Join Priscilla Ron as she delves into the pressing issues surrounding child safety and educational accountability with guest Lindsay Datko. Discover the shocking patterns of misconduct within schools and how advocacy groups are stepping up to make a difference. From legislation efforts to addressing Title IX violations, this episode unravels the complexities and the urgent need for transparency and stronger policies in education.
Welcome to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Ron. She’s a master educator and author leading the conversation to restore the American mind through wisdom, virtue, and truth.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Restoring Education in America. I’m your host, Priscilla Ron, and I am so thrilled that you decided to join the conversation today. There is a brand new school opening this fall in Centennial in celebration of America’s 250th birthday. I can’t think of anything more exciting than opening a new private classical school. It’s called Excalibur Classical Academy. Their mission and vision is restoring America’s heritage by developing servant leaders who are keepers and defenders of the principles of freedom for which our founding fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. And if you have a young child that will be starting kindergarten through third grade this fall, please go to their website to learn more. it’s Excalibur classicalacademy.org and if you’re looking for a great place to teach I know they’re looking to hire so please go to their website Excalibur classicalacademy.org to submit your application or to request a tour and more information but to stay in that theme of new schools we are living in a time where parents are desperately looking for a safe place for their children to go to school because there’s just so many things going on in our public schools and it’s been in the news and i’m going to bring my friend to the stage who knows all about this she’s been right in the middle of the fight welcome lindsay.co hi lindsay i’m so excited to have this conversation with you lindsay but before we get too far into the conversation i am going to share a little bit of your bio with the listeners So Lindsay Datko is a Colorado-based education advocate and community leader known for her work in parental engagement and school policy transparency. As the founder and executive director of Jeffco Kids First, she works to strengthen collaboration between families and school leaders throughout Jefferson County. Her advocacy centers on academic accountability, financial transparency, and ensuring that parents have a meaningful voice in decisions that affect their children’s education. Guided by a child-first philosophy, Datco emphasizes respectful partnerships, fact-based policy discussions, and the protection of individual rights. Through community outreach, public engagement, and policy involvement, she seeks to empower parents and promote open communication between educators, administrators, and taxpayers with the goal of supporting a strong and sustainable future for students across the district. but I know your number one job is wife and mom. So thanks for carving out a little bit of your time today. Absolutely. Lindsay. So another thing we have in common, we are co 2023 graduates of leadership program of the Rockies. And we sat together for nine months learning all about freedom, Liberty, and you just ran with it and, You know, I want to applaud you again because you, along with our classmate, Laurie Gimmelstein and Aaron Lee, won the 2026 Leader in Action Award last week at Leadership Program of the Rockies Retreat at the Broadmoor. What did that recognition mean to you?
SPEAKER 03 :
That was amazing. I have been so uplifted by LPR and supported by the networking there and the principles that they teach that I’ve been able to apply to my leadership at Jeffco Kids First. And it was really an honor to stand and receive that award.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I’m so proud of you and it is so well deserving. And I know all the hard work you’ve been doing and fundraising and just trying to do all of this amazing work. But let’s get into the conversation. But first, for those parents who may not know what Jeffco Kids First is, talk a little bit about your mission and vision and what you do.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, we started during the pandemic. I’m a teacher by profession as well. I taught in DPS like you, Priscilla, and was very, very worried about school doors closing. We gathered 30 of our closest friends and we started advocating to return our kids to normalcy and had some great success, so much that we use the open record system to force the leadership of Jefferson County Public Health to resign with bipartisan support. And it’s interesting, we thought maybe that would be our big moment. And what we realized really is that was just preparing us for what was to come. And by mastering that open record system, system and growing our group. We’re almost at 2,000 local members and families. We have now uncovered over 37 sexual misconduct and abuse cases. Amongst many other concerns, we really care about fighting for neutrality in the classroom and balance where it’s needed. But we never foresaw us becoming a student safety group, Fox 31. reported us as a most prominent student safety group, and that really hit us. We really are fighting for our children’s safety, not just those kind of hot button topics that many parents want out of the classroom to remain neutral, but to keep our kids safe. And I have so many cases that I could go through with you, Priscilla, that I think would really shock people and bring attention.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, it’s really refreshing to know that there are other school teachers who are looking out for parents and kids and families and putting kids first, which is really fitting for the name of your organization. So let’s talk about some of these reports because there have been about 37 sexual misconduct and abuse cases within the district that you’ve drawn attention to and of federal authorities. So talk about some of the patterns that you’ve uncovered that you’re concerned about most.