After Uproar, Denver School Board Retreats on Curriculum

GOLDEN, Colo. - A battle over teaching American history that stirred student protests and kindled a debate about censorship in schools reached an emotional climax on Thursday night as hundreds of parents and students here in suburban Denver sparred with a conservative school board majority over a proposal to create a curriculum-review panel.

But after two weeks of demonstrations and a fierce backlash across Colorado and beyond, the Jefferson County school board scrapped a plan that sought to teach students the 'benefits of the free enterprise system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights' while avoiding lessons that condoned 'civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.' Instead, the board voted 3-2 to adopt a compromise that would allow community members, students and teachers to join the experts who already conduct curriculum review for the school district.

The superintendent, Dan McMinimee, who suggested the compromise, said it represented the 'middle ground' in a fevered debate that pitted the board's three new conservative members against students, parents, the teachers' union and other critics who opposed an effort to steer lessons toward the 'positive aspects of the United States and its heritage.'

The measure passed over the objections of two board members who said they liked the compromise, but still had questions and needed more time to review it. As the board members cast their votes, audience members who packed into a meeting room here booed and shouted, 'Resign!' and 'Recall!'

'You really feel powerless,' said Michele Patterson, the head of the parent-teacher association. 'It's heartbreaking.'

For two hours, dozens of parents, students and community members derided the idea of sanitizing history or of tilting a curriculum to suit a particular political view. They also criticized board members for suggesting that the teachers' union and other board critics had been using the students as pawns.

'We know what we stand for and what we want,' Ashlyn Maher, a senior, told the board. 'We find it insulting that you and others would say we're pawns of anyone else. It is our education that is at stake.'

Outside the district offices, students and parents carried signs saying 'Stop Censoring Our History' and 'Bleep Censorship!' As the meeting got underway, they sat in the grass and listened to a live feed of the proceedings.

The original proposal to create a panel to examine what students were learning in Advanced Placement United States History and elementary-school health classes crystallized months of tensions here in Colorado's second-largest school district.

Since November, when voters elected a slate of conservative reformers over three union-backed candidates, the board and its critics have clashed over teachers' pay and charter schools, expanding full-day kindergarten and the resignation of a long-serving superintendent. But after Julie Williams, one of the three new members, proposed the curriculum-review committee last month, hundreds of high-school students staged walkouts and teachers shut down schools by calling out sick en masse.

Civil liberties groups and several prominent Democrats in Colorado cheered on the students. Senator Mark Udall and Representative Ed Perlmutter issued supportive statements and urged the board to hear out the students. Representative Jared Polis, a Democrat from Boulder, sent a few satirical Twitter messages under the hashtag #JeffCoSchoolBoardHistory, which offered humorously whitewashed versions of American history.

The College Board, which administers Advanced Placement programs and exams, warned Jefferson County that a course could not carry an 'A.P.' designation 'if a school or district censors essential concepts.'

At the meeting on Thursday, Ms. Williams said she had never wanted to censor history classes, but simply to evaluate recent changes to A.P. United States History that have drawn criticism from the Republican National Committee and some conservative educators.

'My proposal was aimed to increase community engagement and transparency so people do know what is being taught to their children,' she said. 'We want increased transparency, increased accountability and increased community engagement.'

Even the board's critics, as they looked at the signs, homemade T-shirts and hundreds of people inside and outside the district offices on Thursday, said they agreed that the community was now undoubtedly engaged.

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