The Sheridan Educators Association and district administrators spent the day negotiating at the state Capitol after being summoned by Gov. Jared Polis, who had been imploring the two sides to end their 22-day contract stalemate.

Thursday’s negotiations were mediated by Polis’ staff and representatives from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

Full details of the agreement were not announced, but the union said the district had met its demands to reinstate its contract, create a path to recognize classified staff and put “an end to the retaliatory and restrictive policies that have caused instability in our schools.”

“To every Sheridan educator who has been part of this: We have set the standard for what it means to fully enfranchise our community, and to make sure educators can unionize and have the dignity they deserve in their workplace,” said Kate Biester, president of the Sheridan Educators Association. “While this entire process has been incredibly difficult, I want to say unequivocally that the challenge has been worth it.”

The governor’s office said the Sheridan Educators Association’s membership was expected to vote to ratify the agreement Friday, and the Sheridan School Board would vote on the agreement Tuesday. The union said teachers would return to the classroom once the agreement is fully ratified.

“We share the governor’s urgency in moving forward toward swift ratification to avoid further delays and ensure students return to a stable, consistent learning environment in which each student can thrive,” said Dr. Gionni Thompson, the Sheridan School District’s superintendent.

District officials and union representatives met in the state Capitol for hours Thursday to try to end their three-week deadlock, which began April 1when nearly 100 school employees went on strike after the union accused district leaders of refusing to both reinstate the Sheridan Educators Association’s collective bargaining agreement and recognize classified employees as union members.

The walkout was Colorado’s longest teachers strike in at least 45 years: It lasted for 17 working days and prompted several statements from Polis urging the two sides to reach a deal.

The strike closed schools during the first few days, but the district����ap five campuses had since reopened — though union representatives have said few students returned to school.

After the union rejected a Monday offer from the district and the strike continued, Polis on Wednesday asked both sides to meet in his offices Thursday morning, and he told reporters in the early afternoon that talks were still ongoing. They continued until the early evening, ending a few hours before the deal was announced.

“I urge both sides to officially ratify the agreement quickly to avoid further delay,” Polis said in a statement Thursday night. “These students have already missed critical classroom time, and each of them deserves a great education and to be back in school. I appreciate the commitment from both sides to reach a workable solution that best serves the families and students of the district while supporting our educators.”

The stalemate also imperiled the future of the entire district: The lawmaker who represents Sheridan schools, state Sen. Jeff Bridges, said this week that he was drafting legislation to combine the district with Denver Public Schools out of frustration with Sheridan leaders. It was not immediately clear if the deal announced Thursday impacts Bridges’ plans.

Tensions had also escalated between the union and the district: Union officials said they would support Bridges’ bill if community members also backed it, and the association also announced plans to seek the recall of the district’s elected board members.

Polis currently has the sole authority to release the program’s graduates from prison. But the governor has not done so since 2023, unilaterally stalling the program and creating a backlog of about a dozen prisoners who have spent decades behind bars and applied for and completed the three-year program aimed at their rehabilitation and release, but who remain incarcerated, awaiting Polis’ sign-off.

Senate , introduced in early April, would allow the parole board to approve releases if the governor does not act for 60 days on a program graduate’s application for early parole, opening up a new route through which program graduates could be freed.

Any decision Polis made in the 60-day window would be final, according to the bill. If the governor did not act on a prisoner’s application for release, the decision would revert to the parole board.

The bill doesn’t change who is eligible for the program or the requirements to complete it, said Sen. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat sponsoring the legislation. But it does establish a timeline so that prisoners who finish the program won’t wait longer than 60 days to find out whether they’ll be released on early parole.

Gov. Jared Polis stops releasing prisoners who’ve spent decades behind bars for youthful crime

"We do mean there to be a clear, if you will, shot clock, a time parameter, either way," Weissman said, adding that the bill will apply to the backlog of prisoners in the program as well as future graduates.

State the Juveniles and Young Adults Convicted as Adults Program, or JYACAP, in 2016 after the U.S. Supreme Court found that children are constitutionally different from adults and should not be automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Lawmakers that year also changed Colorado law to prohibit such punishment.

Initially limited to juveniles, the program to include prisoners who committed a crime when they were 20 or younger and who have served at least 20 years of their sentence.

The prisoners must also meet a variety of other conditions to enter the three-year program, which focuses on building life skills and preparing for life outside of prison. The bill would expand that curriculum to require prisoners to acknowledge the impact and trauma of their crimes.

After prisoners finish the program and receive a recommendation from the parole board on whether they should be released on early parole, the governor must make the final decision. Polis routinely approved releases from the program between 2020 and 2023, freeing all 17 program graduates in that time frame, but stopped doing so in recent years, expressing "discomfort" with the governor's role in the process.

Polis supports the proposed new process, Eric Maruyama, his press secretary, said Wednesday.

"Governor Polis is focused on making Colorado safer, and an important part of that is ensuring that individuals convicted of crimes from their youth get the support they need before being released back to the community," he said in a statement. "The governor is supportive of the JYACAP program and the bill, which would improve the decision-making process for individuals who have completed the program and provide a clear decision timeline for all parties involved."

