Protesters marched against proposed curriculum changes before a school board meeting Thursday in Jefferson County, Colo. Matthew Staver for The New York Times
After Protests the Anti-Protest History Curriculum is Scrapped
GOLDEN, Colo. — Will history be rewritten by the winners?
That was the question parents and students were asking in school hallways, in online PTA forums and on boulevards up and down this suburban Colorado school district on Friday, a day after the school board’s conservative majority voted to change how the district reviews parts of its curriculum. It was the climax of an impassioned debate over censorship, academic freedom and what to teach students about American history.
After two weeks of student protests and a fierce backlash across Colorado and beyond, the Jefferson County School Board backed away from a proposal to teach students the “benefits of the free enterprise system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights,” while avoiding lessons that condoned “civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.” But the board did vote 3-to-2 to reorganize its curriculum-review committee to include students, teachers and board-appointed community members.
The Jefferson County schools superintendent, Dan McMinimee, who suggested the compromise, said it represented the “middle ground” in a fevered debate that pitted the board’s three conservative members against students, parents, the teachers’ union and other critics who opposed the effort to steer lessons toward the “positive aspects of the United States and its heritage.” The board members who supported the proposal said they did not want to censor or distort history.
But the compromise allayed few critics. On Friday afternoon, hundreds of parents and students lined the streets in the Jefferson County School District — Colorado’s second-largest — to criticize the board’s actions as the latest in a series of divisive moves.
Parents and students have said that the board ignored dissenting voices and that the majority voted in haste, overruling the other two members when they said they needed more time to review the proposal. Parents said they were concerned that the curriculum-review committee’s members would be appointed by, and answerable to, the board.
“That still opens the door for the board to mess with curriculum,” said Jonna Levine, a parent and co-founder of the group Support JeffCo Kids. “It starts with A.P. history. What comes next? Stop and think about the books in A.P. lit they could monkey around with.”
Some called for the board’s three conservative members, who were elected last November over a slate of three union-backed candidates, to resign. Others proposed recalling them.
“They have lost my trust,” Amanda Stevens, whose children are in elementary school in the district, said in an email. “I have not seen actions that reassure me they will govern with students’ learning as their top and singular focus.”
For two hours on Thursday night, dozens of parents, students and community members spoke about how the schools lay at the heart of this quilt of suburban towns west of Denver. Families whose children graduated years ago still show up at Friday night football games. Parents live-stream school board meetings at home. Graduates move back to raise their children here.
As board members looked on, students and parents stood up to deride the idea of sanitizing history or tilting curriculum to suit a particular political view. They also criticized board members for suggesting that the teachers’ union and other critics had been using the students as pawns.
“We know what we stand for and what we want,” Ashlyn Maher, a senior, told the board. “It is our education that is at stake.”
“What’s next?” asked Jackson Curtiss, another student. “Are you going to choose science? Are you going to take down English?”
The original proposal — to create a panel to examine what students were learning in Advanced Placement United States History and elementary-school health classes — crystallized months of tension. Since the November election, the board and its critics have clashed over teacher pay and charter schools, the expansion of full-day kindergarten and the resignation of a long-serving superintendent. After Julie Williams, one of the three conservative members, proposed the curriculum-review committee last month, hundreds of high school students staged walkouts, and teachers shut down schools by calling out sick.
Civil liberties groups and several prominent Democrats in Colorado cheered the students on. Senator Mark Udall and Representative Ed Perlmutter issued supportive statements and urged the board to hear out the students. Representative Jared Polis, a Democrat from Boulder, sent Twitter messages under the hashtag #JeffCoSchoolBoardHistory, which offered up humorously whitewashed versions of American history.
The College Board, which administers Advanced Placement programs and exams, warned Jefferson County that a course could not carry an “A.P.” designation “if a school or district censors essential concepts.”
At the meeting Thursday, Ms. Williams said she had never wanted to censor history classes, but simply to evaluate recent changes to the A.P. United States History course that have drawn criticism from the Republican National Committee and some conservative educators.
“My proposal was aimed to increase community engagement and transparency, so people do know what is being taught to their children,” she said. “We want increased transparency, increased accountability and increased community engagement.”
Even the board’s critics — as they looked at the signs, homemade T-shirts and hundreds of people inside and outside the district offices on Thursday — said they agreed that the community was now undoubtedly engaged.