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By Yesenia Robles, Chalkbeat
The president of Colorado’s largest teachers union has denounced a text message to Colorado voters that falsely implies he supports Amendment 80, which would enshrine school choice in the state constitution.
The message includes an audio clip featuring Kevin Vick, the president of the Colorado Education Association. It does not include a disclosure of who paid for it, a potential violation of state law.
“They are blatantly misrepresenting the position of myself and thousands of teachers across the state, who have been vocally opposing this damaging initiative that would open the door to diverting millions in funding away from the public schools that educate 95% of our kids and funnel it to private schools,” Vick said in a statement.
The text message juxtaposes an audio clip of Vick saying “School choice has worked very well for students for years” with an unattributed written message saying Amendment 80 would let families keep the school choice that’s in place now.
Amendment 80 opponents note that the ability for parents to choose where to send their children to school has existed for decades and believe that the amendment backers’ true purpose is to open the door for public education funds to go to private schools.
If Amendment 80 fails, the state’s current school choice will not change. Advocates for the measure say that passing it guarantees that legislators can’t attack school choice in the future.
On Thursday, Bri Buentello, the director of government affairs for Stand Colorado, another education organization opposed to Amendment 80, filed a complaint with the Secretary of State’s office regarding the messages.
A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office said that because the complaint has been filed, the office will not comment on whether the text messages violated disclosure laws.
The complaint is directed at Colorado Dawn IEC, an independent expenditure committee, which reported that it spent more than $872,000 on mail and text communications in support of Amendment 80 on October 12. Colorado Dawn is also listed as paying for the website that supports Amendment 80.
The complaint notes that because the committee is not registered as an issue committee, it may be violating state law by supporting Amendment 80.
One issue committee, School Choice for Every Child, registered with the state to support Initiative 138, which is the former name for Amendment 80. But that committee has not reported receiving or spending any money this year.
Both the issue committee and Colorado Dawn IEC have the same registered agent, Katie Kennedy, who did not respond to a request for comment about the text messages.
Colorado Dawn IEC has been the subject of at least two other similar complaints in the past, including one that resulted in a fine for improper disclosures.
Many of this year’s contributions to the Colorado Dawn independent expenditure committee come from an affiliated nonprofit that according to tax filings is chaired by Steve Durham, a Republican member of the State Board of Education, and from another group called Protect our Kids, run by Luke Niforatos, a vocal opponent of drug legalization.
Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at [email protected].
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