The White River Electric Association, a non-profit cooperative, lost several miles of power lines in two fires that burned public and private land just outside of Meeker in August 2025. Power lines are uninsurable, for obvious reasons, and White River has had to take out a $23.6 million loan to rebuild transmission lines and get power to critical gas development projects in the Piceance Basin.

“The loan itself is not a long-term loan. It was issued with the hope that FEMA would help us,” said Alan J. Michalewicz, general manager and CEO of White River Electric Association. “Now, with FEMA being declined, we are exploring the options that are available to us and what it would take to turn this into a long-term loan. It could have up to a 5% rate impact on membership, across the board to all our members.”

Michalewicz said he is grateful for the bipartisan support in Colorado following the fires and lauded the state’s work in the aftermath of the fires. White River rebuilt transmission lines quickly, and full power will be restored next week to oil and gas operators in the area.

We worry that even a 3% rate increase will hurt families, small businesses and oil and gas operations in a time when everyone, including utilities, is facing the pressure of increased fuel prices.

Trump’s denial is the first time in 35 years that the federal government refused to use Federal Emergency Management Act funds to assist a community in Colorado recovering from a natural disaster, but under Trump’s leadership, such denials are now the norm – that is, if you live in a “blue” state.

According to , Trump’s administration has denied 77% of disaster funding requests when the request comes from a state with a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators. When the request comes from a state with a Republican governor and two Republican Senators, Trump’s administration only denied 11% of requests.

Such partisan wielding of federal dollars intended to provide communities and individuals with assistance to rebuild in the wake of natural disasters is unprecedented. Politico went through 45 years of FEMA records and found that no other president, going back as far as Reagan, has denied a majority of requests from any states, let alone singled out states for political retribution using FEMA dollars. While the rate of approval for Republican-state requests has remained mostly unchanged compared to previous administrations, Democratic-state approvals have plummeted.

We are outraged, but far more than anything, we are sad for our neighbors in Rio Blanco, La Plata, Archuletta and Mineral counties.

Sadly, the counties that Trump is denying funds to had a majority of voters support him for president in 2024. In Rio Grande County, 60% of voters cast their ballots for Trump. Now he has denied their request for disaster relief, which will directly result in increased utility costs for the foreseeable future. Did they vote for this? Surely they did not expect Trump to wield federal funds as a cudgel to punish them for the politics of their neighbors.

Colorado’s leaders cannot drop this issue until Trump reverses this bad decision.

Every single member of Colorado’s congressional delegation — Republicans and Democrats — signed off on . Now that Trump rejected the appeal, our elected officials must increase the political pressure.

No one should be talking about this more than U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, who represents all four affected counties in Congressional District 3. Hurd is facing a primary for re-election, and he has until June to prove he can deliver for his constituents. Hurd should be spending time on the campaign trail explaining how he is fighting for these federal funds.

But he can’t do it alone. Colorado’s U.S. senators — John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet — have decrying Trump’s denial of these funds.

“The president is solely responsible for this abdication of responsibility; the consequences of which will continue to be severe and long-lasting,” the statement reads.

But that doesn’t go far enough.

We need our elected officials to be a thorn in Trump’s side, requesting meetings, talking at every public event about the detailed repercussions of this decision and lauding Gov. Jared Polis for his ongoing support of these counties.

The emphasis from our leaders should be on the unprecedented and politically motivated nature of Trump’s decision. Trump is setting a dire precedent. Will future presidents withhold federal disaster aid unless a state’s leaders laud her achievements, bow to her every demand, and kiss the ring?

We want to live in a country that is free from the tyranny of an executive branch with unlimited power and unlimited spite. Now is the time for Colorado leaders to push back on this bad decision and fight for a future where disaster declarations are considered on their merits and qualifications, not on the angry whims of one man.

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WASHINGTON — The number of 4-year-olds attending state-funded preschools reached record highs last school year, driven by states embracing universal access and an unprecedented $14.4 billion in spending.

State-funded preschool enrollment in the U.S. rose to 1.8 million kids, reaching 37% of 4-year-olds and about 10% of 3-year-olds, according to an annual report published Wednesday by the National Institute of Early Education Research. In total, states added 44,000 students to their preschool enrollment. But the report����ap authors noted that the gains were smaller than the year prior and said preschool access remains wildly uneven from state to state. Some states even lost ground.

“If providing high-quality preschool education to all 3- and 4-year-olds were a race,” the authors wrote, “some states are nearing the finish line, others have stumbled and fallen behind, and a few have yet to leave the starting line.”

Colorado is now ahead of most other states, nearly three years into the launch of its universal preschool program. The new report, which is based on enrollment in the 2024-25 school year, for 4-year-olds — the same as in last year’s report, with about 70% of those children enrolled in programs. That was behind the top-ranked District of Columbia and Vermont. Colorado ranked fifth for preschool access for 3-year-olds, up from 12th.

The state’s program each week for most 4-year-olds, with some qualifying for 30 hours. For 3-year-olds, the state program is more limited, providing free instruction only for those with disabilities.

Gov. Jared Polis’ office said Wednesday that the universal program has served more than 45,000 children during the current school year.

