But the road to that reality has been anything but smooth, with a rally last week in Castle Rock decrying the move, a tense town hall meeting at county headquarters that ended in shouts and jeers — and a lawsuit attempting to shut the whole thing down.

Meanwhile, ballots started hitting mailboxes less than a week ago for the June 24 special election. If voters back the idea, the vote would kickstart the drafting of a home-rule charter by a 21-member commission.

A second vote in November would then seek final approval for the charter itself.

Local control has become a mantra of sorts across Colorado in recent years, with cities and counties lashing out — even taking legal action — against a state government they accuse of overreach in matters of local concern. The resistance ranges from the “Second Amendment sanctuary county” movement of six years ago, which conservative counties launched in response to new gun control laws, to last month’s lawsuit against the state and Gov. Jared Polis by Aurora and five suburban cities. They were attempting to block two recent land-use laws aimed at increasing housing density.

Commissioner George Teal, one of the chief proponents of home-rule authority for the county of nearly 400,000, said the time has come for Douglas County to assert its independence from a state legislature that has shifted decidedly to the left over the last decade.

Home-rule authority, Teal said, will give Douglas County greater legal standing to take on state laws that its leaders believe go too far. It will represent a “shifting of the burden” onto the state, requiring officials to come after the county if the state believes its authority is being usurped — rather than the other way around.

Douglas County has sued Colorado twice recently over disagreements involving property tax valuations and the level of cooperation local law enforcement can give federal immigration authorities. The county lost both cases.

“We will be an independent legal entity under state law — and we are not that as a statutory county,” Teal said. “Home rule is the very mechanism of local control.”

Opponents, operating under the Stop the Power Grab banner, say the run-up to this month’s election has been anything but transparent and open. They accuse the commissioners of quietly concocting the home-rule plan over a series of more than a dozen meetings starting late last year — and then rubber-stamping the decision at a public hearing in late March. That meeting lasted mere minutes.

“What this has brought out in us is the question of — why now?” said Kelly Mayr, a nearly three-decade resident of Highlands Ranch and a member of Stop the Power Grab. “Why are they rushing it? If this is a good idea for the county, why would we not take our time?”

Three Douglas County residents, including state Rep. Bob Marshall and former Commissioner Lora Thomas, sued the Board of County Commissioners in April, alleging multiple violations of Colorado’s open meetings laws. They asked the court to stop the June 24 election from going forward.

But a judge sided with Douglas County last month, saying he didn’t see evidence that the board violated open meetings laws and ruling that a preliminary injunction to stop the election would “sacrifice the public’s right to vote.”

Marshall, a Democrat who represents Highlands Ranch, says the fight is not over, and he expects to prevail in the court case at the appellate level.

In the meantime, he is in the running as one of 49 candidates vying to fill the 21 seats on the commission that would be tasked with drafting Douglas County’s home-rule charter — assuming voters give the OK to the idea on the same June 24 ballot. All three Douglas County commissioners are also running for the charter commission.

“If elected, my main goal will be to ensure transparency,” Marshall told The Denver Post. “There has been none in this process as yet.”

The June election is projected to cost Douglas County around $500,000.

Weld, Pitkin first to adopt home rule

The state first approved home-rule powers for municipalities in 1902, and it extended the same authority to counties in 1970. Until then, counties were considered a statutory creation of the legislature and had to follow state law without exception.

Sixty Colorado counties still do.

Just two — at the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum — took advantage of the new designation in the decade after the law passed: Weld and Pitkin. Denver and Broomfield, though, have de facto home-rule status because of their combined city-and-county structure.

First to take up the home-rule mantle in Colorado was Weld County in 1976. County Attorney Bruce Barker said its three districts had essentially balkanized around that time, each running its own public works department and making its own purchasing decisions.

“The goal was to make things more efficient,” Barker said about the effort behind the switch.

The new charter included a one-of-a-kind five-member Weld County Council, separate from the Board of County Commissioners. The body sets salaries of elected county officials and fills commissioner vacancies. It can also suspend an elected official who has been criminally charged or indicted and it reviews conflicts of interest between county officers, appointees and employees.

“Remember, there was a complete distrust of government after Watergate,” Barker said of the era. “They wanted to have this County Council as a watchdog group.”

Pitkin County made its transition to home-rule governance in 1978, largely in response to concerns about rapid population growth and the desire to conserve threatened natural habitat in the Roaring Fork Valley, said County Manager Jon Peacock. His very role was created by Pitkin County’s new home-rule charter.

The county, home to ritzy Aspen, requires under its charter a vote of the people before it issues debt, as happened with a recent ballot measure that sought expansion of the county’s landfill.

“Home rule gives authority to counties to decide how they are going to organize to carry out the powers and responsibilities that are defined in state statute,” Peacock said. “We cannot exercise authority that is not given to us by state law.”

According to a briefing paper from the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Council Staff, home-rule authority in Colorado was designed to place several administrative functions under counties’ purview. They involve “finances and property, debts and expenses, and the powers and duties of officials, including elections, terms of office, and compensation.”

“In general, home rule ordinances addressing local matters supersede state law,” the briefing paper states. “However, in matters of statewide or mixed concern, state laws may take precedence over conflicting home rule ordinances.”

Weld County learned that the hard way earlier this year when the Colorado Supreme Court struck down a redistricting plan the county had put into play two years ago. Officials drew the boundaries of commissioners’ districts without adhering to a 2021 state law that required it to follow a different protocol.

The high court concluded that redistricting “relates to the county’s function, not the county’s structure.”

“And because the Colorado Constitution requires home rule counties to carry out statutorily mandated functions, home rule counties, like Weld, must comply with the redistricting statutes,” the court ruled.

How much more power would the county get?

