Protests Continue to Rock Jefferson County, Downtown Lakewood

Protests against the Jeffco School Board's conservative majority continued on Friday night, as an estimated 2500 protestors waved signs at intersections from 120th Ave in the north of Jefferson County to Ken Caryl Blvd. in the south. Newspapers as far away as Great Britain reported on the controversy.

Parents, students and teachers line Wadsworth

Blvd. in downtown Lakewood on Friday night 

to protest the actions of the Jeffco School 

Board.

The protests began last year when a newly elected conservative school board majority announced its plans to end the Jeffco school district's 45 year history of collaboration with its employee association and implement a series of controversial decisions, including the firing of Jeffco's award winning superintendent, Cindy Stevenson, and the unilateral imposition of an opaque and untested pay scheme for teachers.

It was the decision by board member Julie Williams to create a curriculum review committee, however,  that ignited the latest round of protests, sick-outs, and student walk-outs. The proposed committee would have had the mandate to seek out and bring to the board's attention classes and curriculum that failed to promote Ms. William's narrow view of patriotism, the free-market system, and history. The original text of the committee's mandate even hinted that courses that taught about safe sex, global warming, or evolution would soon be placed under the school board's microscope.

The Jeffco School Board dropped Ms. William's language at its Oct. 1st board meeting, but voted nevertheless to establish the curriculum review committee, despite nearly three hours of public comment that ran overwhelming against the proposal.

All year, I've been hearing rumblings about the Jeffco School Board's hidden agenda. Now it seems that agenda is out in the open.