The report����ap profile for Colorado noted, however, that the state met only two of 10 “quality standards benchmarks.” The state has had quality standards and policies in the works to address class sizes, curriculum and other factors, but it has delayed those repeatedly, with some now set to take effect in the coming school year.

“In just a few years, we’ve made significant progress reaching children and families in every corner of Colorado,” said Lisa Roy, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Early Childhood, in the governor’s office news release. “At the same time, we are intentionally building a system that supports quality across classrooms, providers, and communities — because access and quality must go hand in hand.”

Free preschool has expanded in California

More than half the nation’s public preschool enrollment gain — some 25,000 students — came in California, which this year made every 4-year-old eligible for its “ ” program, or “TK.” The rapid rollout has had its tradeoffs. The national institute outlines 10 quality benchmarks for preschools, related to teacher training, class size and curriculum. California met just two of them last school year. And private preschool owners say the rush of 4-year-olds joining public schools .

“Universal TK … is a real win, but it����ap also just the start of the work and not the end of it,” said Jessica Sawko of Children Now, which advocates on early childhood issues in California. She noted that the state will hit two more quality benchmarks in next year’s report, by lowering its student-teacher ratio to 10-to-1 and by requiring lead teachers to have early education training.

The report illustrates some of the difficult tradeoffs states face when they scale up programs quickly or have limited funding. Hawaii is one of six states that meet all the institute’s benchmarks. Its state preschool program also only serves 10% of 4-year-olds.

Evidence is mounting that the impact of high-quality preschool can , making them better prepared for kindergarten, more likely to graduate high school and more likely to find work. And it is increasingly seen as essential for and beyond. Educators now also expect youngsters to already equipped to navigate kindergarten.

“We have a lot of kids who still do not fulfill their potential,” said Steven Barnett, founder and director of the early education institute. “We have evidence — very strong evidence — that preschool programs substantially improved the foundation for later success.”

Some states also recognize that free prekindergarten can make a difference for , allowing parents to return to work at a time when private child care is becoming .

Preschool means confident kindergartners

Heather Sufuentes witnessed the impact of preschool when she was principal of Parkview Elementary in Chico, California, as it began its transitional kindergarten program. She said students who attended the program, which has a play-based curriculum and runs the length of a workday, arrived with more confidence and often volunteered to be class leaders.

“They’re well prepared to transition into that big elementary school setting,” said Sufuentes, now director of elementary education for Chico Unified School District. Chico has more than doubled the number of TK seats it offers since 2022.

Marisol Márquez, a secretary who works for the state, sends her daughter to transitional kindergarten at 1st Street Elementary in Los Angeles. She had been sending her for free to a learning center underwritten by COVID-19 relief funding. But she would have had to start paying tuition this year, and she’s not sure how she and her husband, a UPS driver, would have made it work. She was elated to hear 1st Street Elementary was offering free transitional kindergarten.

Educators there quickly discovered her daughter was bright and began sending her to kindergarten for math and reading lessons.

“If it hadn’t been for this program, we would have never found that out,” Márquez said.

In some states, preschool is expensive. In others, it����ap free.

Despite the raised expectations for 5-year-olds, no state mandates that children attend preschool, and only some cities and states make it accessible to every 4-year-old. Preschool offerings differ vastly. A family living in Wyoming, which has no state-funded preschool, could move to Colorado, where every parent can send their 4-year-old to part-time preschool without paying a dime in tuition. In the District of Columbia, even affluent families have access to two full years of prekindergarten, while neighboring Virginia has a far less robust program.

The uneven access across states can exacerbate disparities. Wealthier families can often afford private preschool tuition, regardless of what their state offers. In 2024, private child care centers, which often use preschool curriculum, averaged annual tuition of more than $12,000 for 4-year-olds, according to Child Care Aware of America.

For families that can’t afford preschool tuition, the options can be limited. State-funded preschool programs often have waitlists.

If a family’s earnings are low enough, they can qualify for programs like , which provides early education for the neediest Americans. But the number of children in Head Start is falling, in part due to . Lower-income families may also qualify for state or federal child care subsidies that can help with private preschool, but those have , too.

Trump says states should pay

Federal support for expanding early education funding is sparse and shrinking. Recently, President Donald Trump said the federal government couldn’t afford to support child care while it was waging a war with Iran.

“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care,” Trump said. States, he added, “should pay for it. … They’ll have to raise their taxes.”

The map of states that offer the highest-quality public preschool programs would surprise some partisans. Republican-led states have pioneered universal prekindergarten, with Oklahoma introducing it in the late 1990s. Alabama and West Virginia also have preschool-for-all programs that receive top marks.

Wealthier, Democratic-led states have lagged behind, even as many blue-leaning cities have moved ahead with their own initiatives. New York state lost enrollment last school year, even as New York City, which already has universal prekindergarten, is charging ahead with a plan to make all .

And Georgia, another state with Republican leadership, is the first to have a universal preschool program that meets all quality benchmarks set by the National Institute of Early Education Research.

Rebecca Ellis’s son John Patrick, 5, attends the private Capitol Hill Child Enrichment Center in Atlanta free of charge, thanks to the state’s preschool-for-all program. She said it saved her family a huge amount of money, and she is impressed by how much her son has grown socially and emotionally.