Metropolitan State University political science professor Robert Preuhs said it’s clear from the language of Colorado’s home-rule statute and court cases on the issue that “you’re not getting much more policy latitude” with home-rule status.

“Broader issues like gun control and immigration enforcement and police cooperation with (immigration authorities) are still going to be constrained by state law,” Preuhs said. “You are still a creature of the state, but with more internal flexibility — although Douglas County seems intent on testing that.”

Teal, the Douglas County commissioner, said there are bills passed in the statehouse every legislative session that explicitly exempt home-rule counties from having to comply.

“I would like that opportunity for the citizens of Douglas County to take advantage of these exemptions,” he said.

And there are other laws that sit in questionable territory, Teal said. Home-rule status “gives us new tools in the tool belt. At the very least, it allows the county to challenge the state.”

Teal said he could see the county pushing back on Colorado’s mandatory retail bag fee, the way property assessments are calculated and limits that have been placed on law enforcement.

But first, voters must weigh in. As the campaign over home rule heats up with billboards and signs sprouting up along Interstate 25 and other places in Douglas County, the political temperature is rising as well.

At a May 28 town hall, Commissioner Abe Laydon laid out the stakes in front of 100 or so people in the commissioners’ hearing room in Castle Rock.

“Are we OK with how the state handled COVID-19 and the pandemic?” he asked. “Are we OK with how the state has handled illegal immigration?”

There was some sympathy from the audience, but others were skeptical. When the hourlong session ended, several people stood up and demanded that more of their questions on home rule be answered. Each side accused the other side of “fear-mongering.”

“What are you afraid of?” one attendant yelled as Laydon called for order.

Last week, newly released campaign finance data stirred up a new angle of attack for home-rule opponents. The Yes on Local Control committee raised $110,000 from just five donors — one of them Teal’s wife, Laura. The bulk of the total — $100,000 — came from just two developers.

By contrast, Stop the Power Grab has raised just over $30,000 from several hundred individual donors.

That has Marshall, the state representative from Highlands Ranch, questioning just how much grassroots support the home-rule movement has in Douglas County. And layer on that a recent survey of nearly 1,800 residents conducted for the county that showed respondents opposing home rule by a 54% to 44% margin; some information, including the survey’s margin of error, wasn’t available.

“Where is the outpouring of support for home rule the commissioners claim?” Marshall said.

Amanda Budimlya, who grew up in Colorado and has lived near Sedalia for a dozen years, has been dismayed by the state’s sharp turn to the left and supports the home-rule effort. There will be two opportunities — the June and November elections — for residents to weigh in, she said, giving everyone plenty of time to air out their concerns and grievances.

“It gives us standing so we can try and put things in the charter that we want to protect — like our liberty and rights,” she said of home rule.

Budimlya, 50, said it’s rich that the opposition adopted the name Stop the Power Grab for their campaign in a state where political power has only drifted in one direction in recent years.

“There’s already a power grab happening — the governor, the House and the Senate — it’s all Democrat-run,” she said of Colorado’s political makeup. “Any conservative voice is railroaded.”

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The district is most likely to recommend school closures in the northwest, southwest, and central parts of the city, because those regions will experience the steepest enrollment declines, says the annual report, known as the Strategic Regional Analysis. DPS released it Thursday.

Southwest Denver is expected to lose nearly 2,720 students by 2029, according to the report, while northwest Denver is expected to lose nearly 1,200 students and central Denver is expected to lose nearly 900 students.

The predictions come just days after DPS closed seven schools with low enrollment at the end of this past school year and partially closed three more by removing some grade levels. The process that led to those school closures, like most, was marked by fierce community pushback.

Enrollment in DPS peaked in 2019 before steadily dropping for several years. Student counts ticked up slightly in the last two school years, driven by an influx of migrant families.

But decreasing birth rates and continued gentrification that pushes families out of the city are expected to lead to enrollment losses in the coming years, the report says.

The report highlights other trends:

• The far northeast is the only part of the city where enrollment is expected to grow. The report predicts an increase of 400 students by 2029. That part of the district will need a new elementary school and more middle school seats, it says.
• Student demographics in Denver are changing. While students of color and those from low-income families still make up the majority of the Denver student body, the percentage of Latino and Black students has decreased over the past decade, while the percentage of white students has increased. The percentage of DPS students who qualify for subsidized school meals, an indicator of poverty, has gone down.
• This year, Denver lost more students to nearby school districts than it gained. About 7,500 Denver students chose to attend schools in other districts, while about 7,250 students from other districts chose to attend schools in Denver.
• Preschool enrollment returned to pre-pandemic levels this year, with 5,135 students.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Three decades ago, foreign students at Harvard University accounted for just 11% of the total student body. Today, they account for 26%.

Like other prestigious U.S. universities, Harvard for years has been cashing in on its global cache to recruit the world’s best students. Now, the booming international enrollment has left colleges vulnerable to a new line of attack from President Donald Trump. The president has begun to use his control over the nation’s borders as leverage in his fight to reshape American higher education.

Trump’s latest salvo against Harvard uses a broad federal law to bar foreign students from entering the country to attend the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His proclamation applies only to Harvard, and a federal judge late Thursday temporarily blocked it. But Trump’s order poses a threat to other universities his administration has targeted as hotbeds of liberalism in need of reform.

It’s rattling campuses under federal scrutiny, including Columbia University, where foreign students make up 40% of the campus. As the Trump administration stepped up reviews of new student visas last week, a group of Columbia faculty and alumni raised concerns over Trump’s gatekeeping powers.

“Columbia’s exposure to this ‘stroke of pen’ risk is uniquely high,” the Stand Columbia Society wrote in a newsletter.

