School districts across Colorado are developing policies outlining how teachers and staff will honor student requests to use a chosen name as a result of this year’s non-legal name change bill. Last night, Pueblo’s School District 60 Board of Education passed just such a policy, with the caveat that parents must be notified if a child wants to use a name other than their legal name. LGBTQ activists and allies say mandatory parental notification puts youth at risk from hostile parents.
In 2022, Rep. Stephanie Vigil (D-Colorado Springs) beat Republican Dave Donelson, a Colorado Springs City Councilor, by 710 votes. The narrow victory was a sign of the slow electoral shift in Colorado Springs, a city long considered a conservative stronghold. Since then, Vigil has focused on increasing protections for gig workers, renters, and LGBTQ people in Colorado, and that has made her public enemy number one for El Paso County Republicans.
Rep. Stephanie Vigil (D-Colorado Springs) responded yesterday to Colorado GOP Director of Special Initiatives Darcy Schoening’s recent party-wide email urging parents to remove their kids from public schools and claiming Democrats want to “turn more kids trans.” Schoening’s email specifically identified legislation sponsored by Vigil, this year’s House Bill 1039, Non-legal Name Changes in Schools.
Democrats in Colorado won big last night, winning all the statewide races, potentially taking six of the eight U.S. House of Representative seats and winning the U.S. Senate race. Nowhere in Colorado is the Democratic victory more evident than in El Paso County, where, based on early unofficial results, Democrat Stephanie Vigil is poised to flip a house seat in a race against Colorado Springs City Councilor Dave Donelson, where Vigil leads by 737 votes.
Last Friday’s Hold the Line conference at The Road Church in Colorado Springs featured not just national evangelical thought leaders Sean Feucht and Eric Metaxas and federal legislators Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), but a slate of local elected officials as well. El Paso County Commissioner Stan VanderWerf, Colorado Springs City Councilor Dave Donelson, and Academy School District 20 and Pikes Peak Library District board member Aaron Salt spoke with Steve Holt, pastor of The Road Church, during a brief panel discussion.
