In the spirit of Stock Show week, what’s the state’s beef with religious preschools?

Continuing its never-ending search for ways to constrain the freedom of people of faith, Colorado has opened a new front in its anti-religious holy war: targeting families who choose faith-based preschools.

Colorado’s new Universal Preschool (UPK) program – which has had a rocky rollout – offers generous state support for preschool families. A number of participating programs are operated by faith-based institutions.

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Some religious early childhood centers have gone to federal court to proactively challenge “non-discrimination” tenets in the state program. And bureaucrats who were seeking to retroactively excise religious instruction from eligible programs got their wrists slapped and had to reverse course.

This is great news for freedom, for school choice, and particularly for families on a limited income.

The concept of faith communities offering childcare and preschool is nothing new. The roots of faith-based preschool stretch back to the nation’s earliest years, such as a program run by the Quakers in Philadelphia in 1789.

Fast forward to today, and a survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center found during the pandemic, for example, of the 31% of working parents who used center-based care, half said they preferred a program affiliated with a faith organization.

Advocates for the benefits of preschool programs, including for Colorado’s program, point to studies that show children who enroll in pre-K are more ready to enter kindergarten, have better literacy and math skills and more. Families who choose a religious preschool believe all that plus they perceive these programs to reflect their values, be more trustworthy and have a higher quality staff.

Colorado’s program saves families $6,000 annually, arguably a door-opener for those on limited incomes. By providing state support, the program ensures families will be able to send their children to a quality preschool program that they otherwise could not afford.

The bureaucrats at the new Department of Early Childhood surely believe that. So why would they stand in the schoolhouse door to prevent little kids – particularly kids from poor families and communities of color – from having access to a program their parents want to choose?

This is anti-religious bigotry.

You can go over to the Stock Show, put lipstick and a nice hat on a pig, but it’s still a prettied-up pig. And bigotry can be couched in elegant (but faulty) legal arguments, but it’s still bigotry.

And that is why the state finds itself before a federal judge.

Two Colorado Catholic preschools are among the plaintiffs suing the state to determine whether they can be excluded from the UPK program because of their requirements that families and employees adhere to the Church’s teaching on marriage, sexuality and gender.

The concern the lawsuit raises is whether programs receiving funding must “accept any applicant without regard to a student’s or family’s religion, sexual orientation or gender identity.”

So, if this is the case, the programs have two choices: leave the state program and thus shut the door to families who need the state dollars to attend, or shelve their deeply held religious beliefs. They prefer to not do the former; they are simply not going to do the latter.

Searching for another route to prevent families from choosing religious preschools, bureaucrats quietly worked on a plan to retroactively exclude these programs if they provided religious instruction as part of their school day. The good news is Colorado media uncovered the scheme and Advance Colorado (which I advise) called foul, detailing how singling out religious programs in this way is blatantly unconstitutional. The group threatened a lawsuit.

The state prudently bailed out before this plane went down in legal flames.

Here’s what the anti-religious bigots don’t understand: Religious instruction isn’t an optional add-on, like adding Taco Tuesdays to the school menu. It is infused in the ethos of the program and in how instruction is provided. And bureaucrats arrogantly asking faith-centered programs to drop this whole faith business in return for state support is like a car dealer telling you that you can buy the car – except you can’t have the engine.

Given the significant operational problems the preschool program has experienced, a better use of bureaucrats’ time would be to make UPK work for everybody and stop wasting time stiff-arming families of faith.

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.