by Jacob Richards
On April 14, three Mesa County School District Board of Education members signed on to a letter, signed by 80 far-right school board, and charter school board members asking Colorado High School Sports Association (CHSSA) to bar transgender students from competing in girls’ sports, citing recent executive orders from the MAGA regime.
The letter to CHSSA stated:
“The implications for CHSAA are unmistakable. By maintaining policies that permit boys to compete as girls, CHSAA risks exposing Colorado schools to federal investigations, the potential loss of critical funding, and legal liability under Title IX.”
The letter ends on a threatening tone:
“We stand ready to collaborate with CHSAA to ensure a swift transition to policies that protect girls’ sports in Colorado. However, we will not hesitate to escalate this matter to state and federal authorities if our expectations are not met. The time to act is now.”
D51 Board President Andrea Haitz, and fellow board members Angela Lema and Barbara Evanson signed the letter, but it is not the official position of the board and is not D51 policy.
It’s unknown how many trans athletes compete in Colorado high school athletics, but D51 has confirmed to the Sentinel that there are no known transgender athletes in D51.
This seemingly grassroots appeal by ‘educational leaders’ is very much a minority view representing just fifteen Colorado School Districts, an online homeschool, and ten charter schools. A paltry 8% of school districts and 6% of Colorado charter schools, had one or more board members sign the letter, and even then, it was not a formal position that had been adopted by these school boards. Many like Delta County school district D50J, had only one member sign the letter, in Delta Counties case– Beth Suppes.
Furthermore the majority of signatories are school districts and charter schools that are clients of Brad Miller. Miller is a man that likes to remain behind the scenes. A far-right education lawyer/activist with the firm Miller Farmer Carson Law. Miller is known for busting teachers unions, targeting trans students and spreading fear about Critical Race Theory.
Miller, according to an amazing expose by Logan M. Davis and Chloe Ragsdale in the Colorado Times Recorder, confirmed that he wrote the letter, and that all but three of the eighty signers are clients of Miller, or have clear personal or professional connections to Miller.
The article continues by holding the media to account for their surface level reporting:
“A letter which the local media credulously covered as an organic expression of concern by education professionals was authored by one man; 72.5% of the letter’s signatories are his clients, and another 24.25% are connected to him in some way or other; and yet his name was barely mentioned in the coverage. It’s a remarkable saga: a remarkable failure by the local press corps and a remarkable success by Miller.”
Miller’s connections to Adrea Haitz, President of the D51 Board of Education, first came to public view in 2021, when newly elected Haitz, attempted to push through the hiring of Miller’s legal firm to represent District 51, in violation of open meetings laws.
LGBTQIA+ groups are concerned. Ashley Stahl, Executive Director of Cook Inclusive and PFLAG of the Roaring Fork Valley said in a statement:
“I am deeply disgusted by the language used in this letter. While it claims to focus on fairness in girls’ sports, it is clear that its primary goal is not to support athletes, but to dehumanize and erase transgender people. The rhetoric used is harmful, divisive, and undermines the dignity of transgender students across Colorado.”
CHSSA largely sidestepped the issue in a statement: “It is important to underscore that the ultimate resolution of these issues will not come from CHSAA, but rather from the highest levels of the State and Federal judiciary.”
Locally, citizens also pushed back, voicing their concerns in emails and on social media posts. Andrea Haitz, predictably fell back into her familiar role as the victim.
“What has been disheartening is the vitriol directed at myself Angela and Barb. We’ve been called bigots and white supremacists– ironically by women– because we took a stand for girls,” said Haitz in a post from April 20, on her ‘Andrea Haitz Board Member for D51 School Board’ Facebook page.
This is a well-worn path for Haitz. When she gets called a bigot, after doing or saying bigoted things, she plays the victim. She played this card back in 2022 when a series of transphobic memes on her personal Facebook caused a controversy.
The day after the letter, that Haitz, Lema, and Evanson signed, was sent to CHSSA, at the regular school-board meeting on April 15, Haitz and Evanson objected to the 4th grade social studies curriculum being adopted. They halted the process after eighteen months of open-houses and public input and months of hard work by the Curriculum Committee.
Evanson worried that the inclusion of the BLM movement and the police killing of Coloradoan Elijah McClain in the 4th grade social studies textbook would lead kids to think “cops are bad.”
Haitz danced around the issue, “My son will be in 4th grade next year, and I was just looking at some of the material, and I’m thinking like, this is a little heavy or over his head for some of this stuff, especially like the Black Lives Matters stuff. I was like, I don’t know if this activism stuff is really appropriate for him at fourth grade. As a parent I’m not ready to have that conversation with him.”
When confronted by state educational guidelines, Haitz said, “I think we would butt up against the state a little bit on that, as much as we can push… this is why we have local control, right?”
At a follow-up meeting on April 21, the fourth-grade curriculum was further tabled in a 3-2 decision. The adoption of the curriculum is now in limbo as the board waits to examine another textbook– currently there is no fourth-grade social studies curriculum approved by District 51.
An email from Tom Acker with the Hispanic Affairs Project to the D51 School Board, reminded the board that the state curriculum guidelines for fourth grade social studies include: “describe how a citizen might engage in local and state government to demonstrate their rights or initiate change.”
Acker also asked if the board’s actions to obstruct the adoption of the curriculum violates the district’s own policy.
Seems pretty clear, D51 policy IIJ states: “Since the Board is a policymaking body, it delegates to the District’s professional personnel the authority for the selection of instructional and library materials in accordance with this policy.”
“Ms. Evanson and Ms. Haitz state they want to “protect the kids.” My question is: protect them from what?” asked Acker in closing.
Haitz says she stands for local control, while taking marching orders from a shadowy cabal of far-right front-range education activists led by Brad Miller, and pushing D51 to adhere to federal edicts, the very opposite of local control. She is mirroring Trump’s playbook of destroying the Department of Education under the guise of returning education to the states while at the same time trying to dictate how schools should operate and what they should and should not teach.
Haitz and the cabal of the far-right school board members across Colorado are a threat to education and marginalized students across the state. They will continue to use their position and networks to undermine Colorado’s laws and protections for students while eroding our educational standards.
There is clearly lots of work to do in the world today, but taking back our local school boards is a good, actionable, place to start.
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