CU-Boulder's School of Law and School of Education will present a panel discussion Nov. 3 on Colorado's new voucher law.
Called "The Legal and Policy Issues Surrounding Colorado's New Voucher law," the discussion will be held from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the law school's Lindsley Memorial Courtroom. The event is free and open to the public.
The law, HB03-1160, is officially titled "The Colorado Opportunity Contract Pilot Program" and is targeted to kindergarten through 12th grade children of low-income families living in any school district that has had at least eight schools receive an academic performance rating of low or unsatisfactory. To date, 11 districts are being required to take part in the program.
The first vouchers are scheduled to be awarded next school year. However, a group called the Colorado Congress of Parents, Teachers and Â鶹ÒùÔº has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law.
The panel will consist of four people - two who support the law and two who oppose it. Panel moderator Kevin G. Welner, assistant professor of education at CU and co-director of the university's Education in the Public Interest Center, or EPIC, said the discussion will offer insight from policy experts as well as legal experts.
"The new voucher law has placed Colorado in the nation's vanguard with regard to decisions that will be forthcoming in both law and policy," said Welner. "We couldn't ask for more expertise on these two fronts than that possessed by these four panelists."
Supporting the voucher law on the panel is the bill's sponsor, Colorado Representative Nancy Spence, and William M. Mellor, president and general counsel of the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Institute for Justice, which has a history of litigating in favor of voucher legislation in lawsuits across the nation, has intervened in the Colorado lawsuit.
Opposing the law on the panel is Colorado Representative Jack Pommer and Martha Houser, general counsel and assistant executive director for Legal Services for the Colorado Education Association. Houser is the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the Colorado lawsuit.
The panel discussion is co-sponsored by EPIC and the law school's Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law.
For more information, contact Kevin Welner at (303) 492-8370, or by e-mail at kevin.welner@colorado.edu.