“They focus so much on just helping kids learn how to calm down, to make friends, to regulate their feelings, to solve problems,” Ellis said.

John Patrick and her older son, who attended the same preschool, have even given their parents advice. When they become agitated, the children urge them to take deep breaths.

Denver Post public affairs editor Jon Murray and Chalkbeat Colorado contributed to this story.

, which generally would prohibit the use of that technology to set individualized prices or wages, is part of a growing national focus on companies’ use of “surveillance pricing.” Companies, particularly tech firms, have gathered enormous amounts of personal data on American consumers, including down to the individual level.

Supporters of such legislation say that trend has opened the door for retailers, pharmacies, airlines and other industries to plug that data into algorithms and determine how much one person is willing to pay — and then adjust the price based on factors like potential customers’ location, race, income or level of desperation.

They want lawmakers to rein in the practice, amid broader concerns about data privacy and the ever-increasing cost of living.

“Corporations have long sought to set prices based on what consumers are willing to pay for a product,” said Lee Hepner, an antitrust lawyer with the American Economic Liberties Project, which supports surveillance-pricing regulation. “The effect of surveillance pricing makes that price-setting process much more efficient to exploit customers’ personal data, to predict how much an individual consumer is willing to pay.

“And it is ultimately a price-maximizing force, because that willingness to pay (translates to providing) the highest price, or the pain point price, for each individual consumer in the market.”

HB-1210, which is sponsored by Democratic lawmakers, already passed the state House on a 39-24 vote in late March. On Tuesday, it cleared its first committee hearing in the Senate. It now needs approval by the full Senate before it can move to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk.

The technology is still emerging, and its uses vary. A TV station in Minnesota , vacuums and car seats were more expensive on Target’s app when a reporter was standing closer to the store than when they were farther away. Nearly 14 years ago, the Wall Street Journal higher prices for hotel bookings. By examining zip code-level data, ProPublica  were costlier in areas with more Asian residents.

Another study from last year, in which shoppers , found that prices shifted, from customer to customer, at the same Safeway or Target locations for products like eggs, cereal and peanut butter, according to the New York Times in a story last year.

And several federal lawmakers last year after its president told investors that the airline wanted to increase the use of artificial intelligence technology to influence prices. that it had never used nor plans to use a “fare product … that targets customers with individualized offers based on personal information or otherwise.”

The system can work in the other direction, too, with the technology used to set wages based on workers’ individual data.

More Perfect Union, a left-leaning news outlet, for Lyft and Uber to sit in a room and compare the rates they were offered for the same rides. Those rates differed more often than not.

Business groups and companies argue that price surveillance allows them to adjust prices up and down depending on demand and need, and that it can help drive specialized discounts to consumers. In , the Federal Trade Commission wrote that the technology could be used for “tailored offers to customers.”

But, the report continued, it could also increase prices — or it could be used to offer fewer discounts to individuals who just got paid.

To regulate the practice, lawmakers in several states and in Congress have introduced legislation curbing price surveillance. Colorado’s bill would generally prohibit price surveillance, though the bill includes exemptions for government agencies and when prices shift based on factors like delivery time.

If passed, the bill would be the strongest legislation of its kind in the United States, Hepner said.

Colorado lawmakers weighed similar legislation last year but then shelved it. In both 2024 and 2025, Democrats another type of algorithm that’s used to set rents for apartments and other rental properties. That legislation passed in 2025, only to be vetoed by Polis.

The governor does not appear to have much more interest in a broader effort to curtail surveillance pricing. Polis, who has been skeptical of lawmakers’ past efforts to regulate tech companies, signaled his concerns with the new bill through a spokeswoman Tuesday night.

“Governor Polis is concerned with policies, including price fixing and restrictions on demand-informed pricing, that further interfere with the free functioning of markets,” spokeswoman Ally Sullivan said in a statement. “The governor will review the final legislation if it reaches his desk.”

A swath of business and technology groups oppose the bill. Representatives of those interests testified Tuesday that the legislation was too broad and burdensome.

The groups — including those representing Colorado businesses, national retailers and the tech industry — also repeatedly said that the bill would hamper their ability to offer discounts to customers on an individualized basis.

“Unfortunately, the results of this bill would mean fewer discounts, fewer offers and high costs for consumers,” said Andrew Wood, a regional representative for TechNet, a coalition of major technology companies. In a question that reflects opponents’ public criticism of the bill, the Chamber of Progress, another tech group, showing that 70% of Coloradans opposed the banning of loyalty programs.

Hepner argued that the bill would preserve longstanding discount practices, like publicly available coupons, loyalty programs, and senior or veteran discounts. His group , which found that 78% of likely Colorado voters would support a ban on “companies from using AI or automated systems to charge different prices to different people, or pay different wages to different workers, based on ‘surveillance data.’ ”

Sen. Mike Weissman, one of the Democrats sponsoring HB-1210, said during the hearing that attempts at regulating the practice have been “watered down” in other states.

“I would submit it’s been killed or watered down in rooms like this, by testimony like some of what we heard today — respectfully, not a lot of which was strictly accurate to the bill. We don’t have to be that room, we don’t have to be that legislature, we don’t have to follow suit. We can do something different.”

