By Kelly Notarfrancesco | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
It is said there is no such thing as a free lunch. One small school district in Pueblo, Colorado, recently learned that a free lunch can be served with a side of community outrage.
When the Pueblo D70 Board of Education unanimously voted in March of 2024 to “accept” a significant in-kind gift of $700,000 from the organization TRAILS (Transforming Research into Action to Improve the Lives of Students), did they realize what they were implementing in district classrooms?
D70 accepted a “gift” of controversial psychosocial educational content, financed and promoted by multi-million-dollar non-governmental organizations dedicated to transforming the world through social change.
The “gift” unanimously accepted by the D70 Board of Education on March 5, 2024, prompted Pueblo D70 Superintendent Rhonda Rein to implement the TRAILS Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum based on Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) standards throughout the district’s K-12 classrooms.
The TRAILS curriculum was never provided for public evaluation, so parents were unaware of its implementation until six months later in September 2024, after a parent shared a TRAILS worksheet on which third graders were asked to describe themselves by declaring their preferred pronouns.
Shocked parents, concerned that their kids were being taught lessons which conflicted with their family’s values, began unravelling the backdoor process by which D70 had implemented controversial SEL lessons.
It quickly became clear that the implementation of TRAILS circumvented standard community engagement processes in possible violation of state law and district policy.
Generally, when districts implement new curriculum a transparent process is followed: there is public evaluation of the material, while the board of education reviews and formally adopts the curriculum and related contracts. Surprisingly, public records acquired under the Colorado Open Records Act revealed that Pueblo D70 appeared to skip all the public engagement steps when implementing the “gift” of TRAILS SEL curriculum in its classrooms.
D70 never submitted a Request for Proposal for any SEL curriculum. D70 provided no opportunity for public review of the TRAILS SEL curriculum, nor was the content reviewed or publicly adopted by D70’s Board of Education.
And most concerning, D70 never signed a contract with TRAILS.
Source: https://district70co.diligent.community/home/public/document/24471
The district simply implemented the SEL curriculum without any parent stakeholder engagement, formal process, or typical legal agreements.
By implementing TRAILS outside of a contractual agreement, Pueblo D70 may have violated Colorado’s Student Data Privacy and Security Act. Colorado state law requires that “Each Local Education Provider shall post and maintain on its website a list of the School Service Contract Providers the Local Education Provider contracts with and a copy of each contract.”
Due to the lack of any contract between D70 and TRAILS, TRAILS was never listed on D70’s legally required Student Data Privacy webpage.
Parents were surprised to discover that district leadership began its “partnership” with TRAILS months before the auspicious “gift” was presented to the Board of Education.
Records show that D70 administrative leadership met in November of 2023 with TRAILS staff along with representatives from the Colorado Forum, an exclusive invite-only organization of Colorado business and foundation leaders, and Prosono, a company which helps clients reach their social impact goals designed to “make the world a better place.” The district has not explained why public policy and social change organizations were involved in implementing a mental health program and SEL curriculum in one of Colorado’s public-school districts.
Additionally, according to the University of Michigan which was the birthplace of TRAILS, the program is now a project sponsored by the left-leaning Tides Center.
The mission of the Tides Center is clear: they center equity and justice in all their work, leveraging collective power to facilitate transformative social change.
Does the implementation of a curriculum which is focused on children’s emotional reactions to social situations, and which is sponsored by organizations dedicated to transforming society warrant a transparent public review and approval process? At a minimum?
Source: University of Michigan article linked above.
Parents and teachers voiced many concerns over the TRAILS curriculum to district leaders.
Teachers were worried they were being asked to implement psychoeducation, for which they were not properly trained.
Parents were concerned that the district provided an insufficient opt-out process and that the TRAILS terms of use may violate the U.S. Department of Education’s Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment – which governs the administration of surveys related to mental problems or other personally held beliefs.
The privacy concerns prompted the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network (CPAN) to file a formal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).
Due to the uproar from parents, which included the submission of several formal grievances against the district, the Pueblo D70 Board of Education voted in December 2024 to “pause further implementation” of the TRAILS Tier 1 curriculum, yet did not vote to completely remove TRAILS Tier 1.
This has left some parents wondering if the controversial lessons are still making their way into some classrooms.
At that same meeting, the D70 Board of Education simply removed a vote to approve TRAILS Tiers 2 and 3.
So – to this day, the board has never voted to adopt TRAILS, nor has the board voted to completely remove all TRAILS curriculum either. As district leadership was implementing the curriculum without board approval in the first place, parents remain unconvinced that TRAILS has been eliminated from Pueblo D70 classrooms.
The Pueblo D70 Board of Education should consider passing a clear directive to D70 administration – to remove all TRAILS content from district classrooms.
Additionally, the Board of Education should initiate a district-wide committee of stakeholders including district administration, board members, teachers, and parents to analyze the TRAILS implementation process. The committee should be tasked with making recommendations for improving policies and procedures to ensure legal processes and proper community oversight is provided for future program and curriculum implementations.
The unconventional TRAILS implementation in Pueblo D70 paints a troubling picture: powerful NGOs focused on transformational social change gaining access to children’s private emotional data by taking advantage of a vulnerable, rural district with limited financial resources and staff.
All behind parents’ backs.
Parents should not be left in the dark about what is being taught to their kids.
The Pueblo D70’s TRAILS story proves once again, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.