blaine amendment
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The dinosaurs of the Douglas County School Board
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Innovation in education is happening across the United States, but unfortunately there are those who want to stand in the way of progress and cling to the past here in Colorado. And no one represents the past these days better than the Douglas County School Board, which recently voted to end a scholarship program that would have…
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Colorado voters set to decide school board and city council races, contentious ballot measures
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Voters across Colorado finish casting ballots at 7 p.m. tonight, deciding city council and school board races as well as local ballot issues ranging from funding for affordable housing and limits on oil and gas drilling to road improvements and municipal high-speed internet. For the first time in eight years, though, there isn’t a statewide…
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Foes of school choice in DougCo rest their case on an odious policy with a dark history
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Debate surrounding state constitutional “Blaine Amendments,” which prohibit government aid to “sectarian” institutions, has reached a crescendo as a result of the high-profile school board race in Douglas County. As deeply consequential litigation over Blaine Amendments and parental choice hangs in the balance between two opposing slates of school board candidates, some anti-choice interest groups…
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SLOAN: Are only the teachers unions paying attention?
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It is not inaccurate to say that the future of education reform, at least in the near term, rides heavily on the outcome of the Douglas County School Board race. Gauging by the amount of money they are throwing at it, the teachers unions would agree. Here’s why: in 2011 the incumbent reform-minded board instituted…
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Douglas County should expand, not limit, educational freedom
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It’s becoming harder for opponents of education freedom to come up with legitimate reasons families should not have more options when deciding the best possible education options for their children. The U.S. Supreme Court made it more difficult with a pair of recent rulings, including one that said denying approximately 500 families in Douglas County the ability to…
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Colorado’s Catholics mobilize against the state’s ‘Blaine amendment’
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At first blush, it seems like an innocuous restatement of bedrock public policy: “No appropriation shall be made for charitable, industrial, educational or benevolent purposes to any person, corporation or community not under the absolute control of the state, nor to any denominational or sectarian institution or association.” That’s Article V, Sec. 34 of the…
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Denver archbishop hails U.S. Supreme Court’s ‘welcome surprise’
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Whatever the implications of last month’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer for a pending challenge of a school-voucher program in Douglas County, Denver’s influential Roman Catholic Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila sees the development as great news for religious freedom in general. That’s the upshot of a piece he penned last week for the…
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Colorado’s school voucher battle heats up again as DougCo case gets a new lease on life
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It has been two years since the Colorado Supreme Court said “no” to a Douglas County School District voucher program that would have defrayed the cost of private-school tuition – including at parochial schools – for parents who sought that alternative. The court’s majority held that the state constitution included, “broad, unequivocal language forbidding the…
