PERRY: Supporting the Jeffco school board recall was common sense, not hypocrisy

For those who believe I’m a hypocrite for backing the wildly successful Jeffco school board recall last week after staunchly criticizing the ludicrous 2013 recall of two state legislators, I offer this metaphor to help you find your way.

There is a big difference between sitting shotgun and complaining about the route the driver’s taking, and being compelled to grab the wheel when some nutcase is careening down a road with no guardrails and then speeds up as they veer toward the cliff.

I’ll tell you what’s hypocritical: It’s pundits and newspaper editorial boards bemoaning what the three recently ousted Jeffco school board members  — Ken Witt, John Newkirk and  Julie Williams — had done and were doing to what was once arguably the state’s best school district. But despite their criticism of the stunts the ousted board majority had pulled off, their advice was that parents, teachers, students and taxpayers should just suck it up. Why? Because the list of offenses — the imminent stampede of the district’s best teachers, the waste of millions of taxpayer dollars, the ridicule brought upon the district by Williams’ fantastic rant about making AP History more “patriotic,” the secret meetings and violations of open meeting and records laws, the repeated and absolute malfeasance of board members bent on imposing their extremist right-wing politics on 85,000 students and 4,700 teachers — didn’t pass the test for forcing a recall.

So if running the car into the guardrail and speeding up as you aim for dead man’s curve isn’t a good time to recall these three clowns, just what in the hell is an appropriate moment? After the car crashes?

In contrast, two Democratic state lawmakers, state Sen. Angela Giron and state Sen. John Morse, were targeted for recall in 2013 because they both supported two bland gun-control bills enacted in response to the Aurora theater shooting and the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of votes these and the other 98 state lawmakers make each year, those two gun-control measures — one banned 50-round magazine clips and another required background checks for private gun sales to match commercial gun sales — prompted the recall.

The entire state Legislature had approved the two measures on essentially party-line votes, and the measures were signed into law by the governor. There was nothing the recall could do to undo those two bills.

But there was no groundswell in those two districts for recall. The political assassinations were begun and run by anti-Democratic groups backed by the National Rifle Association: The so-called Basic Freedom Defense Fund, the El Paso County Freedom Defense Committee and the Pueblo Freedom and Rights pact.

But it was hundreds of Democratic and Republican and non-partisan parents in Jefferson County that began and forced the recall there. And the Jeffco recall election was held in coordination with all other state and local elections last week, just like usual with full mail-in ballot privileges.

The Giron and Morse recalls were run by partisan state and county clerks who eschewed the mail ballot systems, and those were the only questions on the Sept. 10 special election ballot. Despite that, however, Morse lost his recall election by less than one percentage point. Giron lost her recall election by 10 points. The two Republicans elected to replace Giron and Morse, by the smattering of voters who turned out for the recall, were ousted during the following regular election in 2014.

In Jeffco, voter turnout was far and above the best in the state, and the three extremist board members were ousted by a whopping 20 percentage points.

I stand by the Aurora Sentinel’s previous insistence that recalling elected officials over matters like the two single gun votes is bad government for everyone, but I adamantly insist that the power of public recall is critical to government, and it was wisely used for the Jeffco recall.

Whereas the 2013 recalls were arguably about partisan politics, the recall of the Jeffco board members were about saving an entire school district before it was too late.

If you don’t think the threat to Jeffco schools was real, let me share this with you. I know firsthand that other school districts in the metro area were not only benefiting from Jeffco’s best teachers making a run for the door — more than one metro school district was looking at ways to get the most and best teachers when the stampede began in earnest.

One local superintendent put it this way: Those experienced, trained, dedicated and effective teachers are worth their weight in gold because another school district and their taxpayers already invested in making them as good as they are. When a good teacher leaves one district for another, it’s always the receiving district’s gain. Good, experienced teachers are the first to bail when crazy stuff like Jeffco starts to happen, because they can. They are welcomed with open arms in places like Denver, Cherry Creek, Aurora and Boulder. The bad teachers? They stay behind because other better school districts don’t want them, and they know it. Jeffco was getting the triple whammy: The best headed for the door, the worst stuck behind, and good teachers elsewhere not applying for the open jobs.

The whacky school board members weren’t just making for amusing headlines. With the teacher exodus, open meeting and records abuses, fiscal mismanagement in handling school crowding in Arvada and a long list of atrocities, those three school board members were well on their way to destroying the school district entirely, and they had two more years to pull it off.

But not now. They’re gone. I can’t imagine how difficult it’s going to be for the new school board to get Jeffco schools out of the ditch and back on the road, but there was no alternative but recall to make it happen. And if it happened here in Cherry Creek or Aurora Public Schools, I’d be right behind a recall.

Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com.