The bill is next set for the first of two full votes on the Senate floor. That vote has not yet been scheduled. The legislative session ends May 13.

The walkout is now Colorado’s longest teachers strike in more than 40 years, drawing the attention of Gov. Jared Polis and at least one state legislator, who is drafting a bill that would merge the Sheridan School District with .

Polis issued two statements last week urging the district and union to negotiate an end to the strike, saying it was “derailing student learning for families who cannot afford to lose another day of instruction.”

“This needs to happen right now,” Eric Maruyama, a spokesman for Polis, said in a statement Tuesday. “Failure to reach an agreement is not an option and students missing more classroom instruction is unacceptable to the governor.”

Nearly 100 Sheridan School District employees went on strike on April 1 after they accused administrators of refusing to reinstate the teachers union’s collective bargaining agreement or to recognize classified employees in the union.

The strike closed schools during the first few days of the walkout, but the district’s five campuses have since reopened — though union representatives have said few students returned to school.

“We did not expect it to go this long,” Sheridan Educators Association President Kate Biester said Tuesday. “I was really hoping the district would have taken less than a week to take our strike and demands seriously.”

Superintendent Gionni Thompson did not respond to a request for comment.

“We’ve been trying to work with them,” Sheridan school board member Daniel Stange said of the teachers union. “We never wanted this to be public. If the teachers would have just worked with us from the beginning, we would have a renewed contract. They wanted the old contract back and that one expired.”

The Sheridan strike is the longest teachers strike to take place in the state in at least 45 years, said Kailee Stiles, spokesperson for the Colorado Education Association. By comparison, the last DPS teachers strike, which saw thousands of educators leave their classrooms in 2019, lasted just three days.

The Sheridan strike doesn’t — yet — show signs of abating, although district officials made an offer to the union Monday afternoon that could end the walkout if the educators approve.

That offer, made after eight hours of negotiations, does not meet all of the union’s demands, Biester said. She did not elaborate or provide details of the offer.

The association has asked Sheridan officials to recognize the union, reinstate the group’s original contract and add classified staff — such as paraprofessionals, custodians and bus drivers — to the bargaining unit, Biester said.

“We did receive some significant movement from the district,” she said. “…Currently, my members don’t seem to be very interested in that offer.”

Tensions between district and union officials have remained high during the strike, with the association announcing plans to seek the recall of Sheridan’s four elected school board members.

“They are welcome to it,” Stange said when asked about the potential recall. “I’ve been here for eight years. I’ve already done my term.”

Additionally, state Sen. Jeff Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat, is drafting a bill that could consolidate the Sheridan School District into DPS, the state’s largest K-12 system. Bridges did not provide details on how exactly the two districts, which serve different counties, could merge, saying the legislation is still being crafted.

Sheridan students would benefit if the district is absorbed by DPS because larger districts have more resources, including money, for classrooms, Bridges said.

Sheridan has 997 students as of the 2025-26 academic year, while DPS has 89,210, according to state data.

A DPS spokesman declined to comment on the potential Sheridan merger.

“Governor Polis appreciates Senator Bridges’ leadership on this issue and is open to whatever is best for the students of Sheridan to receive better services and more investment, and will review any legislation that reaches his desk,” Maruyama said.

The senator said the idea for the consolidation began before the strike, and he informed Thompson, the district’s superintendent, in November that the bill was a possibility.

“I sort of let everybody know … ‘Hey, this is a thing that could come if you all demonstrate your inability to serve the students that you are paid to serve,’ ” Bridges said.

He also expressed concern with the length of the teachers strike — even as schools have reopened with substitute teachers.

“At some point, you have lost the authority to claim that you are running a school district if you don’t have teachers in classrooms,” Bridges said. “They’re the most important part of the classroom. What����ap going on?”

Stange, the school board member, said he believed Bridges’ goal with the bill was to get the district and union back to the negotiating table. The community, he said, won’t support a merger with DPS.

“I was kind of disappointed to think that they would even do that,” Stange said. “…My feeling is Bridges and (others) just tried to say that to threaten, to push us to get into demands.”

The Sheridan Educators Association will only support Bridges’ bill if parents and community members support consolidation with DPS, Biester said.

“There could be potential benefits on a merger like that,” she said. “Seeing movement like this from the state shows that what we are doing in Sheridan is important to the entire state of Colorado.”

Polis signed into law administratively on Monday, without a signing ceremony. The law, which takes effect July 1, will require courts to keep records of petitions for a legal name change from public view if the petitioner is younger than 18 at the time of filing.

The law is aimed at protecting the privacy of trans youths and their families.

The original version of the bill also would have directed family court judges to consider a parent’s acceptance of a child’s gender identity when determining custody. That provision, however, was stripped out.

A spokesperson for Polis said at the time that the governor was worried that the provision would be inadvertently harmful to the children and families it sought to protect.

Denver District Court Judge A. Bruce Jones found that the new subpoena sent to last month was substantially the same request that Polis fought to be able to fulfill last spring. Jones found that complying with both the new request and the first subpoena, which had sought identical employment and personal information about the sponsors of children without permanent legal status, would likely violate state law prohibiting information-sharing with federal immigration officials.

