely known, their proposal to change the AP History curriculum and the subsequent student protests against them.
Though they didn't run openly on the platform, the 3-member board majority was supported by out-of-district conservative pro-voucher donors (and now has Americans for Prosperity backing them) and has been steadily pushing an extreme right-wing agenda. Pushing out a long-time, effective superintendentand then bringing in a much less experienced (but now much higher paid) replacement from Douglas County (where the district attempted to adopt vouchers, contrary to the state constitution). Attacking teachers and their union. Pushing funding from mill levy hikes to charter schools (which were not part of the package approved by voters for those funds). Ditching transparency for backroom decision making, disregarding Colorado's Sunshine Law. Attacking those with different viewpoints at their public meetings, even students (possibly even breaking laws on protecting confidentiality of student information). And of course, pushing for those right-wing curriculum changes on AP History. BetteNoir has a good diary recap of the history of the conservative takeover of JeffCo's school board.
Now, JeffCo residents are pushing back - the effort to gather signatures for a recall election on all three school board members is in full swing. If the signatures can be secured quickly, recall proponents hope to have the recall election concurrent with this November's election of the other two school board seats so that all five members will be before the voters at the same time.
Now it appears that Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-funded dark money group, are already organizing their efforts to support the conservative school board majority.
It is time to push back! There's info on the recall effort available at Jeffco United. The group is already halfway to its goal of raising $100,000 for the recall effort - you can contribute here. If you are a JeffCo resident, be sure to sign the petitions or help collect signatures (there are three total - one for each of the candidates being recalled).
This is a great grassroots effort to benefit Jefferson County kids - but it will take a lot of help to push back against the well-funded Koch machine, who want to make a model for their vision of "education reform" out of Colorado's largest school district. Help fight back!