Ivy League schools draw heavily on international students

People from other countries made up about 6% of all college students in the U.S. in 2023, but they accounted for 27% of the eight schools in the Ivy League, according to an Associated Press analysis of Education Department data. Columbia’s 40% was the largest concentration, followed by Harvard and Cornell at about 25%. Brown University had the smallest share at 20%.

Other highly selective private universities have seen similar trends, including at Northeastern University and New York University, which each saw foreign enrollment double between 2013 and 2023. Growth at public universities has been more muted. Even at the 50 most selective public schools, foreign students account for about 11% of the student body.

As the middle class has grown in other countries, more families have been able to afford test prep and admissions guidance to compete for spots in the Ivy League, said Rajika Bhandari, who leads a firm of higher education consultants.

“The Ivy League brand is very strong overseas, especially in countries like India and China, where families are extremely brand-aware of top institutions in the U.S. and other competing countries,” Bhandari said in an email.

Over the last two decades, she said, U.S. universities have increasingly recognized the benefits of international exchange, seeing it as a crucial revenue source that subsidizes U.S. students and keeps enrollments up in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

America’s universities have been widening their doors to foreign students for decades, but the numbers shot upward starting around 2008, as Chinese students came to U.S. universities in rising numbers.

It was part of a “gold rush” in higher education, said William Brustein, who orchestrated the international expansion of several universities.

“Whether you were private or you were public, you had to be out in front in terms of being able to claim you were the most global university,” said Brustein, who led efforts at Ohio State University and West Virginia University.

The race was driven in part by economics, he said. Foreign students typically aren’t eligible for financial aid and, at some schools, they pay much higher tuition than their American counterparts. Colleges also were eyeing global rankings that gave schools a boost if they recruited larger numbers of foreign students and scholars, he said.

Some wealthier universities — including Harvard — offer financial aid to foreign students. But students who get into those top-tier U.S. universities often have the means to pay higher tuition rates, Brustein said. That provides further incentive to enroll more foreign students, he said, saving more scholarship money for American students.

Still, international enrollment didn’t expand equally across all types of colleges. Public universities often face pressure from state lawmakers to limit foreign enrollment and keep more seats open for state residents. Private universities don’t face that pressure, and many aggressively recruited foreign students as their enrollment of U.S. students stayed flat. The college-going rate among American students has changed little for decades, and some have been turned off on college by rising costs and student debt loads.

Supporters say foreign students benefit colleges — and the wider US economy

Proponents of international exchange say foreign students pour billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, and many go on to support the nation’s tech industry and other fields in need of skilled workers. Most international students study STEM fields.

In the Ivy League, most international growth has been at the graduate level, while undergraduate numbers have seen more modest increases. Foreign graduate students make up more than half the students at Harvard’s government and design schools, along with five of Columbia’s schools.

Harvard’s undergraduate foreign population increased by about 100 students from 2013 to 2023, while graduate numbers increased by nearly 2,000. Part of that growth can be explained by increasing global competition at the graduate level, said William Kirby, a historian at Harvard who has written about the evolution of higher education.

“If you don’t recruit the very best students internationally in your most important graduate programs, particularly in science and engineering, then you will not be competitive,” Kirby said.

The Ivy League has been able to outpace other schools in large part because of its reputation, Brustein said. He recalls trips to China and India, where he spoke with families that could recite where each Ivy League school sat in world rankings.

“That was the golden calf for these families. They really thought, ‘If we could just get into these schools, the rest of our lives would be on easy street,’” he said.

Last week, Trump said he thought Harvard should cap its foreign students to about 15%.

“We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools, they can’t get in because we have foreign students there,” Trump said at a news conference.

The university called Trump’s latest action banning entry into the country to attend Harvard “yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the Administration in violation of Harvard’s First Amendment rights.”

In a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s previous attempt to block international students at Harvard, the university said its foreign student population was the result of “a painstaking, decades-long project” to attract the most qualified international students. Losing access to student visas would immediately harm the school’s mission and reputation, it said.

“In our interconnected global economy,” the school said, “a university that cannot welcome students from all corners of the world is at a competitive disadvantage.”

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

To attract the brightest minds to America, President Donald Trump proposed a novel idea while campaigning: If elected, he would grant green cards to all foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges.

“It’s so sad when we lose people from Harvard, MIT, from the greatest schools,” Trump said during a podcast interview last June. “That is going to end on Day One.”

That promise never came to pass. Trump’s stance on welcoming foreign students has shifted dramatically. International students have found themselves at the center of an escalating campaign to kick them out or keep them from coming as his administration merges a crackdown on immigration with an effort to reshape higher education.

An avalanche of policies from the Trump administration — such as terminating students’ ability to study in the U.S., halting all new student visa interviews, moving to block foreign enrollment at Harvard — have triggered lawsuits, countersuits and confusion for international students who say they feel targeted on multiple fronts.

In interviews, students from around the world described how it feels to be an international student today in America. Their accounts highlight pervasive feelings of fear, anxiety and insecurity that have made them more cautious in their daily lives, distracted them from schoolwork and prompted many to cancel trips home because they fear not being allowed to return.

For many, the last few months have forced them to rethink their dreams of building a life in America.

A standout student from Latvia feels ‘expendable’

Markuss Saule, a freshman at Brigham Young University-Idaho, took a recent trip home to Latvia and spent the entire flight back to the U.S. in a state of panic.

For hours, he scrubbed his phone, uninstalling all social media, deleting anything that touched on politics or could be construed as anti-Trump.

“That whole 10-hour flight, where I was debating, ‘Will they let me in?’ — it definitely killed me a little bit,” said Saule, a business analytics major. “It was terrifying.”

Saule is the type of international student the U.S. has coveted. As a high schooler in Latvia, he qualified for a competitive, merit-based exchange program funded by the U.S. State Department. He spent a year of high school in Minnesota, falling in love with America and a classmate who is now his fiancee. He just ended his freshman year in college with a 4.0 GPA.