“It is impossible to reasonably look at the March 13 subpoena and not consider it against the backdrop of what has happened in this case before,” Jones said about the more recent subpoena, at the end of Tuesday’s two-hour hearing. “Because it’s the same people being asked about. It’s the same agency. It’s the same apparent-looking subpoena.”

His order specifically prohibits Polis from ordering officials in the labor department’s Division of Labor Standards and Statistics to comply. While Jones said complying with the subpoena would likely violate state law, he did not block Polis from otherwise complying with the subpoena or directing other state employees to do so. It’s similar to the ruling Jones issued against Polis in June.

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama said the governor was “committed to working with our federal partners on criminal investigations, and will follow state law and will abide by the court’s decision regarding this particular subpoena.”

“The Governor is grateful that this is a limited ruling and the court did not preclude the state from complying with all other subpoenas or strengthening ongoing efforts with all law enforcement, including local and federal, to tackle serious crime,” Maruyama wrote.

Polis’ attorneys said Tuesday that the governor essentially trusted an ICE agent’s word that the agency wanted the information for a criminal probe, rather than so that ICE could arrest and deport immigrant children or their guardians, as the groups suing Polis have alleged.

State officials and Polis’ staff would not say if the state intended to comply with this latest request when asked by The Post last month.

Jones’ verbal order did not go as far as had been requested by attorneys representing a former state labor official, Scott Moss, as well as the state employees union. They had asked the judge to issue a far more sweeping injunction limiting compliance with future immigration subpoenas sent to the labor department.

The governor had argued he could comply with the 2025 subpoena because, he claimed, it was part of a criminal investigation — which would make information-sharing allowable under state law. But Jones rejected that claim in June, and did so again about the latest request, which seeks the same employment information — about 10 of the same people — as the prior subpoena.

In the new subpoena, however, ICE agents repeatedly said the information was now needed as part of a specific criminal investigation. Polis’ attorneys argued that was sufficient to allow information to be shared under state law.

But Laura Wolf, one of Moss’ attorneys, argued that the new subpoena’s language was evidence only that ICE agents were monitoring the lawsuit and knew what they needed to say.

Jones agreed.

“I think it’s a pretty fair inference (to make), that somebody out there were with the authority to issue subpoenas is looking at this (case) and saying, ‘The governor really would like to cooperate with us, if we just provide him with the means to do so,’ ” Jones said. “And apparently, the means to do so is to use a talismanic phrase — ‘criminal investigation’ — at which point, boom, we cooperate.”

Christopher Beall, one of the attorneys hired by the state to represent Polis, told Jones that the court should look at the new subpoena on its own and not draw conclusions about ICE’s intentions based on the prior request.

“I did not wake up in a new world today,” Jones said in response. He looked across the room at Beall. “And nobody here did, either.”

Last week, Polis was deposed under oath by Moss’ attorneys. The transcript of that exchange has not been publicly released, though Wolf referenced excerpts in court Tuesday. She said that a lawyer from the state attorney general’s office had emailed ICE officials, requesting that they obtain a subpoena authorized by a grand jury if they wanted the information they were seeking.

But in his deposition, according to Wolf, Polis indicated that the state attorney’s request wasn’t made at his office’s direction, and he said the state’s new subpoena policy — which gives the governor broad discretion to determine when to turn over records to ICE — did not require a grand jury subpoena.

Indeed, Polis’ policy prioritizes swift responses to subpoenas that mention criminal investigations, while also seeking to shield discussions of compliance from ever being made public.

Tuesday’s hearing came after Wolf learned that the labor department received the second subpoena in March. Wolf had previously requested that Jones issue a more sweeping injunction against Polis in case state officials receive more subpoenas seeking similar information to the one rejected last year.

Polis’ attorneys responded to that request dismissively, arguing that there was no indication that such a subpoena was imminent.

In fact, the new subpoena had been sent to state officials a week before Polis’ attorneys asked Jones to deny Wolf’s request.

Azure Printed Homes, a California startup, expects to produce 7,000 homes a year at its Culver City plant and at a new 25,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Montbello that opened last week. An added assembly site in Bennett is under consideration down the road.

If the Montbello location generates half that projected volume, it would put Azure ahead of the state’s current homebuilding leaders, D.R. Horton and Lennar.

It’s a moonshot goal, but if achieved and sustained, it could also help shrink the state’s shortfall of affordable units and fill the void created when Clayton Homes shut down its Heibar prefabrication plant in Adams County. That plant was an important supplier behind some of metro Denver’s most affordable new homes.

“Azure’s 3-D modular printing system presents an interesting and unique variation for the possible creation of housing at a lower cost and faster than stick-built or traditional modular construction,” said Rodger Hara, a veteran affordable housing consultant in Denver who attended the factory’s opening.

A complete shell of a home can be printed in 24 hours, Azure claims. The non-shell siding and windows on the open sides are customizable, as is the interior. That work, plus plumbing and electrical installation, can take another two to three weeks.

A highly customized home can go from concept to completion in a month when everything lines up. Initially, the company plans to start printing and assembling homes with about 50 workers and a handful of 3-D printers.

“Time is money, and by building a home at a fraction of the time, 3-D printing can bring huge savings,” said Gov. Jared Polis, who has pushed hard to make the state a leader in developing new home construction technologies. “I’ve never seen it faster.”

