Colorado school board won't discuss traditional families resolution after all

School district 11 officials in Colorado Springs, Colo., have canceled plans to debate a resolution supporting traditional families. Board members had planned to discuss the measure supporting "stable, heterosexual, two-parent families" at Wednesday's meeting, but board member Willie Breazell pulled the item from the agenda after receiving complaints. The resolution would have also asked Colorado Springs's delegation to the legislature to promote state policy defending such families. "I think it was going to distract from the things we want to accomplish," Breazell said Saturday. "There was too much focus on the negative, rather than the positive." The board wants to ask voters for permission to borrow money to build two schools and renovate existing ones, and Breazell said his resolution may have overshadowed that. Board member Karen Teja, who opposed the resolution, said many angry residents had contacted her about the resolution and that they weren't just gays and lesbians. "Some were offended," she said. "My neighbor said, 'If my husband dies, is the school district trying to tell me I have to go get a new husband?' " Teja also said that grandparents who are raising children told her they were offended by the resolution. Breazell said he proposed the resolution because families and education are so closely connected. He said students who come from a poor or a single-parent home might not be as ready to learn.