Category Archives: Media

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Letters to the Editor – First Amendment Rights

First Amendment Rights (from the Gazette)

Imagine a local social studies teacher assigns an essay. Why does the First Amendment matter right here? In your town, in your high school, in 2023?

You might coach your child that afternoon over your kitchen counter. The First Amendment flings open the door for participation in our own government. It means your voice (yes, yours) matters. It allows dissent to those in power. So it’s the backbone, Johnny, of democracy.

Without that amendment, you’d explain, protests and marches could be squashed by officials or current trends. Members of certain groups could be punished. But how would you tell him about our local school district?

Twice this spring, Woodland Park School District changed their policy, prohibiting employees from speaking about the district to the press or on social media without the superintendent’s permission.

Violation meant insubordination; evidence in the form of strategic staff terminations supports this grievous reality.

U.S. District Court Judge Gallagher recently indicated portions of the policy “do have problems,” and proposed mediation between the teacher’s union and the school district.

Both parties agreed. Yet a response from the school district warned that dialing back the policy would embolden “dissident” teachers in an election year.

Hmm. Let’s look closer, Johnny. Wouldn’t those supporting the district be heard, too? What would the district want people not to say?

You might explain the employees are taxpayers with rights to articulate their views of this government institution. Some are parents, now with no option to speak on behalf of their kids—despite the board’s purported value of parental rights.

During my own service on the Board of Education, it never occurred to the board to censor employees.

Why would we? We can think critically about opinions that we encounter. We can ask for evidence of statements we question.

We conservatives have been focused on teaching the Constitution. And correctly pushing back against what we see as impingement to free speech. How can we specifically support this constitutional right?

The specific policy reasons they must “create and maintain a dignified and professionally responsible image for the school district.” Perhaps our students would ask us about board members who speak freely without any ability for staff to rebut their views, even with facts. And perhaps image-driven

motivations should concern us less than created space for truth, integrity, and the value and freedom of every voice.

We must ask our kids, “In a democracy, are only those in powerful positions allowed to speak freely?” Johnny, when it is stifled, we must ask: for what purpose?

Carol Greenstreet
Woodland Park

Letters to the Editor – Educators with limited resources

Educators with limited resources (from the Gazette)

Oh, absolutely! Let’s not “reverse course!” In case you missed it, we already did.

Better I guess to “go forward” to a 19th century educational model. Or…let’s all be reactionaries and go back to the early and mid 20th, when “the Greatest generation” and the “Boomers” came of age. The same septuagenarians and octogenarians that succeeded, slammed the door in everyone else’s face, and twisted American culture into what it is today now want to pass the blame for it onto educational institutions. They’ve been doing this since the ‘80s.

Kids’ social media addiction didn’t come from a classroom. They watched their parents. Everyone likes to quote Mark Twain. He also said, “always obey your parents, when they are present.” It’s not educators who send kids to school hungry, mal-clothed, psychologically traumatized, “weak” with “feelings,” or any of a number of other pathologies that would discomfort you to experience even once, much less daily. Yet, always, the educators everywhere do their best to take care of them with limited resources while experiencing ill-intentioned political headwinds.

It’s not a shortcoming of the schools to adapt to the times, especially when they primarily have the kids’ interests at heart. Maybe what you need to get through your coon-skin hat, is that the world beyond your “trespassers will be shot” yard sign has changed and always will.

If you think “counting change” is the metric, just wait until you hear about AI singularity, quantum computing, autonomous robotics, digital surveillance, and more. Teaching kids to fear the future and that they’re already victims of it isn’t helping them.

Andrew Pappadakis
Woodland Park

Not a Good Start to the School Year | Guest column | Pikes Peak Courier | gazette.com

If the traditional schools are fully staffed (or close to it) and in great shape, why did my first grader’s class size jump from 16 to 30 this year?

How is this the best education for my daughter when her class is so big and loud that she comes home with headaches to the point we bought noise canceling headsets so she can concentrate on schoolwork – while in class?
— Read on the Gazette

Colorado Springs’ federal judge to mediate Woodland Park schools free speech suit

Posted yesterday in the Colorado Politics website:

Lawyers for the Woodland Park School District and the local teachers’ union agreed on Wednesday to mediate their dispute over a policy that allegedly infringes on employees’ constitutional right to free speech.

