Colorado Conservatives Transform Mountain School District With a Win in the Culture Wars 

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Disclaimer:  This article may contain the personal views and opinions of the author.

Podcaster Dan Bongino praised the small Colorado school district of Woodland Park for doing “actual conservative stuff” on the May 10 episode of “The Dan Bongino Show.”

He touted the district’s adoption of the “American Birthright” social studies standards and its pick for school superintendent – a man previously fired from another school district for “promoting positive aspects of the United States.” 

Conservatives took over the school board of Woodland Park just over a year ago and got to work turning the district into what The Blaze calls “a patriotic microcosm.” 

One of the new conservative members of the board, David Rusterholtz, made a promise leading up to the November 2021 election.

“We will listen to what parents and students have to say, review all school board policies, and not have a one-size-fits-all approach,” adding that there “is definitely a sentiment, not just here but around the nation, that parents want their kids to be educated to their virtues and values, and school districts need to listen to them,” Rusterholtz said according to the Pikes Peak Courier.

Another newly elected board member, David Illingworth, the board’s vice president, wrote in an email that the board should take a page out of former President Trump’s book…”you advance on many fronts at the same time, then the enemy cannot fortify, defend, effectively counter-attack in any one front. Divide, scatter, conquer,” reported the Courier.

Much to their chagrin, NBC News reported the success of the conservative board and listed the steps it followed since the election to transform the district such as:

• hiring an unwoke superintendent, Ken Witt, who prioritizes academic achievement over students’ feelings and discounts student protesters as “pawns” of the teachers’ union;

• adopting a patriotic social studies program called “American Birthright” whereby students learn “the structure of our self-governing republic, the functions of government at all levels, and how our key institutions work” free of leftist propaganda;

• approving the community’s first charter school; and

• ousting obstructionist, leftist staff members and driving nearly 40% of the high school’s professional staff to threaten to quit.

Illingworth’s approach runs counter to other school districts in the nation. He plans to measure the board members’ success not on whether they “please the teacher’s union and their psycho agenda against academic rigor, family values, and even capitalism itself,” but whether they “bring a parent’s voice and a little common sense to the school district.”

Amen! This is how we take our country back. It has to start at the lower levels of government.

The Civics Alliance, the group behind the American Birthright curriculum, states on its website, “We oppose all racism and support traditional American pluralism, e pluribus unum—out of many, one. These beliefs are not those of the radical New Civics activists, which espouse identity politics with overlapping ideologies of critical race theory, multiculturalism, and so-called ‘antiracism.'”

The conservative coalition reminds people that the New Civics has infected our education system to a great extent. The group states, “Well-intentioned reformers must not collaborate with those promoting an ideology that would destroy America.”

The state board of Colorado rejected the new social studies standards adopted by the Woodland Park district calling them “too extreme” for the state.

Let’s see if other school districts follow this approach.