A “Democratic” Socialist Attack on Colorado’s Children
Colorado’s District 49 Board of Education (Colorado Springs metro) on Monday had to eliminate the last vestiges of Education reEnvisioned BOCES (ERBOCES). The decision creates havoc and hardship for homeschooled children—but don’t blame the board. It only tried to help ERBOCES and the thousands of children who depended on it.
Blame this cruelty on the far-left Colorado legislature, the openly socialist Colorado Education Association, and the Colorado State Board of Education and the department it governs.
District 49 did not fail Colorado’s homeschool families. It tried to serve them.
For more than a decade, D-49 and other partnering school districts attempted to create flexibility for children of all varieties. They publicly supported enrichment options for families who had already chosen to educate their children at home. They recognized that children are not identical. They are unique human beings, each created perfectly by God, with different gifts, challenges, learning styles, and needs.
Homeschool enrichment programs existed to meet some of those needs without forcing every child into the same government-assigned classroom.
That effort is now being dismantled.
The oppressors who destroyed this child-friendly program control the far-left Colorado legislature, the socialist Colorado Education Association, and the Colorado State Board of Education. These are self-serving political institutions that treat children as revenue-producing commodities to be controlled in ways that maximize benefits for adult members of the monolithic teachers’ unions.
The legislature and educational establishment have spent years tightening rules, restricting funding, and applying bureaucratic pressure so intense it would surely stop the growing homeschool movement. They finally succeeded.
When District 49 was left as the last remaining partner and state officials made continued operation untenable, the board had little choice but to dissolve ERBOCES or pay a high price imposed by the state.
This is the predictable result—which I’ve warned of for years—of a political ideology that will not tolerate academic freedom. The children belong to the state, by God, and we can’t let parents control how they learn.
The Colorado Education Association has already told us who it is. In 2023 the state’s largest teachers union formally declared that capitalism “inherently exploits children” and stands in opposition to its political goals. This is not subtle. It is an openly socialist club that views parental choice as a threat to its power and funding.
Legislators whom the union funds in return for political outcomes have delivered what this special interest group paid for. They steadily erode parental choice in education and will soon come after charter schools, private schools, and tax incentives that fund private scholarships. Just watch.
The Colorado Department of Education and State Board have enforced the resulting regime with letters, deadlines, and regulatory pressure that left local partners with no viable path forward. Having won this battle, they’ll have an insatiable appetite to move society backward to the days when parents and children had no options but the neighborhood attendance center.
These institutions do not care about the special needs of individual children. They care about control. A child who thrives with one day of enrichment, outdoor learning, or specialized support outside the standard system is a problem to them—not a success. Uniformity is easier to manage than excellence tailored to the child.
These power-mongers would overturn Brown v. Board of Education if given the chance.
Brown was the first great school choice victory in modern America. It rejected the idea that government could assign children to schools based on a collective political preference and deny them better options. The parents in Brown demanded the right to escape a system that failed their children. That principle remains the moral core of school choice: the child is not the property of the state, and parents have the right—and the duty—to seek the educational options that fit their children best.
Today’s “Democratic” socialists invert that principle. They treat the government school system as the default owner of the child and view every meaningful alternative as a threat to be regulated, defunded, or dissolved. Homeschool enrichment programs that helped thousands of Colorado families are simply the first of many casualties to come.
District 49 and its former partners tried to serve children as individuals. The political establishment in Denver prefers children as a collective. The difference is not technical. It is moral. And Colorado’s children are paying the price.
AI Note: This article and others are written by Wayne Laugesen over the course of hours. Like most writers, I use AI for editing, proof-reading, and research to ensure the best outcome for readers.