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and that’s, again, just what we know. And I want to emphasize, we work with attorneys and HR professionals. We have private investigators, very skilled, and policy experts. So our team is very skilled and very dedicated, and we always corroborate the reports we get, often and sometimes from victims themselves. with open records. And so anything we put out is in writing and has been documented. One, I’ll just start with this. I remember one morning just getting ready. I’d just gotten my kids out the door and I got a phone call from a mom and she said, I just got home from my workout class and my husband had discovered extensive evidence of sexual abuse on my son’s Instagram private messaging. She said, and it’s my son’s social worker at the school. That has turned out to be one of the most egregious cases and just so incredibly disturbing. We’ve been supporting that family. He was 12 when she started grooming him. Um, and you know, abused him in the side, the school doors, uh, just a very disturbing case. And, um, we learned that other families had complained about this teacher, um, for other professional issues that really put hardship on their families as their child social worker. There’s another case and I’m kind of trying to, to build a pattern here for you. The Columbine case, which an international, such a heartbreaking case of a young girl who was groomed by her teacher since she was about 15 in her class, declared homeless by a network, we call it, of 10 employees who had some knowledge, who saw red flags and who knew she was being declared homeless. from a family that had a stable and loving home and normal difficulties. What had happened was their daughter had been groomed by a female teacher. Her behavior began to shift. She was a straight-A student. And they put her in counseling. The counselor happened to be a Christian counselor. And because of that, they decided to go behind the parents’ back, blame them of putting her in conversion therapy. wrongly blaming them and declare her homeless where she was then whisked off by this teacher to California eventually and still remains away from her family now that she’s an adult. Law enforcement called this an incident of trafficking in their eyes that had many, many elements of trafficking her off to California. And What we learned in that case, what’s disturbing in that case, is it took our organization 18 months to take this to the commissioner of education and ensure that her license was revoked. And they launched an investigation and the attorney general’s office, Phil Weiser and the Colorado Department of Education did revoke her license. But it took a citizens group to pressure for 18 months in order to see that happen. I can quickly go through a couple of others just to show you this same pattern of discoveries that we’ve made and history that showed red flags. Another case was a teacher at a middle school, Creighton Middle School here in Jeffco. This has also been in the news. He molested migrant children in his office under the guise of fake medical exams. He covered his windows with posters, He’s been going through the litigation process. And we discovered in open records that there was a two-year arrest warrant out for this teacher. that had been missed. That was incredibly disturbing. Another red flag to us and we started building this pattern. You may have heard recently about a case and a dispute between the St. Vrain School District and Jeffco schools because this teacher had been fired from St. Vrain for after being under investigation from their district for some very disturbing claims about filming students inappropriately. He then went to teach in Jeffco, and we discovered through our team that he had been teaching while on an ankle monitor, awaiting out of custody for a halfway house. And now the police investigation on him is extensive and I’ve looked at it as much as I could possibly handle. Very disturbing. But now there’s this dispute between St. Vrain and Jeffco. Why didn’t St. Vrain report to CDE? And why didn’t Jeffco conduct a proper reference check? And so, again, we see this disturbing pattern. Those are cases that are in the news that are criminal. But there are many cases that maybe don’t rise to the criminal level because grooming is not considered criminal in Colorado yet. Maybe something that we’re looking at. There are many cases of misconduct that need to be reported to CDE to keep them from going to other districts. There was a teacher that was allowed to resign in lieu of termination from Jeffco, went to Adams 12 for grooming allegations. We looked him up a couple months later and he was teaching the same age students. We called up Adams 12 and alerted them. And the next day he was out of the classroom. And so we saw a very different response there in Adams 12. He was eventually fired. They took immediate action, but again, he wasn’t reported. And so they had no flagging. I could go on and on, Priscilla. I don’t know how much more you want with you about these kinds of cases, but.
SPEAKER 02 :
I see this as the classroom teacher. I know for a fact there are teachers who will Go to the easiest target, like you said, students who are in foster care students are in special education. I know that there is a teacher who secretly gave this little girl bandages unbeknown to the guardians. I mean, we have. A former school board member in Denver Public Schools who was accused of inappropriate behavior and texting, who is back in a middle school in public schools. Our system is allowing these individuals back into our schools and not taking it seriously for the safety of kids, for the safety of parents. You know, so yes, I know you have.
