The African Leadership Group, through its advocacy and civic engagement, aims to improve educational quality and options for our families. Our action agenda includes issues like fair funding, quality options, high standards and accountability, excellent educators, and education-to-workforce pathways.Â
By organizing and activating the community, our goal is to speak with a unified voice and take collective action toward improving educational quality in Colorado, and especially in the Denver-metro region where most of the state’s African immigrants and people of color live.
Reflecting the families we serve, ALG has long been a supporter of public charter schools, because these independently run, publicly funded schools provide parents with a wide array of choices for their children.
Charter schools have successfully beaten back threats to their growth and even their existence over the years, because a coalition of Republicans and more centrist Democrats have seen them as a beneficial option for families.
This November, however, charter schools face a more subtle threat. Four seats on the nine-member State Board of Education (SBE) are open, and it appears highly likely that the balance on the board will shift from pro-charter to at least somewhat anti-charter.
Such a shift would be highly significant, because the SBE hears appeals of charter school denials issued by local school districts, and has the power to overturn such denials, both of new school applications and contract renewals for existing schools.
The SBE has been a champion of charters for many years, regularly overturning capricious charter school denials by local school boards. If, in fact, the composition of the SBE changes, then that backstop for charters will disappear, and many schools could face closure in the future. And promising new charters might never get off the ground.
The likely biggest change to the board’s composition comes in District 8, which includes Boulder County. There, long-time charter supporter Angelika Schroeder, cannot run again because of term limits. The Democrat vying to replace her in this heavily Democratic district is Kathy Gebhardt, a lawyer who is skeptical at best about charter schools.
Even if no other changes were to occur, the shift from Schroieder to Gebhardt would tilt the board’s balance away from a pro-charter stance. Gebhardt has said she wants more charter approval and renewal decisions to stay at the local level, indicating a reluctance to overrule local decisions.
Also on the ballot in November is Amendment 80, a proposed constitutional amendment that would enshrine school choice in the Colorado Constitution. If Amendment 80 were to pass, it would seem to protect the general existence of charter schools in Colorado, though it might not act to protect any individual school from closure or denial.
As a nonprofit organization, ALG does not endorse candidates, and nothing here should be construed as an endorsement. We simply urge everyone to educate themselves about the issues and to vote on November 5.
