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Polis opts Colorado into federal scholarship program as education spending swells
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Christian Home Educators of Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Polis opts Colorado into federal scholarship program as education spending swells

By Colleen Enos | Commentary, Christian Home Educators of Colorado With Christmas right around the corner, we are all shopping in earnest. This flurry of activity makes us focus on our budget and how much we can spend on all that Christmas cheer. We are carefully counting our pennies, while the State of Colorado’s Budget continues to spend more each year. Governor Polis’ budget request for 2026 is over $50 billion. Education spending is no exception. Colorado’s per-pupil spending is $18,130, an increase of 7.4% since 2020, according to the Reason Foundation. As enrollment in public schools continues to decline, funding is going in the opposite direction. Coloradans are asking, “Where is all the money going?” Staffing levels are up, even with a 4.6% drop in public...
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The Modern Cult Operating in Plain Sight in Our Schools
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Local, Top Stories

The Modern Cult Operating in Plain Sight in Our Schools

By Laureen Boll | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice In the 1970s, the U.S. was gripped by a wave of predatory cults that preyed on the vulnerable, even children. Groups such as the Hare Krishnas and  Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church convinced their disciples that parents were outdated obstacles to living one’s best life, and often convinced these youngsters to leave their homes.  Once parents were out of the picture, the cult leader became the child’s new point of authority.  Thousands of families were shattered, with children vanishing into underground networks, never to be heard from again. As someone who came of age during that era, I remember the urgent warnings from parents like my own: stay vigilant, spot the signs of manipulation, and neve...
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Calls Grow For Red States To Challenge SCOTUS Ruling On Schooling For Illegal Aliens
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The Federalist, Approved, Commentary, National

Calls Grow For Red States To Challenge SCOTUS Ruling On Schooling For Illegal Aliens

By: Shawn Fleetwood | The Federalist If Republicans play their cards right, they could potentially topple a SCOTUS decision that opened America’s schools to illegal aliens. The culmination of a disastrous 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision granting illegal aliens access to American public schools has seemingly taken center stage in Charlotte, North Carolina, this week. After the Department of Homeland Security revealed Saturday that U.S. immigration officials would be conducting enforcement operations throughout the city, local media began reporting that an unusually high number of students were marked absent from school. According to data in these reports, roughly 30,000 students did not attend Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools on Monday. (“Officials initially rep...
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Charter Renewals, Transgender Athlete Rules Dominate Douglas County Board Debate
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CBS Colorado, Approved, Local

Charter Renewals, Transgender Athlete Rules Dominate Douglas County Board Debate

By: Olivia Young | CBS Colorado Updated on: November 11, 2025 / 10:24 PM MST / CBS Colorado As of 9:45 p.m. Tuesday, the Douglas County School Board had not yet voted on a controversial resolution regarding charter schools in the Colorado county. Douglas County residents packed the final school board meeting under the current board. Last week, voters chose a progressive slate of school board candidates who ran on a campaign of data over politics, teacher retention and equal opportunities for students, flipping the board. Clark Callahan, Kyrzia Parker, Tony Ryan and Kelly Denzler are expected to be sworn in in early December, joining like-minded current members Brad Geiger, Susan Meek and Valerie Thompson. The outgoing board members are Kim Moore, Becky Meyers,...
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Denver voters choose union-backed Democrats over reform in school board sweep
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Chalkbeat Colorado, Approved, Local

Denver voters choose union-backed Democrats over reform in school board sweep

By Melanie Asmar | Chalkbeat Colorado A “blue wave” swept across the country on Election Day. But in Denver, all the school board candidates were Democrats. So, faced with similar choices, voters bubbled their ballots for the candidates endorsed by a Democratic stalwart: the teachers union. “If you’re in a blue city and you’re a blue voter, you’re going to vote for the true-blue candidates — and the true-blue candidates were the union candidates,” said Van Schoales, a longtime supporter of the Democratic brand of education reform. For many years, Denver Public Schools was considered a national exemplar of the type of education reform that favors school choice and charter schools but not private school vouchers. A 2019 teachers strike sparked in part by pushback to reform polici...
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Heidi Ganahl and Tori Stork end the “DougCo Dirty Dozen” with a warning to voters
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

