Voters across Colorado last week received a misleading text message from an unidentified source suggesting that the president of the state’s largest teachers union supports Amendment 80, which would change the state constitution to add a right to school choice.
The Colorado Education Association and its president, Kevin Vick, have been vocal opponents of Amendment 80, sounding the alarm that it could open up a gateway to a statewide voucher program. Voucher programs rely on public dollars to fund private school tuition, including at schools with a religious affiliation.
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Amendment 80: Placing a right to school choice in Colorado’s constitution
The measure would solidify parents’ right to send their kids to any public school, charter school, private school or homeschooling program. Opponents say it would pave the way to a state voucher program.
Read moreThe texts, which include an audio clip of a voice purported to be Vick talking about school choice, are now the subject of a campaign finance complaint filed by former state Rep. Bri Buentello, who is now chair of the Pueblo County Democratic Party. She alleged in her complaint that she “strongly suspect(s)” the texts were filed by Colorado Dawn IEC, an independent expenditure committee backing conservative candidates in local and state races, and that the group should file as an issue committee and should have disclosed in the texts that it was behind the missives. She didn’t provide specific evidence that Colorado Dawn IEC is behind the texts.
The complaint may end up being moot, however, because Colorado Dawn IEC has not reported working on Amendment 80. A separate nonprofit with a similar name, Colorado Dawn, has been supporting the measure — it reported $873,000 in spending on mailers and text messages in support of Amendment 80 on Oct. 12 — and is allowed to do so under state campaign finance laws. The nonprofit doesn’t disclose its donors.
Whether the nonprofit, if it is behind the texts, violated state campaign finance law by not providing a disclaimer with the messages is an open question.
Daniel Cole, who runs both groups, declined to comment.
The text message quotes Vick saying, “School choice has worked very well for students for years” and encourages voters to approve Amendment 80, which “would let families keep the school choice we have in Colorado right now.”
The message also includes a 19-second-long audio clip of Vick saying, “School choice itself is statutory. It has been in our program for 30 years. It has broad bipartisan support, and it has worked very well for students for a number of years.”
Vick called the text message a “deceptive tactic,” saying it “obviously clipped a small portion of the larger statement that I was making, which is that this is not needed.”
“In my mind, it’s emblematic of what this measure represents overall,” he said, adding that Amendment 80 proponents are using the popularity of school choice as “a Trojan Horse to put forth their real ambitions.” He believes those ambitions are driven by a goal to roll out a statewide voucher program.
Vick said CEA members across Colorado, including in Fort Collins and Pueblo, had received the text.
The conservative political nonprofit Advance Colorado Action is behind Amendment 80. It paid to gather signatures to get the initiative on the ballot.
Michael Fields, the president of the organization, wrote in a text message to The Sun that Advance Colorado Action did not send out the text message. He declined to comment further and did not respond to a follow-up question asking if he was aware of who sent the text message.
The ballot measure has divided education advocates and organizations in a decadeslong battle over school choice. Critics say the right to school choice is already adequately protected by state law. Fields says the constitutional amendment is needed to preserve school choice in the face of regular attacks from lawmakers.
A long list of education organizations have come out against the ballot measure, including the Colorado Association of School Boards, ACLU Colorado, the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance, Colorado Black Women for Political Action, Colorado PTA, Colorado Fiscal Institute, New Era Colorado Action Fund, AFT Colorado, the League of Women Voters of Colorado, The Bell Policy Center and the Colorado Association of School Executives.
Melissa Gibson, deputy executive director of CASE, called the text message “incredibly disappointing” when the general political climate has already become polarizing.
“I think that voters are really tired of this kind of dishonest politics,” Gibson said. “I think voters want to hear it straight and be able to have complete and accurate information to make their decisions at the ballot. And when organizations put forth information that’s intentionally misleading, that’s not helpful and I think voters recognize that.”
Amendment 80 supporters are “likely concerned that there are a lot of voters who are going to vote against it because they recognize that school choice is already protected in Colorado law,” Gibson added.