Colorado legislators, activists to speak out against social studies standards revisions

The state Board of Education is expected to vote on revisions to Colorado’s social studies standards — which have drawn scrutiny after mentions to people of color and those in the LGBTQ community were removed — by the end of the year.

But before they do, a group of state legislators, nonprofit leaders and community members hope to convince the seven-member board to add those references back in.

A group of roughly 30 people, including Democrats Sen. Julie Gonzales and Rep. Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, met Wednesday night at Regis University in Denver, where they urged people to tell the school board why K-12 students should learn about the experiences of people of color and those in the LGBTQ community.

“LGBTQ people live in Colorado and have forever,” said Mardi Moore, executive director of Out Boulder County.

She said the nonprofit works with young people and that removal references to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from the social studies standards revisions negatively affects their mental health.

Initially, the experiences of people in the LGBTQ community and people of color were included in revisions to the social studies standards.

But many of the mentions were stripped earlier this year, following complaints by members of the public and at least one school board member about the “age appropriateness” of including their perspectives in history, civics and geography lessons.

The changes to the revisions included removing many — but not all — of the mentions that listed minority groups, as well as removing words such as “equity” and “race.”

The committee has said the changes were made to cut repetitive language. But those gathered at Wednesday’s meeting said the language has become too vague.

It’s the “erasure of people, a lot of people collectively,” said Neil Fishman, who attend the meeting.

One member from the school board, Lisa Escárcega, was at Wednesday’s meeting. The Democrat, who represents Denver, has previously said she would not vote to approve changes to the standards if they excluded the perspectives of minorities.

Earlier this year, Colorado lawmakers sent a letter to the state school board, telling the directors that the removal references to minority groups “boldly thwarts the legislative intent” of a 2019 law that was passed to have K-12 schools teach students about the experiences of people of color and those in the LGBTQ community in history and civics classes.