Update April `6, 2022: The fired school superintendent is proceeding to sue the school board . Former DougCo superintendent says he was fired illegally over support for masking, equity policies | Colorado Public Radio (cpr.org)
Update: April 17, 2023
Anti-wokeness and anti-masking come to a blue state county. Douglas County, a fast-growing southern suburb, one of the richest counties in the US. , is also one of blue state Colorado's largest school districts, It has been the site of tumult as conservative movements, anti-maskers and the opponents of "wokeness" in anti-Critical Race Theory have gained their control on the local school board in a recent election. The race which gave the school board a 4-3 majority involved local wealthy supporters and dark money from national political action committees opposing teaching of certain issues of race and gender equity in schools and others also opposing masking mandates. The money supporting these extreme right candidates totaled three times the money raised by their more mainstream opponents. The conservative effort to take over school boards reaches fever pitch in one Colorado district (nbcnews.com). An opponents of the winning candidates admitted " they were asleep at the wheel ". If this newly elected majority attempts to impose their views of curriculum that whitewashes racial history to reverse gender equity in school district, years more of turmoil can be expected. The new board has already acted to reverse equity policies and to oust the superintendent. As we learn to live with COVID and the virus abates, the masking issue will also become diminished as a hot button issue.
The last time in Douglas County the conservative majority got national attention is when they attempted to impose controversial programs regarding taxpay funded vouchers for religious affiliated schools. In 2011, that issue of school vouchers sparked a 7-year battle as religious conservatives controlled the board and tried to institute a voucher system that would have provided student taxpayer funded scholarships for their students to attend religious affiliated schools. Subsequent elections changed the makeup of that board. That attempt to institute vouchers ended in 2018 after the US Supreme Court had ruled against a similar case in another state. The US Supreme Court referred the matter back to the Colorado Supreme Court that had ruled earlier that the plan violated the state constitution. In 2018, the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed the case ending the voucher case attempt and the Douglas County School Borad ended the plan, which had never been put in place due to lawsuits and court challenges.
Dougco school board removes superintendent - feliciamuftic@gmail.com - Gmail (google.com)
Colorado school board votes to end voucher program | AP News 2017
Douglas County school board members decry move to oust superintendent (coloradosun.com)
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