CASTLE ROCK, Colo. — A new anti-voucher majority on a suburban Denver school district board voted Monday night to eliminate a program enacted by an earlier conservative-dominated board to help public school students attend secular and religious schools with taxpayer-funded vouchers.

The Douglas County school board voted on a resolution to end the voucher program and years of litigation that reached the U.S. Supreme Court and reflected the national debate over publicly funded school choice.

One of the seven board members abstained from voting because he is a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the voucher program. All others voted to end it.

The vote came after a few dozen people spoke in favor of ending the program in Castle Rock, about 25 miles south of Denver. About 80 people in the room applauded the outcome after the vote.

Stephanie Van Zante, a parent of two graduates of schools in the county, criticized conservative political interests she said were behind the voucher program.

“This is what you were elected to do – serve the taxpayers in a public school district,” Van Zante told the board. “Ending this policy shows that this board has returned its focus to local educational practices and not national politics.”

Advocates and opponents of taxpayer-funded vouchers closely followed the case, which involved a 2011 attempt by its then-conservative board in the wealthy district to let students attend schools of their choice using taxpayer-funded vouchers.

The program has since been tied up in litigation initiated against it by a parents’ group called Taxpayers for Public Education. The Nov. 7 election of an anti-voucher slate of candidates, supported by a $300,000 campaign contribution from the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union, turned the tables on the program’s prospects.

Douglas County has been a national example in the school voucher movement because it is the only school district in the nation where vouchers were implemented by a local school board, as opposed to a state legislature, said Leslie Hiner of the EdChoice Legal Defense and Education Center, which advocates for greater school choice.


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