By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice
Drake Middle School parents were told last year that students could write spoken-word poems about politics or divisive issues if they personally chose those topics.
This spring, one DMS student wrote a pro-life poem about abortion.
School officials told the student she could turn the poem in for credit, but could not read it aloud in class.
Parents had already spent more than a year warning DMS and Jeffco leaders about the school’s SLAM poetry unit before the story spread nationally.
Parents objected to SLAM poetry unit in 2025
Parents began emailing DMS leadership in 2025 after students watched “America, Reloading” and “The Star Spanglish Banner” in class.
One email sent to teacher Tanisha Lee and DMS principal Jill Kline described the material as having “incredibly controversial political themes with strong and emotional bias.”
Parent email to DMS leadership, April 2025.
“The brutal imagery of multiple school shootings, combined with nihilistic concepts that the country does not care about them and the implication that school shootings equal the Second Amendment functioning as intended, are grossly inappropriate for students, particularly in Jeffco,” the parent wrote.
The parent also objected to references targeting Christians and graphic language tied to Columbine and Sandy Hook.
The email later added, “The associated brain storm assignment lists a variety of social justice and activist causes as suggestions for issues to pick from. The student’s personal stance/beliefs are solicited after hearing only one very biased perspective on divisive and controversial issues. It is my understanding that Ms. Lee clapped her approval for both controversial poems upon their completion. This smacks of teaching twelve-year-olds what to think, not how to think.”
Lee told parents students could choose divisive topics
Lee responded the next day.
Lee response to parent complaint, April 2025.
“I completely understand how the tone and content could have come across as intense and politically charged,” Lee wrote.
She said the poems had been used in previous years as examples of SLAM poetry performance and delivery.
“It was never my intention to violate Board Policy,” Lee wrote. “The purpose of these texts is educational, not political.”
Lee also told the parent that students would later write their own spoken-word poems “but not about politics or divisive issues unless that’s something they personally choose.”
“The goal is to help them take a stance and express it with voice and purpose, not to push any particular perspective,” Lee wrote.
A brainstorming sheet used with the unit asked students to identify issues they were passionate about and what they wanted to change in the world.
Examples included gun violence, women’s rights, racial injustice, climate change, refugee crisis and voting rights.
Topic brainstorming sheet shared by parents from the DMS SLAM poetry unit.
Families were notified April 14. The poem was gone by April 16.
This school year, an April 14 email sent to families by DMS language arts teacher Thea Cudnowski said students would study “America, Reloading” during the upcoming poetry unit.
Two days later, DMS notified parents the poem would no longer be used.
DMS notified families about “America, Reloading” being removed from class instruction.
“After careful review and consideration, we have decided not to include the poem ‘America, Reloading’ in our curriculum,” the message stated.
The email said students would instead analyze a different SLAM poem titled “Why I Hate School But Love Education.”
During a May 15 appearance filling in on the Dan Caplis Show, Lindsay Datko, founder of Jeffco Kids First, said parents had spent more than a year objecting to the DMS SLAM poetry material.
“We pushed back hard,” Datko said on-air. “Jeffco schools top leadership finally agreed that this did breach controversial topics policy.”
She later added, “This has been removed from this school and we will continue to watch for it.”
A student chose abortion for her poem topic
This May, when a DMS 7th grader wrote a pro-life SLAM poem about abortion, school officials allowed her to turn the assignment in for credit. But they barred her from reading it aloud to classmates.
“A life is a life, no matter how small,” she wrote.
Another line stated, “They are created in God’s image.”
The student later told RMV she felt “punished” after being told she could not present the poem with the rest of the class.
One year earlier, parents were told students could choose divisive topics for their own spoken-word poems. For years, teachers had used “America, Reloading” for instructional purposes.
The poem “America, Reloading” in its entirety, which had been used for years in the DMS slam-poetry unit.
“America Reloading” included lines such as: “Of the twenty children murdered at Sandy Hook, Not one of them needed an ambulance. That’s how dead they were. That’s how well the Second Amendment works.”
Another section stated, “Christ could tear the nails from his hands and scrape them down a shrapnel-battered chalkboard and they’d still be praying for their bank accounts.”
The 7th grader’s poem argued against abortion and referenced faith and unborn children.
“Nothing compares to the love a mother has for her baby,” she wrote.
The DMS student’s pro-life poem.
As the last week of school started, the student’s mother Jacki Caskey told Newsmax host Todd Starnes what school officials had told her. “Under no terms is she allowed to read this poem.”
Caskey said school officials argued the poem could offend students, make students feel unsafe and was “too politically charged.”
The student later told Starnes, “I think my poem was treated differently simply because my teacher and many other teachers, like the assistant principal, did not agree with what I was saying.”
Datko says complaints never fully stopped
After videos posted by the Caskey family drew more than 2 million views online following a Libs of TikTok repost, Datko emailed Jeffco Superintendent Tracy Dorland and the full school board arguing the dispute followed years of unresolved parent complaints tied to the DMS SLAM poetry unit.
“We were made aware of the viral video featuring a 7th-grade student from Drake Middle School and her mother,” Datko wrote. “For the past two years, multiple parents have quietly raised serious concerns with school and district leaders about this very Drake SLAM poetry unit and its implementation.”
Datko email to Jeffco leadership, May 20.
During the family’s Newsmax interview, Caskey said they no longer believed earlier promises would lead to lasting changes.
“They’ll say, ‘Oh, we’ll do things differently,’ but nothing really changes,” she said.
Datko closed her email to Jeffco leadership with a warning about why families increasingly turn outside the district to force public scrutiny:
“This newest viral situation would have been avoided if district and school leaders had indeed addressed parent concerns last year and this year, as they repeatedly assured us they would. The community will naturally rely on local and national media as long as Jeffco fails to respond honestly to serious issues and enforce neutrality policy in classrooms.”
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