- A newly elected conservative school board in Colorado is enraging many residents and teachers.
- About 40% of the district's high-school teachers have said they're leaving next year, NBC News said.
A Colorado school district's board was taken over by conservatives aiming to emulate former President Donald Trump — and its new policies are set to drive off nearly half the district's high-school teachers, NBC News reported.
At the end of 2021, a group of conservatives won control of the school district in Woodland Park, Colorado.
Since then, it has enacted a number of conservative policies that have infuriated many teachers, residents, and even staunch Republicans in the town of just 8,000 people, NBC News reported.
Nearly 40% of the district's high-school teachers have decided to leave at the end of this school year, a district administrator told NBC News.
At least four higher-ups in the district have quit over the new board's policies, according to interviews and emails viewed by NBC News.
"This is the flood the zone tactic, and the idea is if you advance on many fronts at the same time, then the enemy cannot fortify, defend, effectively counter-attack at any one front," David Illingworth, a new member of the school board, wrote to another member shortly after being elected, NBC News reported.
"Divide, scatter, conquer," he wrote. "Trump was great at this in his first 100 days."
Among its most controversial new policies is the board's decision to adopt the American Birthright social-studies standard. The curriculum standard, created by a conservative advocacy group, emphasizes patriotism, discourages civic engagement, and criticizes the federal government's control of public schools, NBC News said.
The board also pushed against mental-health resources for students, with the superintendent musing how a school social worker didn't help stop a student's killing off campus, the NBC News report said.