But the alarm he felt on that flight crushed what was left of his American dream.

“If you had asked me at the end of 2024 what my plans were, it was to get married, find a great job here in the U.S. and start a family,” said Saule, who hopes to work as a business data analyst. “Those plans are not applicable anymore. Ask me now, and the plan to leave this place as soon as possible.”

Saule and his fiancee plan to marry this summer, graduate a year early and move to Europe.

This spring the Trump administration abruptly revoked permission to study in the U.S. for thousands of international students before reversing itself. A federal judge has blocked further status terminations, but for many, the damage is done. Saule has a constant fear he could be next.

As a student in Minnesota just three years ago, he felt like a proud ambassador for his country.

“Now I feel a sense of inferiority. I feel that I am expendable, that I am purely an appendage that is maybe getting cut off soon,” he said. Trump’s policies carry a clear subtext. “The policies, what they tell me is simple. It is one word: Leave.”

From dreaming of working at NASA to ‘doomscrolling’ job listings in India

A concern for attracting the world’s top students was raised in the interview Trump gave last June on the podcast “All-In.” Can you promise, Trump was asked, to give companies more ability “to import the best and brightest” students?

“I do promise,” Trump answered. Green cards, he said, would be handed out with diplomas to any foreign student who gets a college or graduate degree.

Trump said he knew stories of “brilliant” graduates who wanted to stay in the U.S. to work but couldn’t. “They go back to India, they go back to China” and become multi-billionaires, employing thousands of people. “That is going to end on Day One.”

Had Trump followed through with that pledge, a 24-year-old Indian physics major named Avi would not be afraid of losing everything he has worked toward.

After six years in Arizona, where Avi attended college and is now working as an engineer, the U.S. feels like a second home. He dreams of working at NASA or in a national lab and staying in America where he has several relatives.

But now he is too afraid to fly to Chicago to see them, rattled by news of foreigners being harassed at immigration centers and airports.

“Do I risk seeing my family or risk deportation?” said Avi, who asked to be identified by his first name, fearing retribution.

Avi is one of about 240,000 people on student visas in the U.S. on Optional Practical Training — a postgraduation period where students are authorized to work in fields related to their degrees for up to three years. A key Trump nominee has said he would like to see an end to postgraduate work authorization for international students.

Avi’s visa is valid until next year but he feels “a massive amount of uncertainty.”

He wonders if he can sign a lease on a new apartment. Even his daily commute feels different.

“I drive to work every morning, 10 miles an hour under speed limit to avoid getting pulled over,” said Avi, who hopes to stay in the U.S. but is casting a wider net. “I spend a lot of time doomscrolling job listings in India and other places.”

A Ukrainian chose college in America over joining the fight at home — for now

Vladyslav Plyaka came to the U.S. from Ukraine as an exchange student in high school. As war broke out at home, he stayed to attend the University of Wisconsin.

He was planning to visit Poland to see his mother but if he leaves the U.S., he would need to reapply for a visa. He doesn’t know when that will be possible now that visa appointments are suspended, and he doesn’t feel safe leaving the country anyway.

He feels grateful for the education, but without renewing his visa, he’ll be stuck in the U.S. at least two more years while he finishes his degree. He sometimes wonders if he would be willing to risk leaving his education in the United States — something he worked for years to achieve — if something happened to his family.

“It’s hard because every day I have to think about my family, if everything is going to be all right,” he said.

It took him three tries to win a scholarship to study in the U.S. Having that cut short because of visa problems would undermine the sacrifice he made to be here. He sometimes feels guilty that he isn’t at home fighting for his country, but he knows there’s value in gaining an education in America.

“I decided to stay here just because of how good the college education is,” he said. “If it was not good, I probably would be on the front lines.”

AP Education Writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

The 27-year Jeffco Public Schools physical education teacher, who officially retired last week, is a Field Day diehard. And until the very end, he awarded placement ribbons each spring.

He ran a day-long competition for students at Blue Heron Elementary in Littleton. The morning was formatted like a track meet. Events like the 40-meter dash, hurdles, three-legged race, high jump and sport stacking featured five competitors per heat, with a blue ribbon given to the winner, and a different colored ribbon for each of the other places.

Then, in the afternoon, Bierzychudek staged non-competitive events that hewed toward what Field Day has become: a celebration of teamwork, sportsmanship, and ensuring that kids of all abilities feel valued when exercising.

“Over the last couple decades, there was a push to not being competitive at Field Day,” Bierzychudek explained. “Everything competitive was dummied down. Everyone gets a ribbon, everyone wins, everyone feels good. That notion hit the whole country, except for my classes and my Field Day. I just couldn’t let the true competition die.

“My Field Day presented real-life situations: Winning and losing. Welcome to the real, silly world that we live in.”

Bierzychudek did adjust to the change in philosophy, but he long remained in the minority of gym teachers who recognize winners individually. He believes that even with ribbons, he accomplished the same goal that’s now the national standard.

Joe Deutsch, the president of the Society of Health and Physical Educators and a professor in health, nutrition and exercise sciences at North Dakota State, explained that the shift is a reflection of the holistic change in physical education as a whole.

“Thirty, forty years ago, the focus (in P.E.) was on developing athletes, or developing elite physical human beings,” Deutsch said. “Therefore, Field Day was an identification of that. And that is not at all what Field Day should be now.

“It’s fun competition now, like your family playing fun games in the backyard. We don’t have to give out ribbons and establish dominance in the process. Our focus in physical education is and should be in helping people discover their passion for lifelong physical activity, and Field Day is supposed to be an opportunity for a fun reflection of that.”