SPEAKER 03 :
Let me tell you this, Priscilla, really quick, because this is a big one. Our chief of schools was put under investigation for child sexual assault material, child pornography, and then took his life. But this same person was in charge of of investigations and also this adult sexual abuse trainings. And so it really shows you why we’re having these problems and why there needs to be such a fix, particularly in Jeffco schools. And it’s happening everywhere, but we have had people very prominent across the nation who say they’ve seen nothing like what we’ve uncovered. There are some real gaps in Jeffco schools and of course other schools that are showing the same pattern.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, well, as you said, and look, for people who say, oh, this isn’t happening. I’ve never heard of this happening. It’s literally happening all across the nation. We’re not making this up. We’re not hypersensitive. There are children being victimized. There are children being ripped from their parents because the adults and the policymakers are not putting into place very, very strict policies. consequences. Let’s talk about one of our favorite legislators, Senator Mark Baisley. You’ve asked him to introduce legislation to track employee sexual misconduct. Okay, so what was the purpose of that bill?
SPEAKER 03 :
So what’s interesting is Senator Baisley covers part of Jefferson County and follows our work. And in good faith, as you would hope a representative would do. He had a meeting with Jeffco schools, superintendents and board members at the Capitol. And he asked them, what are you doing to address this? And it was actually their suggestion that he run a bill to propose a sort of registry or database where this misconduct that doesn’t rise to the level of criminal is tracked in order to prevent the pattern that I tried to uncover here a little bit of teachers just simply moving to the district next door. And so he did so. And we repeatedly asked Jeffco schools, we noticed that they weren’t, they were suddenly not getting behind him. You know, and just as some context, four out of five of our uh, board members are union backed and they suddenly were backing away from Senator Baisley, uh, being the one to run this. And so we continually emailed them and said, you know, amendments are welcome. Let’s get them to Senator Baisley. Let’s make this a bill that Jeff Coe sees is fitting and will solve, resolve this issue. And they just went completely silent. And so it was Tuesday. We were at the Capitol and, um, gave testimony, a prior Jeff co board president gave testimony, um, a great mixture of testimony from parents and board members. Current board member gave testimony and there was one against the bill and it was the president of the Colorado teachers union. And the three Democrats on the committee voted it down to even proceed forward. But it doesn’t end there. We were very upset with that. And I wrote a fairly strong email to Jeffco schools saying, you know, you must not be serious about resolving this problem. and got an email back saying well we think someone else is going to be running the bill and what that told us is that they simply didn’t want senator basely to be the one to run the bill they would rather somebody uh on their side of the aisle run the bill and um this is not not a bill where we want to see those kinds of political um shenanigans from people who hold non-partisan seats And so we’re quite disturbed by that process that one, they asked him to run the bill and then they backed away so that they could be the heroes in a story that they don’t deserve, quite frankly, to engage them.
SPEAKER 02 :
and they will not engage and suddenly they’re the heroes and that’s very frustrating to the reason 585 why to get out of the teachers union and stop giving them money because this is atrocious and i am going to call every time i get an opportunity to call out the teachers union i do because i am a former union leader i was on the cea and i was a delegate to nea and i was probably teaching as a union member when you were the leader So this is embarrassing. If you are a teacher listening to this or watching on the encore, you need to stop paying dues to the teachers union because you don’t need them. And they are supporting everything that’s the opposite of the virtues and the values that we support as educators. There is no reason why the teachers union should oppose a bill holding educators accountable for sexual misconduct to minors. Are you kidding me?
SPEAKER 03 :
And let me add one more shocking thing, because Priscilla, I predict that the person who’s going to run the bill is also running the prostitution bill. And so you’re telling me that you’re going to legalize prostitution while at the same time be a hero of child exploitation and sexual misconduct. as a political cover or what’s the intent there? And now I’m just, I’m predicting, it’s my opinion, that this is going to happen because three of the four on the prostitution bill that are sponsoring are in Jefferson County. And I think that that’s of high likelihood. We’ll see how that unfolds if my prediction’s right, but we’re very disturbed that our children are in the midst of this.
