February 08, 2022 11:29 AM UTC

School Board Hubris: It's 2015 All Over Again

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• by: Colorado Pols

In the last week, a plot by the newly-elected conservative majority on the Douglas County Board of Education to oust the district’s popular superintendent Corey Wise and roll back the district’s equity policies to something more satisfactory to the far right exploded in controversy after conservative board members allegedly violated open meetings laws in the process. Wise was fired by the district in a 4-3 vote ending over a quarter-century of service to DCSD, but as Denver7 reports, the backlash is just ramping up:

Students across Douglas County walked out of school Monday to make their voices heard following the decision by the school district’s Board of Education to fire now-former superintendent Corey Wise on Friday.

“He’s done so much for the teachers here,” junior Audrey said Monday…

A lot of people don’t really care about the school board. But there are quite a few teachers and parents and students who genuinely know Corey Wise and loved him,” Audrey said. [Pols emphasis]

The Denver Post’s Jessica Seaman:

At Monday’s walkout, students felt Wise supported the district’s equity policy and now they fear that without him the district will disband the equity advisory committee, said Mia Warren, 18, who served on the student board that helped select the former superintendent to lead the district.

“All their voices went into the trash,” the Highlands Ranch High senior said. “We wanted somebody who did believe in equity. It’s just really sad to see it go away so fast.”

Meanwhile, in similarly conservative Mesa County, a similar drama is playing on as School District 51’s leadership face a hostile new board majority with parent and teacher support. As the Grand Junction Sentinel’s Nathan Deal reports:

Diana Sirko, [Brian] Hill and Tracy Gallegos each received a warm welcome Monday night from hundreds of School District 51 students, staff members and parents who are concerned about the futures of the three officials in Mesa County schools.

The superintendent, assistant superintendent, and director of equity and inclusion, respectively, were flooded with support before a special Board of Education meeting at R-5 High School in which a private executive session was held discussing the contracts of each…

Nick Allan, who ran against now-board Vice President Will Jones for the District D seat on the board in November and lost 52% to 48%, said that the events in Douglas County “100%” sparked more motivation for students, staff and parents to demonstrate their opposition to the new conservative bloc of Jones, President Andrea Haitz and Secretary/Treasurer Angela Lema potentially pursuing similar actions with Sirko, Hill and Gallegos’ employment.

In both locations, you have new ideologically polarized conservative majorities making sudden changes impacting not just nonpolitical career professionals but also students in tangible ways. In doing so, they’re alienating parents and students, and galvanizing political opposition to the new majority–and the very real danger is that freshly aggrieved opposition will be much more motivated than those of the majority.

That’s exactly what happened, as longtime readers will recall, in 2015 in Jefferson County after a right-wing school board majority snuck into power in the otherwise-sleepy 2013 off-year elections. Not only did the “WNW” majority go down in flames, losing their seats by a consistent over 60% margin in a recall election, but the campaign to oust the Jeffco board majority established lasting political networks that have helped cement Democratic control in once-swing Jeffco in the years since. DougCo and Mesa County are a long way behind Jeffco in terms of that kind of political maturation, but school board ideological overreach is proving itself to be a reliable waypoint on the road to lasting change.

When you teach the kids early on who they can trust, they remember.