That new approach could be seen in the afternoon portion of Bierzychudek’s Field Day — a period filled with games like squirt tag, the big clothes relay and the parachute, topped off by popsicles. But the morning? That more closely resembled what the annual elementary school rite of spring once was: A track-and-field competition that rewarded athleticism and winning.

The hybrid affair reflected a localized philosophy by school districts that gives P.E. teachers the power to conduct their Field Day as they best see fit.

“It’s all about what each school wants to do, listening to the culture of their school and what they’ve done over the years, and what the climate of the school is to determine what their Field Day looks like,” said Douglas County School District specials coordinator Laurie LaComb. “I think that is the case with most Colorado districts.”

New-age Field Day lessons

Of the eight P.E. teachers across four districts that The Post spoke to for this story, Bierzychudek was the only one who gave out ribbons. The rest put on events similar to the one at Powderhorn Elementary.

P.E. teacher Owen Plyler describes it as “a blend of health and fitness activities, team-building and cooperation activities, and a few competitive races with no reward for winning.”

Plyler, who also serves as Dakota Ridge’s varsity boys soccer coach, described his childhood self as a “blue-ribbon fella” but believes that “it’s fine that we’ve largely moved on from the pin-the-ribbon-on-the-kid days.”

“I’m not one to say it has to be either way,” Plyler said. “I just want everyone to get out and have a great workout. Have some competition, but not let winning drive our behavior and attitude.”

At Ashley Elementary in Denver, seventh-year P.E. teacher Kelly Donnelly says the philosophy of her Field Day is to “demonstrate safety, cooperation and good sportsmanship by following rules, staying with the group, working with various classmates, and encouraging others to achieve objectives of the game.”

Ashley’s Field Day this past Friday had a couple traditional events such as tug-of-war and the potato sack race, but it was a ribbonless day heavy on out-of-the-box team-building games.

There were leaky pipes, where students in a line passed a PVC pipe filled with water over their heads. There was the sponge relay, which consisted of students passing a soaked sponge over their heads to transfer water to an empty bucket. And there were the tallest tumbling towers, where groups worked together to build the highest possible towers using mega cups.

Donnelly says the sportsmanship and cooperation pieces of Field Day are heavily emphasized throughout the year. She even hands out “good winner” and “good loser” awards to reinforce the concepts during P.E. class.

“What I always ask the students is, ‘What is more important: The people or the game?'” Donnelly said. “And they all know the people are more important. If they win, they’re not going to boast. If they lose, they’re not going to pout — they’re going to tell the other team good job, and look at their own teammates and say, ‘We’ll do better next time.'”

Over at Trevista at Horace Mann Elementary, Donnelly’s Denver Public Schools counterpart Aric Pelafas has also embraced the new style of Field Day. The eighth-year P.E. teacher installed a unique wrinkle in his Field Day where, instead of kids moving in groups from station to station in timed increments, he allowed partnered students to freely choose whatever event they wanted to do, whenever they wanted to do it.

If a pair of students wanted to spend the whole 90 minutes at the dunk tank, obstacle relay, or home run hitter competition, Pelafas was all for it.

Pelafas doesn’t do ribbons at his Field Day, but he puts on a school race in the fall where the top three boys and girls placers in each grade get a medal.

“New practice is doing small-grouped activities with as many kids moving as possible, as opposed to large games, large relays where you might have five kids waiting in line, and one kid moving at a time,” Pelafas said. “Since we’ve got (about 25) stations to choose from, now it’s more of a laid-back atmosphere. And since there’s not giant team or group activities, there’s less hype around winning and more hype around just having fun and moving their bodies.”

Ribbons of nostalgia

Still, Donnelly and Pelafas — both products of hyper-competitive Field Days as children — acknowledged there’s a lingering nostalgia for the old days.

“I’ve heard conversations among parents at Field Days like, ‘Remember when they used to give out the ribbons?’ And then usually there’s a laugh after, like, ‘How ridiculous were we for sometimes making kids feel less than if they didn’t win?'” Donnelly said.

“So there’s a nostalgia for those of us who went through that era, but I’ve never heard a parent say, ‘Why are we doing these other games now?'”

Grandview football coach Tom Doherty longs for the blue-ribbon days Bierzychudek refused to give up. He believes moments like the one he experienced in fifth grade at Shrine of St. Anne Catholic School in Arvada are part of what shaped him as a person.

“I remember thinking about Field Day for weeks ahead of time,” Doherty said. “At St. Anne, I could never beat (my friend) Dean Benallo in anything. I finally beat him in the shoe kick, got a blue ribbon and Field Day 1983 is etched in my brain forever.”

On the flip side, Deutsch believes that what Field Day has become “is not sport,” nor should it be. Rather, its current form is aimed at “the violin player and other kids who might not see themselves as an athlete, and so not as ‘physical education.'”

“… (Club and) travel sports are crazy today in comparison to what they were even 20 years ago, and so there’s plenty of opportunities for kids to establish their dominance in sports through those outlets that they’re participating in outside of school,” Deutsch said.

Bennett Moreland, a 10-year-old fourth grader at Cherokee Trail Elementary in Parker, sees both sides.

Moreland is a standout athlete and wishes his Field Day came with ribbons to commemorate his wins. But he also wants positive vibes for all of his classmates.

“I’m a competitive person, and I like winning,” Moreland said. “It’d just be cool to have a ribbon for events I’ve won. But I also get why they don’t give them out, because some of the kids who aren’t as athletic, I wouldn’t want them feeling bad for losing.”

Bierzychudek’s longtime district P.E. coordinator David Yonkie believes “the ribbons were not as important for the students as it was for the parents.” Bierzychudek respectfully disagrees.