Heidi Ganahl and Tori Stork end the “DougCo Dirty Dozen” with a warning to voters

By RMV Staff | Rocky Mountain Voice If Colorado’s education battles mirror the nation’s divide, Douglas County may be the front line. After two weeks and twelve hard-hitting episodes, Heidi Ganahl and her daughter, Tori Stork (formerly Ganahl), have made their case through the “Douglas County Dirty Dozen” video series: the state’s most conservative district is facing a coordinated push from national unions and progressive networks intent on steering local classrooms away from parents and community values. The First Six: Unions, Books, and Boundaries Heidi Ganahl's first six videos exposed the growing influence of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in Douglas County. Four candidates—Kyrzia Parker, Clark Callahan, Tony Ryan, and Kelly Denzler—each received $2,500 from AFT Col...
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Safety, Discipline, and Learning at Heart of Denver School Board Races
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CBS Colorado, Approved, Local

Safety, Discipline, and Learning at Heart of Denver School Board Races

By Olivia Young | CBS Colorado Voters will elect four members of the Denver School Board next week. That will determine a majority on the seven member board and the future direction of the district, including the tenure of Superintendent Dr. Alex Marrero. DPS parents who are stressing the importance of casting ballots talked with CBS News Colorado. Chanele Simmons is a business owner and mom to three DPS students attending schools in far northeast Denver. She says her children's well-being is on her mind every day they're in classes. "That they're good and safe, that they're learning and that they're emotionally great," she said. Simmons would like to see the next Denver Board of Education focus on bringing down class size. She fears with the current class sizes are making i...
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While she fought cancer, a Durango teacher moved in on her child
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

While she fought cancer, a Durango teacher moved in on her child

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice When Colorado mom Cindy Stein sat before state lawmakers last spring, she was still recovering from cancer—and from losing her child to a teacher’s influence in a system that no longer sees parents as essential. “While I was fighting for my life, this teacher inserted herself into my daughter’s world, convincing her to reject me and her family,” Stein told the Senate Judiciary Committee.  https://twitter.com/OffThePress1/status/1917709537177424184 The clip spread quickly online. A month earlier, the Daily Wire broke the story, exposing what she says Durango schools tried to keep quiet. When a teacher’s comfort crossed a line Stein says her 16-year-old met Durango High School math teacher Joanne Smotherman while she was enduring...
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Classroom or campaign: NEA handbook sparks questions in Mesa County
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The Business Times, Commentary, Local, Top Stories

Classroom or campaign: NEA handbook sparks questions in Mesa County

By Austin DeWitt | Commentary, The Business Times In the last two months, the National Education Association (NEA) released its 2025 Handbook, the document that sets the goals and priorities for the nation’s largest teachers’ union for the coming year. And then, just as quickly, it was gone. Within 24 hours, the handbook was quietly removed from its website. Why? What was so controversial that it had to be scrubbed from public view? Fortunately, a copy was preserved before it disappeared, and what it contains should give every educator, parent and taxpayer pause. What the NEA Is Promoting The handbook calls for “racial quotas over merit” – a direct rejection of merit-based advancement – and instructs that “all educators must acknowledge the existence of white supremacy culture ...
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Board of Education clash over science standards reveals how politics steers Colorado classrooms on climate change
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Board of Education clash over science standards reveals how politics steers Colorado classrooms on climate change

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Politicizing climate change Let me start with a quote from the CPR article linked at bottom. The article is about how the Colorado State Board of Education recently amended science standards. "The board’s lengthy discussion reflects how a topic the scientific community agrees on — that human activities cause global warming — can become political outside of scientific circles." The article then proceeds to detail how conservative/Republican members of the Board of Ed sought amendments to some of the science standards around global warming. There is, conversely, little to nothing about the liberal/Democratic board members, save for some snappy comebacks included by CPR's Brundin. As for the Republican members, th...
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