Montrose County School District to consider hiring controversial Miller Farmer law firm

At it’s regular meeting tomorrow, