Face The State Staff Report
This year's newly minted state House and Senate Democrat leaders have given school choice supporters a reason to be cautiously optimistic, as the two men slated to lead their respective chambers have often split with their union-backed party to support school choice.
Terrance Carroll, D-Denver, selected as Speaker of the House by his party's caucus Thursday, is an outspoken supporter of school choice. Similarly, Senate President Peter Groff, also a Denver Democrat, sponsored the “Innovation Schools Act of 2008,” which gave Colorado schools the flexibility to act more like charter schools by removing union agreements, and by giving schools more control over their budgets, hiring decisions and calendars. Carroll co-sponsored the bill in the House.
“If the Democrats are going to be in charge in Colorado, they could not have picked two leaders friendlier to school choice and charter schools,” said Ben DeGrow, a policy analyst for the Golden-based Independence Institute.
Since Democrats took over the General Assembly in 2004, the education committees have been stacked with Democrats elected - and financed by - the Colorado Education Association, the state's largest teacher's union. Rep. Mike Merrifield, D-Manitou Springs, chairs the education committee in the House, but was suspended from the post for the 2007 session after Face The State published an email from Merrifield to Arvada Democrat Sen. Sue Windels, his counterpart in the Senate. In the e-mail, he proclaimed, “There must be a special place in Hell for these Privatizers, Charerizers, [sic] and Voucherizers! They deserve it!”
At the time, Carroll vented his frustration to The Rocky Mountain News, saying Merrifield’s comments reflect a larger agenda to “gut charter schools.”
Now Carroll is in a position to change the makeup of the House Education Committee, but the question remains whether he will. Alluding to the three-way race for speaker, Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, questioned what kind of commitments Carroll might have made in order to secure enough votes for the post. “Certainly Terrance Carroll has been on the right side of a lot of our charter school fights,” said Gardner. “In a leadership struggle you have to ask what commitments were made and to who, but I respect Terrance Carroll enough to know he didn’t give away his fundamental beliefs.”
Carroll was unavailable for comment before press time.
The Senate Education Committee is also facing a shake-up. Windels and Vice Chairman Ron Tupa, D-Boulder, were both term-limited this year, leaving two open seats on the committee. Sen. Nancy Spence, R-Centennial, the committee's ranking Republican, was hesitant to speculate about whom Groff might appoint to the open seats. She says she is very optimistic that with Groff and Carroll at the helm, the upcoming legislative session, which begins in January, will be a good one for charter schools.
Jim Griffin, president of the Colorado League of Charter Schools, said he would like to see representation on the education committees that is more consistent with the makeup of the caucus in the House as a whole. He alleged that driving the legislature's education agenda too often is a handful of legislators adamantly opposed to “anything charter school related." It is these legislators, Griffin maintains, that too often are picked to serve on the assembly's two education committees.
The Capitol rumor mill is buzzing that Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins, will likely be appointed to chair the Senate's committee, while newcomer and former State Board of Education member Evie Hudak, who was elected to fill Windels slot, is a top contender to fill one of the open seats.