It’s why Bierzychudek also lamented the demise of the Presidential Physical Fitness Test, which ended in 2012 and ceased the blue, red and white patches that came with it. The blue patch was given to kids who scored at or above 85% of the national percentile on the test’s five aspects (endurance run, shuttle run, sit-ups, sit-and-reach and pull-ups or push-ups).

As he packed up his office to head into retirement, Bierzychudek vowed that his approach to incentive-driven athletic development of young people would continue even after he walked out the door.

“Kids, they miss the real competition. They thrive on it,” Bierzychudek said. “During all my Field Days, I saw how kids would wear those ribbons with pride. All blues, one of every color, it didn’t matter. Wearing the ribbons was important.

“… And as for the Presidential Physical Fitness Awards, I’ve got a drawer full of them and I’m taking them with me. All of my grandkids are going to have to earn their Presidential Physical Fitness Award, like I did when I was their age.”

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Jeffco’s policy says that in most cases, transgender students “should be assigned to share overnight accommodations with other students that share the student’s gender identity.” It also says the needs of transgender students will be assessed on a case-by-case basis to maximize their social integration, ensure their safety and comfort, and minimize stigmatization.

The Education Department is launching an investigation under Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. Under its contested interpretation of the law, the Trump administration has used Title IX to challenge transgender rights policies.

The Jeffco district “allegedly misleads parents by informing them that girls and boys will be separated for overnight accommodations without divulging that its definition of ‘girl’ includes boys who claim a female identity,” the department said in a press release.

Jeffco Public Schools said in a statement that its policy is grounded in Colorado’s anti-discrimination law, the regulations for which say transgender individuals should be allowed to use restrooms, locker rooms, and dormitories that are consistent with their gender identity.

“Families always have the ultimate choice whether their student participates in any unique programming that involves overnight accommodations,” Jeffco Public Schools said in its statement. “We are unwavering in our commitment to the well-being of our students, staff, and families, and we strictly adhere to all Colorado state laws governing their treatment.”

Title IX does not prohibit “the degree of protection that the State of Colorado provides,” the district said.

This is the second Title IX investigation of a large Colorado school district since Trump took office in January. That same month, the U.S. Department of Education announced it was investigating Denver Public Schools for converting a girls’ restroom into an all-gender restroom.

Jeffco’s policy on overnight accommodations for transgender students is also the subject of an ongoing federal lawsuit filed by several district families. One family claimed their daughter, then 11 years old, was assigned to share a bed with a transgender student on an out-of-state overnight trip. The U.S. Department of Education’s press release cited the family’s claim, calling it one of “several disturbing reports” about Jeffco’s policy.

In court documents, Jeffco Public Schools argued that the district “does not typically know the sex assigned at birth of any of its students” because parents can legally change the sex designation on their child’s birth certificate before enrolling the child in school.

Jeffco also argued that it honors students’ requests “to room by themselves, with specific classmates, or with their parents,” and did so in the case of the 11-year-old. When she expressed discomfort at rooming with a transgender student, the trip organizers “quickly and discreetly” moved her to a different room, the district wrote in a court document.

The Jeffco investigation was one of two announced Monday in what the Trump administration has declared “Title IX Month,” marking the 53rd anniversary of the law. The other investigation involves the admission of a transgender woman to a University of Wyoming sorority, a case that was also the subject of a federal lawsuit.

“This Administration will fight on every front to protect women’s and girls’ sports, intimate spaces, dormitories and living quarters, and fraternal and panhellenic organizations,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in the press release.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters

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The Jefferson County Education Association sent a four-page letter to the school board Tuesday outlining numerous grievances against Dorland, ranging from failure to address school safety concerns to making decisions “behind closed doors without explanation.”

“Superintendent Dorland’s approach has repeatedly undermined trust, destabilized our schools and diverted valuable time and resources away from classrooms,” the union wrote in the letter. “Her leadership style is fundamentally misaligned with the values our community expects and our students deserve.”

The letter said the union’s representative council unanimously voted “no confidence” in Dorland.

“I was disappointed, but not surprised that the JCEA issued their vote,” Dorland said in an interview Thursday. “That’s straight out of a typical union handbook.”

Dorland noted that the letter comes as the teachers union and district haven’t been able to reach a deal on a new contract. She defended her leadership, saying student academic performance has increased, while suspensions and expulsions have dropped under her superintendency.

She was hired in 2021 as Jeffco Public Schools’ sixth superintendent in seven years.

“Over the last four years, I’ve provided leadership stability,” Dorland said. “…I hear their concerns. I’m reflecting on their feedback and I take their concerns seriously.”

A day after the union notified the school board of its vote, state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican, sent her own letter to board President Mary Parker saying she was “deeply alarmed by what has unfolded in this district under the leadership of Superintendent Tracy Dorland.”

Both the union and Kirkmeyer criticized Dorland’s handling of a Jeffco Public Schools administrator who was investigated for allegedly possessing child sexual abuse material.

That administrator, former Chief of Schools David Weiss, was fired by the district in December after the Jefferson County sheriff’s office began its investigation. He later died by suicide.

“From the tragic high profile case of the chief of schools — whose misconduct was allowed to continue until his death — to a series of incidents where individuals accused of wrongdoing were permitted to resign quietly or be transferred rather than held accountable, this district has repeatedly chosen to protect itself instead of protecting students,” Kirkmeyer wrote in her letter to Parker.

“The public trust has been shattered,” Kirkmeyer added. “A culture that allows misconduct to be ignored, minimized or hidden must be dismantled. That starts with new leadership.”

Dorland pushed back on the lawmaker’s allegation that Jeffco Public Schools continues to allow misconduct in the district, saying it was “unfair and, frankly, libelous.”

“I was particularly disappointed in the inaccurate statements she has shared in her letter,” Dorland said of Kirkmeyer. “We have taken all appropriate steps to address, immediately, any issues that have arisen.”

