Why might Colorado parents want to reaffirm their right to school choice by adding it to the state constitution? Isn’t our state already a national leader in offering pre-K-12 educational options?

Homeschooling, online learning and of course charter schools are thriving and broadly popular in Colorado. As of the 2022-23 academic year, 268 public charter schools were educating, uplifting and, in many cases, changing the lives of more than 137,000 students across Colorado. That’s over 15% of public school enrollment, a big stride for public education.

So, why worry?

Because the coast is far from clear for school choice — despite its wide-ranging public support and its many political allies, including Gov. Jared Polis.

Look no further than a bill in the spring 2024 legislative session, which adjourned last month. House Bill 24-1363 sought to inflict a death by a thousand cuts on Colorado’s nationally acclaimed and broadly popular charter schools. The legislation would have attacked the publicly funded, autonomously designed and run charters from every angle.

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Behind its pretext as an effort to increase charter school accountability — as if it were needed — was a bill full of booby traps. It cynically set up obscure, arcane policy twists intended to do their damage while flying under the radar. It would have suffocated applications for new charters as well as charter schools in operation with  bureaucratic requirements masquerading as checks and balances.

The bill had the backing of big guns — particularly the teachers unions, which bitterly oppose charter schools. But it ran into opposition from school-choice supporters among the Legislature’s ruling Democrats, as well as from their fellow Democrat and staunch charter-school supporter in the Governor’s Mansion. The bill at last died in a committee in April.

But even if that assault was stopped, it is one of only many that have been mounted by choice opponents in the Legislature — and many more that are likely to be attempted.

Which is why the pro-school choice advocacy group Advance Colorado has decided to launch a preemptive strike. Noting the “annual barrage of legislative assaults” on school choice, the group has written a citizens initiative that would ask voters statewide to secure school choice in the Colorado Constitution.

This week, the group released a white paper it wrote that shores up the case for the ballot initiative.

“The current bipartisan consensus surrounding school choice, including the support of Democratic Gov. Jared Polis (a charter school founder), is not permanently guaranteed,” Advance Colorado warned in a news release Thursday. “The reform needed to secure those rights is to place them in the state Constitution.”

The group contends its Initiative 138 “will create very high legal hurdles to repealing or diminishing these rights.”

“The people of Colorado cannot afford to wait for anti-choice activists to take away educational options for children,” the white paper states.  “Putting the right to school choice in the Colorado Constitution grants it legal advantages a normal statute does not have.”

It seems supporters of school choice are fed up after decades of attempts to sabotage meaningful options for kids. Perhaps enough Colorado parents are fed up to enact constitutional guarantees.

For more information, go to: www.advancecolorado.org

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board