The sudden death today of a heralded, bipartisan effort to expand options for autisitic schoolkids underscores a standoff within the ranks of ruling legislative Democrats when it comes to fundamental education reforms, according to the effort's Republican sponsor.
Senate Bill 130, authored by Senate GOP Whip Nancy Spence, was a groundbreaking proposal to create the state's first charter school specifically serving children with autism. Spence, of Centennial, the GOP's ranking member on the Senate Education Committee, won support for her bill on both sides of the aisle, including from Senate President Peter Groff. Groff, a Denver Democrat, has often made headlines with his advocacy of wide-ranging school reforms and is leaving his post at the end of the 2009 legislative session to help guide education policy in the Obama administration.
Yet, Spence says, it ironically was some of Groff's fellow Democrats in the House who killed the bill this afternoon in the House Education Committe. Spence said she had been told earlier that if she didn't agree to water her bill down, it likely couldn't pass the House.
"This underscores a deep and growing rift over education reform in the other party," Spence said. "When you look at how key Democrats on education policy like Peter Groff and (Denver Sen.) Chris Romer stood by this bill only to have their fellow party members defend the status quo and defeat this propsoal in the House, you have to wonder if the two sides are heading for a showdown at some point."
"On the one side, you have reformers like the president himself while on the other, you have elements of the old establishment who have dug in their heels." |
Spence noted that Groff, Romer, House Speaker Terrance Carroll, newly minted Democrat U.S. Sen. Mike Bennett and President Obama all are on record supporting wide-ranging education reforms like charter schools and performance pay, which long have rankled elements of the public-education establishment.
"On the one side, you have reformers like the president himself while on the other, you have elements of the old establishment who have dug in their heels," Spence said.
|
Sen. Nancy Spence |
She added, "I was delighted by the support I received from President Groff and other members of his party in the Senate, and naturally I was very saddened by my bill's defeat in the House. Of course, the ones hit hardest by this are the children who would have benefited. In the long run, though, you have to wonder how the other party will resolve this fundamental division within its ranks."
Spence, a leading statehouse advocate of school reform, faced months-long opposition from charter school opponents of her bill, who argued that the plan would take money away from public schools and provide an unnecessary service to children with autism. Spence maintained that the bill isn't about taking on the public-education bureaucracy or taking funding from public schools; it's about providing autistic children with a school that specifically serves their unique needs, she said.