While the union’s letter, which detailed a broad range of issues beyond Weiss, did not explicitly call for the superintendent’s termination, Jefferson County Education Association President Brooke Williams said in an interview that the union is supportive of the school board replacing Dorland.

“I’m not opposed to new leadership and I don’t think our council is opposed to new leadership in Jeffco,” she said. “…We feel there’s a lack of trust right now.”

Williams, the union president, said educators have tried to bring their concerns to Dorland in the past, but they have been ignored.

“There’s been some gaslighting,” she said. “…We’re calling on the school board to take swift action and decisive action to restore collaboration and re-establish the confidence in leadership in Jeffco and really rebuild our relationship not only with our communities, but our employees.”

Williams said she does not believe the union has ever taken a vote of no confidence before.

“We have a long history in Jeffco of being divided by educational politics and once again… Jeffco Public Schools is marred and divided by educational politics,” Dorland said.

The union’s letter paints Jeffco Public Schools as a district in crisis.

The union alleged that Dorland has made top-down decisions — including changes to health care and school start times — without listening to students, families and educators.

Many of the district’s decisions are also happening “behind closed doors without explanation,” including the removal of books from school libraries, according to the letter.

Dorland disagreed with the union’s assertion that she hasn’t engaged with the community when making decisions, such as altering when school days begin and end. The change was made, the superintendent said, because it was inefficient and meant students in one building received less instruction time than their peers in another building.

“We did work with people to make those decisions,” Dorland said. “My leadership and my team’s leadership… has been about students first and that is who my primary customer is.”

Jeffco Public Schools provides insufficient mental health support to students and staff and maintains “unsustainable workloads, especially in special education and alternative education settings,” the letter said.

When educators have raised concerns about school safety, Dorland “has dismissed or delayed action while morale, retention and student outcomes suffer,” according to the letter.

There have also been other safety concerns, according to the letter, such as a Ralston Valley High administrator not allowing a school nurse to call 911 when a student was allegedly vomiting blood.

The union said Dorland hasn’t communicated adequately with the community regarding how schools will respond if federal immigration officers show up on campus — a fear that educators across metro Denver have expressed since President Donald Trump resumed office earlier this year and ramped up deportations.

“Superintendent Dorland’s continued leadership has exacerbated tensions, widened the gap between decision-makers and stakeholders, and damaged the district’s credibility with employees and the broader community,” the union wrote in the letter.

Dorland reduced the number of equity, diversity and inclusion specialists the district employs from three to one and ended diversity and inclusion training, the union said.

She also made changes to the district’s resources for supporting transgender students and changed policies on teachers using pronouns in email signatures without input from staff or the school board, according to the letter.

While staff can still include their pronouns in emails, they are no longer allowed to have links to resources about the LGBTQ community, Williams said.

She said the changes to diversity and inclusion practices came after Trump threatened to pull federal funding from K-12 districts for policies his administration said were discriminatory.

“We were specifically told we could not have surveys with students asking what their preferred pronouns were,” Williams said.

Dorland denied that the district has rolled back diversity and inclusion efforts, including resources for transgender students.

“While we may have shifted from previous models on how this work was done, we have not stopped,” she said. “The way we have shifted the work is actually supporting students.”

Jeffco Public Schools enrolled more than 75,000 students as of the 2024-25 academic year.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday the U.S. will begin revoking the visas of some Chinese students, including those studying in “critical fields.”

China is the second-largest country of origin for international students in the United States, behind only India. In the 2023-2024 school year, more than 270,000 international students were from China, making up roughly a quarter of all foreign students in the United States.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” Rubio wrote.

The action comes at a time of intensifying scrutiny of the ties between U.S. higher education and China. House Republicans this month pressed Duke University to cut its ties with a Chinese university, saying it allowed Chinese students to gain access to federally funded research at Duke.

Last year, House Republicans issued a report warning that hundreds of millions of dollars in defense funding was going to research partnerships linked to the Chinese government, providing “back-door access to the very foreign adversary nation whose aggression these capabilities are necessary to protect against.”

The Department of Homeland Security raised similar issues in a letter barring international students at Harvard University last week. Secretary Kristi Noem accused Harvard of “coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party,” citing research collaborations with Chinese scholars. It also accused Harvard of training members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a Chinese paramilitary group.

The announcement came a day after Rubio halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for international students as the department prepares guidelines for increased vetting of their activity on social media.

The crackdown on visas adds to uncertainty for international students

Together, the announcements from the State Department added to uncertainty for America’s international students, who have faced intensifying scrutiny from President Donald Trump’s administration.

Earlier this year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested and tried to deport students who had been involved in campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war. And the Trump administration abruptly terminated the legal status of thousands of international students before reversing itself and then expanding the grounds on which students can lose permission to study in the U.S.

University of Wisconsin student Vladyslav Plyaka was planning to visit Poland to see his mother and renew his visa, but he doesn’t know when that will be possible now that visa appointments are suspended. He also doesn’t feel safe leaving the U.S. even when appointments resume.

“I don’t think I have enough trust in the system at this point,” said Plyaka, who came to the U.S. from Ukraine as an exchange student in high school and stayed for college. “I understand it probably is done for security measures, but I would probably just finish my education for the next two or three years and then come back to Ukraine.”

The Trump administration last week moved to block Harvard University from enrolling any international students, a decision that has been put on hold by a federal judge, pending a lawsuit.

Trump said Wednesday that Harvard, whose current student population is made up of more than a quarter of international students, should limit that percentage to about 15%.

“I want to make sure the foreign students are people that can love our country,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

The action on Chinese students renews a priority from Trump’s first administration to clamp down on academic ties between the United States and China, which Republicans have called a threat to national security. In April, Trump ordered the Education Department to ramp up enforcement of a federal rule requiring colleges to disclose information about funding from foreign sources.