Azure’s homes cost about 30% less per square foot to build and require 70% less time than traditional methods, said Gene Eidelman, the .

Eidelman, in a dig at traditional rivals, notes that when people moved around in horses and buggies, homes were built primarily by driving nails into wood with a hammer.

Self-driving electric vehicles are now increasing their presence on the road, but home construction still involves a lot of nails being driven into wood.

Conventional homes can take 7 to 12 months to become move-in ready after breaking ground, longer if any customization is required.

Azure’s approach combines 3-D home printing, which extrudes layer upon layer of material to build a structural shell, with prefabrication, which involves building wood or steel-framed components in a factory.

Most 3-D home printers like ICON, based in Austin, and Alquist 3D, which moved its headquarters from Iowa to Greeley in 2023, use a concrete-like slurry extruded on the construction site. Some of their designs define — a la Luke Skywalker’s childhood home on Tatooine.

Azure, by contrast, melts pellets made of recycled plastics and fiberglass. Its printers extrude the material in a factory setting, allowing production to continue around the clock, regardless of the weather.

The resulting obround shell, which consists of a roof, floor and the two short sides, is durable, heat and cold-resistant, and able to withstand fires, termites, and the elements. The design is more modernistic than futuristic, different but still relatable.

State leaders also see construction innovation as the key to helping Colorado overcome its housing crisis. The country faces a shortage of 10 million homes, according to the .

Colorado’s Demography Office puts the state’s housing shortfall at 106,000 units in 2023, which is a 25% decrease from a peak shortage of 140,000 units in 2019. Just to keep pace with population changes, the state needs about 34,100 new homes and apartments a year.

“We really try to make sure that we are advancing a robust economy, and that includes a home for every budget,” said Eve Lieberman, executive director of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.

Colorado has put tens of millions of dollars on the table looking for ways to resolve its housing shortfall, primarily through the Colorado Affordable Housing Fund, which is funded through Proposition 123, and the Innovative Housing Incentive Program or IHIP, which was created from a $40 million transfer out of the General Fund to support housing-related manufacturers.

IHIP loans and working capital grants have helped seed or support , and they are attacking the housing cost problem from a variety of angles.

Among the modular factories with state backing are EcoMod in Hudson, Fading West in Buena Vista, and Vederra in Aurora. Panelized component makers accessing state help include Phoenix Haus in Grand Junction, Huron Components in Littleton, and Higher Purpose Homes in Durango.

Besides Azure, other 3-D home printers with state dollars include StructureBOT in Colorado Springs and Verotouch Construction in Salida.

The support has directly incentivized the production of more than 1,000 units, with an additional 2,000 units in the works, Lieberman said. Azure has the potential to become the star in a new generation of home fabricators.

Azure has received a $3.9 million loan from the state’s Affordable Housing Financing Fund, which is funded through the redirection of 0.1% of state income taxes or about $300 million annually via Proposition 123.

It is also looking to raise $10 million from investors as part of a push to boost capacity at its original Los Angeles plant and its new Colorado plant.

“I have become the greatest salesman for Colorado as I walk around the world, because enough of the talking,” Eidelman said.

A customer emailed him four years ago saying the company should consider Colorado, a suggestion he initially rebuffed because of a lack of incentives. But not long after, IHIP rolled out.

During that process, Eidelman got to know Jack Tiebout, who headed IHIP, which is under OEDIT. In December, Tiebout left the state to work as Azure’s principal in charge of growth and partnerships.

So far, the company, which launched in 2022, has built 100 homes and has orders worth another $60 million, primarily in transitional housing for homelessness programs, as well as community-based affordable housing programs.

Currently, the company is providing 54 transitional housing units for the Welcome Home Village in San Luis Obispo, which is scheduled to open next month.

The company had a two-bedroom, 360-square-foot model that cost $96,900 on display outside its factory. The company said it can build homes at an average cost of $150 to $175 per square foot.

Prices range from $20,000 for tiny backyard studios to $200,000 for a full-size home with ADUs.

State and local leaders are hoping Azure can fill the void left when Clayton Homes closed its 200,000-square-foot factory at 475 W. 53rd Place. The plant, which was the state’s largest maker of panelized components, struggled under the weight of reduced demand because of higher interest rates and fluctuating lumber costs.

Through its affiliation with Oakwood Homes, the plant was behind some of metro Denver’s most affordable new homes. But it was also “old school” compared to some of the newer plants popping up under IHIP.

Wary of a potential court challenge, Colorado lawmakers are readying new legislation that would allow the state’s residents to sue federal officials — including immigration agents — when those officials violate locals’ constitutional rights.

But first, the bill’s sponsors have to overcome opposition from an unexpected source: the state’s elected prosecutors.

The new measure, which is expected to be introduced in the coming days, would expand on — if not replace — a bill by the same Senate sponsors that’s already passed that chamber and is a handful of votes away from Gov. Jared Polis’ desk. The new bill would allow Coloradans to sue any federal official for violating their civil rights. That’s a more expansive approach than , the earlier measure, which would apply only to federal officials involved in immigration enforcement.

