WEEK OF FEBRUARY 13, 2025
VOLUME 129 | ISSUE 50
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Elizabeth district fights suit from ACLU BY NICKY QUINBY SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA
Maegan Winegar, left, the Elizabeth School District’s new vaping prevention education coordinator, stands with Camden Ross, a member of SWAT, for PHOTO BY NICKY QUINBY Students Working Against Tobacco.
Schools step up fight against vaping avoring, nicotine or cannabis, 2017 and 2018, e-cigarette use any statistics, vaping is prevaMaegan Winegar heads flpropylene glycol, and vegetable among youth skyrocketed at a lent in the building. Students glycerin and can’t be legally rate of epidemic proportions. to think they [vapes] are prevention education purchased or used by people Elizabeth High School stu- seem safe, and because they don’t BY NICKY QUINBY SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA
Elizabeth School District’s new vaping prevention education coordinator, Maegan Winegar, has been holding a series of parent meetings to help inform about the risks and prevalence of vaping. The first parent meeting was held on Jan. 27 at Elizabeth Middle School. E-cigarettes, or vapes, typically contain water, chemical
who haven’t reached adulthood. In nicotine vapes, though the amount of nicotine in products varies, they’re extremely addictive because the vapor is quickly absorbed through blood vessels and nicotine can reach the brain in as few as 10 seconds. Vaping is a problem within the Elizabeth School District, as it is with young people across the country. In 2019, agencies declared vaping an epidemic among youth. Between
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dent Camden Ross was present at the Jan. 27 meeting to help Winegar and lend a student perspective. Ross is part of SWAT, Students Working Against Tobacco. She said despite teachers monitoring bathrooms, groups of students still sometimes pile into school bathrooms to vape. Ross feels like it’s not fair to other students who just want to use the restroom. EHS Principal Bret McClendon said, “While we don’t have
have a distinct odor like cigarettes, they are difficult to detect.” Though EHS has made strides to discourage vaping, Winegar hopes that through education and policy changes, she can make even greater progress. Across the nation, vaping is not just a high school problem — students all the way down to the elementary school level are being exposed to vaping and exSEE VAPING, P12
The Elizabeth School District has filed its formal response to a recent federal lawsuit and request for preliminary injunction from the ACLU of Colorado, concerning the district’s suspension of 19 books from school libraries. The injunction, filed Dec. 20, asks that the removed books be returned to ESD libraries and would stop the school board from continuing to remove books. The school district’s response, “Defendant’s Opposition to the Preliminary Injunction,” was filed on Jan. 27 in U.S. District Court in Denver. The district’s filing gives an explanation of its rationale in the Library Protocols and Book Lists and argues that the plaintiffs who sued in December do not make a convincing argument for granting the injunction. The document explains that in the fall of 2023, Elizabeth School Board director Mike Calahan reported that his daughter, a middle school student in ESD, checked out a book from her school library recommended for readers aged 14 and over which contained profanity and sexual content. Because of this incident, the board identified a “significant disconnect” between curricular goals and library materials. The board asked the district’s Curriculum Review Committee to review the library collection and form a policy to “address student access to potentially controversial library content.” This resulted in the new Library Protocols, Sensitive Topics List, and a list of 19 suspended books, which was approved by the board on Aug. 12, 2024. The district subsequently asked the community to review the suspended titles by visiting district offices SEE ACLU, P7
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