SPEAKER 02 :
So I’m going to do a plug for Teacher Freedom Alliance because you can join Teacher Freedom Alliance for free and get $2 million of liability insurance. So if you need protection, you don’t even need to pay for it, teachers. So give yourself a raise, quit the teacher’s union, join Teacher Freedom Alliance. You can find their website. So let’s move on to discussions about Title IX, Lindsay. This investigation by the U.S. Department of Education related to overnight travel. Unpack some of what you’ve been finding out there.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Um, this has been a big one in the news. There was one case of a little girl, 10 years old, who went on a Washington DC trip and found out that her bedmate was actually a boy because he announced as much, the child announced that much and scared. This little girl went into the bathroom and called her mother and, um, Luckily, her mother was on the trip in another room and was able to eventually help the child navigate, but really the emphasis via policy was placed on the transgender child’s privacy and not this child. So that’s a that’s a really big and egregious thing to the vast majority of people we find. But here’s what happened since then. We started Jeffco or Jeffco schools has a week long outdoor outdoor lab trip where sixth graders go up to the mountains and they have high school leaders. who come and chaperone them. They sleep in the bunk rooms with them. They monitor their showers and really mentor them the whole week. And we started getting reports that children would come back and say, you know, I’m really, I was really uncomfortable the whole week because my high school leader was a 17 year old female and young boys were reportedly changing their clothing and sleeping bags because their leader was female. right in front of them or monitoring their showers. This is a report that we get frequently that this is occurring. In fact, we uncovered documents showing Jeff Coe is actively recruiting transgender older teens, sometimes 18 years old, to bunk in the same space as 11 year olds. And sometimes those are smaller bunk houses. So this is something that just greatly disturbs people of all perspectives. So not only could you have a peer, but you could have an older leader as of the opposite sex in intimate spaces, even monitoring showers. And so Alliance Defending Freedom launched a lawsuit and has done an amazing job just making sure that they’re not asking Jeffco to break the law, but to make the policy so that parents are informed about this beforehand or allowed to opt out of this situation in general. And Jeffco, has really fought hard in fact we uncovered a quote from our chief of legal who was emailing another activist attorney in the state and said she was couldn’t believe the hand wringing over this case when there was real risk in the world and so that just really shocked people um this has really broken trust and it’s Jeffco is the hill they will die on. They simply just needed to implement a policy that would allow parents to know, and they refused. But the other great aspect is that we had multiple members take our work and report it to the US Department of Education. And as part of their June Title IX investigation launches last June, they used this case. they are also actively looking into and investigating this case and we have records of them corresponding with Jeffco schools, and that’s very active. And so we’ve got it from both angles, the legal side, as well as the US Department of Ed, looking at the policy. So we’re very hopeful on that. I think Jeffco is making a grave mistake when this we know is an 80-90-10 issue. And so we’ll see how it unfolds, but we’re watching and we’re pushing, so.
SPEAKER 02 :
Absolutely. So for those people who want to support what you’re doing, list your website.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yep. JeffcoKidsFirst.com. And follow us on Facebook. Search the Facebook group Jeffco Kids First. It’s where all the action unfolds.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, it’s really important for people to know what you’re doing. They can follow some of the bills. Really quickly, your organization reported concerns about a school allegedly teaching students how to track ICE agents. In just a little bit of time, explain what you uncovered.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, just quickly, a parent sent us photos of her son who had taken pictures of a presentation at a school in Jeffco. And the slides were showing military level tactics that Fox News actually uncovered this, not in relation to this school. It’s called Salute, and it’s military tactics to track ICE agents. They also gave them a link to private signal chats where citizens are tracking ice. We found this to be a major safety risk for students, and this created a big explosion nationally. And so we addressed it. They took down all posters. They wrote an apology note to parents. That was a huge breach of policy, breach of trust. And that wasn’t just a cultural concern or trying to blow things up. That was strictly a safety concern to teach children to do something like this, especially other people’s children. And so we’re just chipping away one by one to make sure our schools are neutral, balanced and safe.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, Lindsay Datko of Jeffco Kids First, thank you so much. And for my listeners, please make sure you follow, like, subscribe, and get involved, donate. They really need your help and for you to share more information about the things you’re seeing at your schools and Jeffco as well. To my listeners, thank you so much for tuning in and catch me next time. And remember, educating the mind without the heart is no education. So seek wisdom, cultivate virtue, and speak truth.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thanks for tuning in to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Ron. Visit PriscillaRon.com to connect or learn how you can sponsor future episodes to keep this message of faith, freedom, and education on the air.