Last month, the Woodland Park Education Association and its president, Nathaniel Owen, filed suit against the district, seeking to strike down a prohibition on employees speaking to the press or posting on social media about school matters without the superintendent’s prior approval. The district warned that neutering the policy would embolden “dissident” teachers in a school board election year.

At a Sept. 13 conference, U.S. District Court Judge Gordon P. Gallagher cautioned that portions of the policy, in his view, “do have problems.”

In lieu of holding a hearing on the plaintiffs’ request to block the policy’s enforcement through a preliminary injunction, Gallagher asked the parties if they would be amenable to revamping the document themselves. He disclosed that U.S. Magistrate Judge Maritza Dominguez Braswell, the lone federal judge stationed in Colorado Springs, had offered to mediate the dispute.

“We think that’s a great idea,” said Matthew J. Werner, the attorney for the district. The plaintiffs’ attorney similarly agreed to meet with Dominguez Braswell.

Earlier this year, the school district revised its policy on press releases and interviews. Previously, the policy focused on the superintendent’s role in communicating to the public. However, the modifications now prohibit employees from being interviewed by the media about school operations without authorization.

Moreover, the policy prevents staff from posting on social media “in their capacity as employees” about district decisions, unless granted permission. Violations of the policy “will be considered to be insubordination.”

The teachers’ union challenged the manner in which the district issued the policy, as well as the substance.

“Employees can no longer speak on matters of public concern without fear of reprisal from the School District,” lawyers for the plaintiffs argued in seeking an injunction. Teachers are “prohibited from being able to speak at School Board meetings, post information on social media, or make comments to the media on matters of public concern regarding their working conditions and learning environment.”

The district countered that eliminating the policy would increase criticism and disrupt operations.

“To grant the Union’s Motion would require an injunction that would embolden dissident School District employees to make public statements on social media as official school representatives,” wrote Werner. “The School District faces significant employee dissent should the injunction be imposed during an election year and a tumultuous and contentious political climate.”

In May, NBC News reported on the tumult in the district, in which a conservative school board member likened their “divide, scatter, conquer” tactics to those of former President Donald Trump. The superintendent has also minimized the importance of student counseling and the board president derided the teachers’ “psycho agenda.”

Other controversies included the board’s condemnation of voluntary mental health screenings for children and their embrace of a conservative social studies curriculum that state board of education members called “too extreme.” Amid the outcry after the school board approved a charter school allegedly without prior notice, board member David Illingworth urged the then-superintendent to create a “list of positions in which change in personnel would be beneficial” — apparently referring to terminations.

The teachers’ union lawsuit is the latest effort to confront the district’s leadership. Gallagher, the district judge, suggested that the constitutional claims about the district’s restrictive communication policy had merit.

“As written, on its face,” he said, some sections “do have problems. Problems that can potentially be corrected. But problems nonetheless.”

The parties agreed to try mediation over the next two to three weeks. Gallagher said if they still wish for him to rule on a preliminary injunction afterward, he will proceed. 

“I will await her report on that issue,” he said, referring to Dominguez Braswell.

The lawsuit also challenges the district’s decision to provide staff with professional liability insurance through the Professional Association of Colorado Educators, which the plaintiffs have called an anti-union organization.

The case is Woodland Park Education Association et al. v. Woodland Park School District et al.

https://www.coloradopolitics.com/courts/colorado-springs-federal-judge-to-mediate-woodland-park-schools-free-speech-suit/article_50c26db4-5283-11ee-b9af-c712dfa6edb3.html?fbclid=IwAR2iAFPlHjRypb-O5AyNmjJEkY0xwZjvlDr0-de5Ds5BFjJG9nnTzgoCjJQ

Woodland Park schools stifle free speech | BIDLACK

Posted on the Colorado Politics Website, by Hal Bidlack:

Sometime in 1962, a clerk working at the U.S. Supreme Court was sifting through the many mailbags that, each year, brought hundreds of letters asking the court to take up a particular legal case. Most of these letters were highly polished legal documents, prepared by law firms with lots of experience in case law. But on that day in the early 1960s, a clerk, whose name is unfortunately lost to time, noticed a handwritten envelope addressed to SCOTUS from a prison.

