Spence: Guv inks sex-ed bill but overlooks more pressing reforms

Senate GOP leaders bemoaned freshman Gov. Bill Ritter’s signing of an education bill they say micromanages sex-ed at local school districts, while leaving more urgent reforms on the back burner. 
House Bill 1292 which imposes statewide standards for sex education was signed into law earlier this week.  Ritter reassured detractors in a press release that “this legislation ensures local school districts have control over what programs they choose to offer to their students.”

Republican members of Senate Education Committee, however, voiced their distress that Democrats once again are forcing their agenda on local schools, while overlooking legislation they say would have a much more positive effect on the education system.

“I don’t understand how Democrats support telling schools how and what to teach their children about sex, but disapprove of creating math and science standards,” Assistant Senate Republican leader Nancy Spence commented.

Spence, also the ranking GOP Senate Education Committee member, pointed to Sen. Josh Penry’s Senate Bill 131, which would have mandated four years of math and three of science in order to graduate from high school.  The bill died at the hands of the Democrats in the House Committee on Education after receiving bipartisan endorsement in the Senate.

Advocates of the bill said the globalized job market demands higher standards, especially in terms of math and science skills.  Colorado is one of the few states in the nation that does not have any graduation standards.

“Ensuring our students are competitive in the workplace must also be a high priority, but evidently there are those across the aisle who only see the value in improving and protecting students’ private lives and not their professional ones,” Spence said.

Spence went on to state that the vast majority of school districts in Colorado already have sex-education programs and that HB 1292 unnecessarily interferes with the way they are developed.