The local nonprofit Parents Challenge expects hundreds of parents, students, teachers, and community leaders to gather and raise awareness and encourage parents to find out more about school choice at a rally timed to coincide with National School Choice Week.

The local event begins at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday on the steps of Colorado Springs City Hall. It will feature students and parents representing every type of school – from traditional public schools to public charter schools, to public magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and home educators.

Participants will speak and perform, and more than 600 are expected to attend.

National School Choice Week, which runs Jan. 21-27, consists of 32,000 independently planned school choice events throughout the country. Events big and small spotlight educational options for students and encourage more parents to review them.

“Parents Challenge is proud to be a sponsor of National School Choice Week because we believe that many educational options help parents to become better education consumers in advocating for their children,” said Parents Challenge Executive Director Deborah Hendrix.

Local philanthropists Steve and Joyce Schuck founded Parents Challenge to help ensure all parents and guardians, from all socioeconomic circumstances, know their children have the option to attend whichever schools best suit a student’s needs. The organization grants tuition scholarships and tries to eliminate a variety of barriers to exercising school choice.

Colorado is blessed with a growing variety of schools that offer options of traditional learning centers, public charter schools, online learning, private schools, and homeschooling. It is a win-win for children.

Colorado’s open enrollment and school funding system gives us schools that cater to children with learning difficulties, those gifted with high intelligence, those interested in music or other forms of art, those with high interest in aerospace, computer technology, or any number of other focused disciplines.

Every individual is unique, and the more schools society offers the better off we all will be.

We celebrate School Choice Week with gratitude for the limitless opportunities afforded by free market education.