Upon opening the letter, the clerk found a letter written in ink and by hand from a prisoner from Florida, who was in jail for a breaking-and-entering charge. His name was Clarence Gideon, and he had asked for a lawyer when he was arrested, but since he was indigent, he was not given one. He was duly tried, convicted and sent to prison.

The Supreme Court took up the case, and would, in 1963, rule unanimously for Gideon. Simply put, SCOTUS ruled people on trial get lawyers. I’ve written about the importance of cases such as Gideon before, wherein a seemingly small case rises in importance as an important Constitutional question is raised.

I thought about Gideon again this week when reading an interesting Colorado Politics story about the goings on in Woodland Park, a beautiful city directly west of Colorado Springs. The school board up there has become a pretty far-right organization, and it appears to be openly hostile to teachers and especially teacher’s unions. The school board has instituted a new policy wherein the board forbade any teacher or other employee from talking to the press or posting on social media about school matters, without the superintendent’s prior approval (emphasis mine). You know, a gag rule.

Not at all surprisingly, there were legal actions taken, and now both sides have agreed to meet with a federal judge down here in Colorado Springs in hopes he can mediate and find a solution. The judge did note, at the outset, the district’s policy had problems.

Can we think for a moment about what the Woodland Park school board is actually doing? They are demanding their employees be mute, with reporters or on their own Facebook or Instagram pages, unless the big boss has specifically told them what they want to say is OK. Oh, and if they do post something about their school on a social media page without permission, they can be charged with “insubordination.”

Lawyers for the board even went so far as to say, “To grant the Union’s Motion would require an injunction that would embolden dissident School District employees to make public statements on social media as official school representatives.” Seriously? Employees who differ with a chosen policy are now “dissident?”  Agree completely or you are silenced? Sound like anywhere else in the world you can think of?

Now, to be sure, there are some occupations where such restrictions make sense, at least to a degree. During my own 25-year-plus military career I voluntarily agreed to restrictions on my free speech rights, when it came to policy, nuclear issues, and such. But should employers not dealing with national security issues be able to simply stifle their workers when those workers are disgruntled? Should bosses be able to ensure they are never criticized?

I have long been troubled by those who seek to limit speech, outside of a few tiny areas (such as yelling fire in a crowded theater, making false claims in a TV commercial, etc.). I call myself an absolutist on the First Amendment. I’ve always believed the best way to fight “bad” speech is with more and more speech, rather than trying to shut down that speech with which you disagree.

The Woodland Park School Board was taken over by hard-right folks, which is fine given that conservative town elected them, but now that same board seems to be saying they demand their employees never question them, and that they remain above any criticism or remonstration. But that is not the way the United States works, or at least it hasn’t been. And folks who seek to shut down criticism forget times can change, and they might one day find themselves on the other side of the power gap. Are they likely then to believe their rights to criticize can be shut down? Sauce for the goose, so to speak.

At the moment, this case is headed for mitigation, and it is possible the judge involved may be able to work out a solution that both sides accept, even if they don’t agree with it. But I can’t help but wonder if this case is a possible future “Gideon?” If the judge decides, as he hinted, the policy has major problems and unconstitutional implications, might this case end up back in the court system, and perhaps ultimately all the way to the Supreme Court? It wouldn’t surprise me.

Regardless of your beliefs, be you far-right, far-left, or somewhere in the middle, I urge you to be on guard and always uneasy when any government entity seeks to reduce your free speech rights. We can all think of countries wherein the laws make it a crime to criticize the leader. I don’t think too many of us would like to live in those places.

The price of you having your own free speech rights is that you will, from time to time, have to listen to other people’s speech with which you strongly disagree. And please be especially alert to anyone who demands other folks’ free speech rights should be limited to avoid “dissident” behavior.

Free speech can be challenging and frustrating, but it is far better than the alternative. I hope the people on the Woodland Park school board come to understand that, lest a future Supreme Court clerk find a letter from a teacher asking for free speech rights in a mail bag, as even this hard-right Supreme Court would likely find the restrictions imposed to be unconstitutional.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

https://www.coloradopolitics.com/opinion/woodland-park-schools-stifle-free-speech-bidlack/article_e112aa4a-5374-11ee-9a96-3f6f8733b658.html