Can a political party cynically slam the schoolhouse door in the face of special needs kids and get away with it?

Colorado Democrats just did, with apparently no political penalty and not even a nudge from their collective conscience.

A bill sponsored by state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer addressed a significant need in Colorado’s education system. If a family with a special needs child finds current public-school programming is not fully meeting their child’s needs, the bill gave a portion of the state’s per-pupil spending to that family to make a better choice. The funds could be used at another school or for other specific educational services.

And, yes, those choices can be at non-public schools.

Which, predictably, causes the teacher unions to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of the education wars – pulling the leashes of their political pets at the Capitol tight.

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The basic facts that make the bill necessary are not in dispute. Colorado students who have an individualized education plan (IEP) have a vast range of educational challenges and needs. In many cases, those needs can be met by a public school or a charter public school in their home district. But there can be educational, physical or psychological complexities that require a specialized program offered by non-public schools. Or there may be additional services available in the private sector that families need to supplement what the public schools offer.

It’s also not in dispute children with IEPs are struggling academically, with only single-digit percentages of middle schoolers scoring proficient in math and language arts.

The bill was carefully tailored to this population.

It offered a wide range of services to be funded including occupational, behavioral and physical therapies. To receive an Empowerment Scholarship Account, a child must have been diagnosed with at least one criterion such as traumatic brain injury, autism, intellectual disability, hearing, speech impairment, visual impairment or others.

It’s common sense, carefully crafted and focused on serving a specific population that needs more school options.

But here’s where the education establishment groups become incontinent.

If a family has means, the choice of finding the best program to fit their child’s needs is based on the specifics of the program and its quality, not whether it is offered by a public entity. However, if the family lacks financial power, often families of color, the choice is often to accept what public schools can offer and endure with the knowledge those services may fall short.

The bill would have helped address this disparity.

The teachers union, passionately in love with the status quo, snidely says if you want a non-public program, pay for it – even if you can’t – and even though you do pay taxes toward the schools. The needs of the child, which can be very specialized, be damned.

Are there rational reasons to vote against special needs families?

It’s not a fiscal decision.

According to the state Department of Education, Colorado’s public school system is a $6.4 billion enterprise, when you include all sources of funding. The fiscal note for the bill says the scholarship program in its first year of operation would have cost approximately $136 million to help these kids. That’s 2.1%.

The same people who are not troubled by the fiscal impact of the continuing waves of illegal immigrants arriving in our sanctuary state, and are eager to provide a menu of expensive taxpayer-funded services to them, they clutch their pearls at giving a Colorado special needs child $9,000 to put in her backpack to go to a better school.

How many kids would the bill have helped?

The estimate is approximately 13,200 students would receive scholarship funds. The total public-school enrollment is 881,000, meaning a whopping 1.5% of Colorado’s school population would benefit.

Democrats can’t even say their decision to hold kids hostage is popular.  National polling shared by the reform group Ready Colorado showed savings accounts plans such as this that include non-public options are broadly supported by 88% of Colorado teachers and even 58% of Democrats.

None of these facts – and facts they are – prevented the bill from being killed in committee on a party-line vote.

No matter how small the population, or how limited the expenditure of tax dollars, these self-centered, well-funded education groups eagerly bar vulnerable children from escaping to a better future.

And their Democrat lickspittles in the legislature blindly fall into line.

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.