During his first term, the Education Department opened 19 investigations into foreign funding at U.S. universities and found that they underreported money flowing from China, Russia and other countries described as foreign adversaries.

Hours before Rubio announced the change, Eastern Michigan University announced it was ending engineering partnerships with two Chinese universities, responding to Republican pressure. Rep. John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, recently urged Eastern Michigan and other universities to end partnerships with Chinese universities.

Around 1.1 million international students were in the United States last year — a source of essential revenue for tuition-driven colleges. International students are not eligible for federal financial aid. Often, they pay full price.

Northeastern University, which has more than 20,000 international students, has set up “contingency plans” for those who hit visa delays, said spokesperson Renata Nyul, without elaborating.

“This is a very dynamic situation, and we are closely monitoring the developments in real time to assess any potential impacts,” she said.

The US plans more in-depth reviews of visa applicants’ social media

In his announcement on China, Rubio said the government also will “revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.”

Visa applicants have been required to provide social media handles to the State Department since 2019. The cable Tuesday did not indicate what kind of additional scrutiny the new guidelines would cover, but suggested the new reviews may be more resource-intensive.

The additional vetting will deter students from coming to the U.S., said Jonathan Friedman of PEN America, a literary and free expression organization.

“The details remain vague, but this policy risks upending the long-standing place of the U.S. as a beacon for intellectual and cultural exchange with the world,” Friedman said.

The move to cut off international enrollment at Harvard stems from a dispute with the Department of Homeland Security, which has demanded that it provide information about foreign students that might implicate them in violence or protests that could lead to their deportation. Harvard says it complied with the records request, but the agency said its response fell short.

On Wednesday, Trump said more scrutiny of Harvard’s students is necessary.

“They’re taking people from areas of the world that are very radicalized, and we don’t want them making trouble in our country,” Trump said.

The Trump administration has cut over $2.6 billion in federal grants for Harvard as it presses demands for changes to policies and governance at the Ivy League school, which the president has described as a hotbed of liberalism and antisemitism. Harvard has pushed back and filed a lawsuit against the administration.

Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim in Washington and Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco contributed to this report.

Vedanth “Ved” Raju, 12, survived nine rounds and was among the final 20 contestants still standing in the semifinals before being outdone by the mineral “ellestadite” in the 10th round of the national spelling competition held outside Washington, D.C.

The eighth-grader from Aurora Quest K-8 school, who was sponsored by The Denver Post, sailed through the quarterfinals Wednesday morning before his departure.

He entered the competition this week on a high note, having won the state spelling bee and regional science fair in the same week this spring.

Ved correctly spelled — and, in some cases, defined — the following words (with definitions via Merriam-Webster):

• “Faipule,” a Samoan native councillor heading a political district and belonging to a fono
• “Pathogen,” which Ved correctly defined as “a specific cause of disease”
• “Trivet,” a usually metal or wooden stand often with short feet for use under a hot dish
• “Sapling,” which Ved correctly defined as “a young tree”
• “Apoptosis,” a genetically directed process of cell self-destruction
• “Congrio,” a large Chilean cusk eel esteemed as food
• “Febrile,” which Ved correctly defined as “characterized by fever”
• “Amalaka,” a bulbous or melonlike ornament terminating the shikaras of medieval Indian temples

A couple of those science terms should seem familiar to the eighth-grader, who won first place in the junior category at the Denver Metro Regional Science and Engineering Fair in March for his project developing a plant-based ointment to treat diabetic foot ulcers. Ved has his sights set on becoming a doctor.

He has a good mentor. His older brother, Vikram Raju, took second place at the Scripps Bee three years ago.

Earlier in the day, Boulder speller Blanche Li was bested by tacos.

Blanche, an eighth-grader from Summit Middle School, incorrectly spelled “taqueria” — a Mexican restaurant specializing especially in tacos — during the Bee’s sixth round.

Blanche correctly spelled and defined the following words:

• “Inuk,” a member of the Inuit people
• “Scrounge,” which Blanche correctly defined as “to find or round up”
• “Lastage,” a port duty for the privilege of loading a ship
• “Malleable,” which Blanche correctly defined as “capable of being shaped”

Spelling isn’t Blanche’s only passion. The 14-year-old plays clarinet and tenor saxophone in her school band, loves Ultimate Frisbee and building Lego sets. She’s an aspiring lawyer.

More than 240 spellers started the competition Tuesday and only a handful remained on Wednesday evening.

The Bee’s finals will be broadcast live at 6 p.m. Thursday on the ION network and spellingbee.com.

Individual school districts will receive the same or more money than they did this year.

The state’s $1.2 billion shortfall put a wrench in legislators’ plan to use a new funding formula they created for schools last year, which was supposed to put $500 million more toward K-12 education during a six-year period starting next fiscal year.

Unable to implement the new formula, the governor, lawmakers and school districts debated this session how Colorado determines how much per-pupil funding each K-12 system receives, namely the formula’s use of “averaging.”

The new law — House Bill 1320, which Polis signed Friday — will use a four-year enrollment average to help determine funding — a method that districts have said will help them adjust to falling K-12 enrollment, as the amount of money a school receives is based on the number of children in their classrooms. Without averaging, districts would receive less money as enrollment is falling statewide.

During the 2026-27 fiscal year, the number of years used to create an enrollment average will drop to three as long as certain measures are met, according to the new law.

“With this bill, Colorado has made good on our promise to fully fund K-12 education and meet students where they are and bolster educational outcomes across our state,” Polis said in a statement. “I appreciate the sponsors of this bill for working to increase school funding and turning on the new, student-focused school finance formula in a sustainable way.”

The bill signed by the governor sets the state’s per-pupil funding amount at about $8,691.

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