Teachers are leaving, legal battles are ensuing, voters are left divided and all of this at the expense of school children. Douglas County, which includes towns such as Castle Rock, Franktown and Park Meadows, is currently facing a showdown in its public education system between the teacher’s union and the school board.

Thursday night in Lindsay Auditorium starting at 7 p.m. the DU Student Union and Colorado Student Power Alliance hosted a screening of the documentary film, “The Reformers,” created by Brian Malone, that highlights the issues with education reform currently happening in Douglas County. The audience consisted of about twenty people, mixed between DU students, Douglas county voters and one “teacher activist.”

Sara Fitouri, a student organizer of the CSPA, a Douglas County high school graduate and law student at DU who is also working on her MA in International Studies said DU students needed to be aware of this situation not only because the corporatization of schools affects students as a whole in primary and higher education, but also because one of the main sources of campaign funds for the current school board members comes from a infamous DU supporter, Ralph Nagel, who helped to fund and build Nagel Hall.

“I’m sure we all recognized a familiar name in the film,” said Fitouri.

The Colorado Student Power Alliance is a statewide organization that is working to promote fair public education for students of all backgrounds. They have groups at all of the local colleges in Denver but chose to host the screening at DU because of its central location between the Denver Metro area and Douglas County, according to Fitouri. The newly founded DU-associated sect of COSPA is currently working to make official their name as “DU Student Union” and begin hosting more education reform events on campus.

The debate in Douglas County centers around a few key issues including: the school board’s decision to break away from a long-standing partnership with the Douglas County Teacher’s Federation; the use of publicly funded “vouchers” allegedly given to private and religious schools; the accusation of big business corporatizing the education system to make profit rather than benefit students. Teachers, parents, students and pro-reform supporters are becoming increasingly polarized on these topics.

The current school board, headed by Superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Celania-Fagen, is nicknamed “The Reformers” because of the nature of their election on a reform platform that was popular during the 2009 election year because the U.S. was still deep in the recession period. The education reforms were supposed to save the school district money, while also giving parents more choice about where to send their children, but many now believe that these reforms were not an effective change to the arguably already-successful school district.

The documentary lays out the complicated situation in an easily digestible format. Malone, who also narrates the films, starts out by warning, “this is a lot of information, so stay with me.”

“The last thing I wanted to do was make another movie, but I couldn’t let this situation remain as it was without speaking up,” said Malone, a filmmaker who also created the movie, “Patriocracy,” which can be found on Netflix. He noted that when a controversy like this landed in his backyard, he had no option but to cover it.

Malone’s point of view presented in the film is anti-school board, pro-teacher. According to the film, the school board has not been transparent in their use of funds, and although the school districts reserve money has increased from around 20 million before 2009, to now around 80 million, the savings has been at the cost of the schools. Art and music programs are supposedly being cut, while teacher’s benefits are reduced and their workload increased. According to Malone, the Douglas County school district has about 600 million dollars at its disposal.

Now, with the upcoming school board elections in November and four seats on the board opening up, screenings of “The Reformers” are being shown throughout the Colorado area to help push support and votes towards opposition candidates.

“We have to look at each other as human beings, not as machines to make money with,” said Malone, explaining why he believed the market model could not work properly when it came to the context of public education.

The Colorado Student Power Alliance is organizing a group to go out to Castle Rock and canvas in support of candidates such as Barbara Chase, Bill Hodges and other opposition candidates on Oct. 26 and again on Nov. 2. The term canvassing refers to door-to-door promotion.

More information can be found about COSPA’s efforts on their website at costudentpower.org. There is also a Facebook page called “Students hit the streets” that provides more information about canvassing sign-ups and times.

For more information about The Reformers documentary, check out the website at reformersmovie.com