SB-5’s supporters want to fill a gap in federal law that allows people to sue state officials for civil rights violations — but doesn’t provide the same remedy when it’s federal authorities violating those rights.

However, to improve the state’s chances against an almost-certain court challenge by the Trump administration, supporters argue, a new state law would need to apply to all government officials — not just those engaged in one area, like immigration enforcement.

“States cannot lawfully discriminate against federal officials, but they can pass laws that apply generally and equally to all government actors,” argued Beau Tremitiere, the deputy director of impact programs and counsel at Protect Democracy, a national advocacy group backing the new bill.

Both bills have been spearheaded by Democratic Sens. Mike Weissman and Julie Gonzales. The new measure would effectively try to invert parts of the , a federal law that, among other things, allowed people to sue state officials for violating their civil rights.

The new bill would have broader applicability, too, Tremitiere and others said: While SB-5 would apply to immigration enforcement, the new legislation would also apply to any federal authority who violate people’s rights — like with elections or gun ownership.

The new version of the legislation would allow civil rights lawsuits against any person — meaning a state or federal employee. Lawmakers and supporters argue that would change nothing for local government officials, who have long faced the possibility of lawsuits under the Klan law.

DAs group calls bill ‘fundamentally flawed’

But the state’s district attorneys, along with groups representing local governments, disagree — vehemently.

In this new legislation, they see challenges to current legal immunities and, behind it, a potential wave of litigation against prosecutors and local government officials.

“I think it����ap just fundamentally flawed,” said Tom Raynes, the executive director of , of the expected new bill. “It can’t be crafted to do what they want it do to — and can’t be crafted in a way that protects state, municipal or county employees from doing their job — without the hanging fear of personal lawsuits for what is alleged and then having to assert defenses (when) no one knows whether they apply for sure.”

The group represents the state’s elected prosecutors, and it wields significant lobbying influence in the Capitol. CDAC hadn’t opposed SB-5, but it’s come out forcefully against the bill’s replacement.

Raynes said lawmakers’ proposal wouldn’t ultimately lead to any successful lawsuits against federal agents and would instead open the door for frivolous action against state employees. He dismissed arguments that the bill wouldn’t weaken prosecutorial immunity as speculative and said it would take litigation — meaning time and money — to determine if that was true.

Kevin Bommer, the head of the Colorado Municipal League, alleged that more litigation was the primary intent behind the measure.

The disagreement, which has slowed the new bill’s introduction, threatens to upend part of Democratic lawmakers’ plans to respond to aggressive actions by President Donald Trump’s administration this year. It also comes six years after Colorado lawmakers did end the qualified immunity granted by state law to police officers in a sweeping reform bill passed in response to the racial justice protests of 2020.

Prosecutorial immunity has remained intact, and district attorneys have kept their guard up. The District Attorneys Council approached some lawmakers earlier this year, concerned that legislators would look at their immunity next, and Raynes acknowledged that his group was generally worried about their protections.

Supporters dispute interpretation

The position taken by Raynes’ group on the civil rights bill has confounded some of the measure’s supporters. Ariane Frosh, a policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, said she “can’t explain why there’s been this kerfuffle about immunity.”

She — like others — pointed to language in the latest draft of the new bill, which states that current prosecutorial protections put in place in the Klan Act remain in effect.

“It’s not accurate,” Weissman, of Aurora, said of critics’ concerns Monday.

Added Gonzales, who represents a Denver district: “The question that every member of this legislature will have to grapple with is the actual strict analysis that this bill proposes to create, or (if they will listen to) fearmongering by the lobby.”

Gonzales said Polis’ office was on board with the new legislation. Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama said Tuesday the governor was “open” to it. The governor’s office said the proposal would maintain immunity protections, including for prosecutors.

“We are committed to working with legislators on bills that keep our communities safe and protect individual Constitutional rights while not leading to excessive or frivolous litigation,” Maruyama said in an initial statement Monday. “We are hopeful that productive conversations with all stakeholders continue.”

Jessica Smith, a partner at the Denver law firm Holland and Hart who reviewed the draft legislation for The Denver Post, said she didn’t think the bill would change anything for local officials, either.

She said the new bill appeared to be focused on filling the gap in federal and state law that generally doesn’t allow for civil rights lawsuits against federal authorities.

“When I first read the (bill), I didn’t read it as trying to undo or erode any of the state law immunities that exist, under (Colorado law) or otherwise,” she said.

But, Smith added, she understood that the broad language in the measure — that it would apply to all government officials — could spark the prosecutors’ concern. She said the bill’s sponsors could include even stronger language to assuage those fears.

Raynes, though, said he didn’t think the bill could be salvaged.

“What you get as an end result is a pyrrhic victory for (lawmakers) that says, ‘I passed a bill in an effort to provide a state cause of action against federal employees,’ ” he said. “But you won’t succeed under this action. But you will subject half of the government entities to significant litigation and costs.”

As the backroom arguments continue over the new legislation, lawmakers have scheduled SB-5 — the earlier, narrower measure — for a committee hearing Wednesday. The bill passed the Senate in February on a party-line 20-11 vote.

Updated at 8:33 a.m. April 21, 2026: This article was updated to clarify Gov. Polis’ position on the proposed legislation.