Students, teachers, and history win in JeffCo, Colorado, as Koch-backed school board recalled

Jefferson County, Colorado, had a big win for education and democracy Tuesday, with all three members of the county's far-right school board being recalled by voters and replaced with a completely new full five-member board. The recalled board members had been at war with local teachers—and then went to war with American history. They wanted to revamp the Advanced Placement U.S. history curriculum to "promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights" and definitely not "encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law." After months of protest, with students staging walkouts and teachers holding sick-outs, the school board backed down, but the damage had been done. Voters mounted a recall campaign, and on Tuesday it had its ultimate success.

As of 10 p.m., the Jefferson County recall effort held a resounding 64 percent to 36 percent lead. [...]

Williams, Newkirk and Witt raised the ire of thousands in the district when they hired a new superintendent from Douglas County, proposed a review of updates to the advanced placement U.S. history curriculum, hired a board attorney and instituted a new performance-based teacher compensation plan.

The three recalled board members were backed heavily by the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity.

This is my favorite part:

Julie Williams, one of the Jefferson County school board members who was recalled Tuesday, said the election was taken over by "the liberal agenda and union bosses."

"It's hard to fight the lies," she said after conceding defeat. "I will continue to fight for our kids, for stopping Common Core and the over-testing of our kids."

That's the woman who defended the assault on the AP history curriculum by making ludicrous claims about what it omitted while admitting that "I'm not familiar enough with everything that is in AP history to make that judgment" about what historical events were misrepresented by the curriculum she was attacking.