A judge may have put Douglas County Schools’ voucher program on hold, but the fight over school choice south of Denver probably isn’t over.
Board member Doug Benevento said the school board will likely appeal the decision of 2nd Judicial District Court Chief Judge Michael Martinez, who also shut down the first incarnation of the program in 2011.
BENEVENTO: The school choice advocate expressed a desire to appeal the judge’s ruling.
“We still believe students deserve choice, and that parents should be in charge of their students’ education,” he told Chalkbeat Colorado. “We remain undaunted in the pursuit of empowering parents to choose the best education for their children.”
Benevento and school board president Meghann Silverthorn, the leaders in pushing for the voucher program, didn’t return Watchdog.org’s requests for comment.
The school board reimplemented the voucher program in March by a 4-3 vote after a heated and hours-long meeting. The board first created the program in 2011, but Martinez said the inclusion of religious schools violated state law. The Colorado Supreme Court upheld that decision last year, saying the state constitution contains “broad, unequivocal language forbidding the State from using public money to fund religious schools.”
So the new program excluded religious schools as a compromise, but Martinez said Douglas County can’t do that either.
Silverthorn told Watchdog in March that the compromise wasn’t optimal, but was the best option for the school board at the time.
“While it’s not the program we originally wanted, I think it’s a good thing to give choice in any way we can,” she said.
RELATED: Colorado school district will relaunch voucher program this fall
The relaunch, originally planned to begin this fall, got a tepid response from students and their parents.
Tom McMillen, director of student and parent choice for Douglas County Schools, told the Denver Post only five eligible students had applied.
Douglas County, the second largest school district in Colorado, is a suburban district of about 67,000 students.
Benevento hypothesized the litigation had a chilling effect on participation. The exclusion of religious schools also likely had a major impact; 90 percent of the students who signed up for the original program in 2011 wanted to attend those.
The U.S. Supreme Court may hear a case to consider whether the original voucher program violates the religion clauses or Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The Institute for Justice, which represented families who received scholarships under the original program, argued the Colorado Supreme Court ignored that the original program aided students, instead of schools. The group also noted other state supreme courts had upheld similar school choice programs under similar state constitutional provisions.
Now IJ attorneys Tim Keller and Michael Bindas are fighting the county in federal court over the exclusion of religious schools. The group wants to ensure any voucher program is open to students to attend either a religious or nonreligious school.
“Just to be clear, this order was entered in the state court case — not the federal case that IJ recently filed challenging the exclusion of religious schools from Douglas County’s new School Choice Grant Program,” Keller told Watchdog.