{"id":41808,"date":"2022-03-08T16:05:01","date_gmt":"2022-03-08T23:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-group-to-file-school-transparency-ballot-measure\/"},"modified":"2022-03-08T23:05:01","modified_gmt":"2022-03-08T23:05:01","slug":"colorado-group-to-file-school-transparency-ballot-measure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-group-to-file-school-transparency-ballot-measure\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado group to file school \u2018transparency\u2019 ballot measure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Colorado Capitol in Denver. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun)<\/span>Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Proponents of a recently defeated bill to require Colorado school districts to publish detailed lists of educational materials online plan to launch a similar effort through a 2022 ballot measure, a conservative group said Friday.<\/p>\n

State Rep. Tim Geitner, a Republican from El Paso County and the legislation\u2019s only sponsor, will file the ballot initiative with backing from the Independence Institute. The statutory measure seeks to amend Colorado law to explicitly include \u201ceducational materials\u201d in the list of records that are subject to disclosure under the Colorado Open Records Act, according to draft text.<\/p>\n

\u201cColoradans, as the investors that pay for every government expenditure, have a right to know what their government is doing \u2013 taxpayer funded schools are no exception,\u201d Geitner said in a statement. \u201cTransparency is necessary to inform parents and taxpayers on not just age-appropriate material, but on the rigor and focus of the next generation\u2018s leaders of our great state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Geitner\u2019s legislation, House Bill 22-1066, was defeated by Democrats in a 6-3 party-line vote of the House Education Committee on Thursday. It would have required all public school districts and charter schools to maintain detailed, \u201ceasily accessible\u201d lists of educational materials on their websites, including \u201ca summary of the content of the material,\u201d and to provide copies of any material to a parent at their request.<\/p>\n

Opponents of Geitner\u2019s bill included teachers\u2019 unions like the Colorado Education Association, which called the new requirements a \u201cmassive distraction\u201d for educators and school district staff.<\/p>\n

HB-1066\u2019s provisions resembled those of model legislation released in December by the Manhattan Institute and co-authored by activist Christopher Rufo, who praised Geitner\u2019s efforts to bring the \u201ccurriculum transparency\u201d movement to Colorado.<\/p>\n

Rufo is among the leaders of a national conservative movement that has crusaded against a broad spectrum of policies ranging from diversity trainings and anti-bullying programs to teachings about the centrality of slavery in U.S. history \u2013 often lumped together by opponents under the umbrella of \u201ccritical race theory,\u201d a previously obscure graduate-level academic term with little connection to K-12 curricula.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe strategy here is to use a nonthreatening, liberal value \u2013 \u2018transparency\u2019 \u2013 to force ideological actors to undergo public scrutiny,\u201d Rufo wrote on Twitter last month.<\/p>\n

As a statutory initiative, the Independence Institute\u2019s ballot measure would first need to be approved for circulation by the state Title Board, then collect and submit at least 124,632 valid voter signatures in order to qualify for the 2022 statewide ballot.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

Colorado Newsline is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent source of online news on politics, policy and other stories of interest to Colorado readers. Read more at coloradonewsline.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

initiative would require districts to publish information about curriculum materials<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[394,155,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-41808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-legislature","tag-education","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41808"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=41808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}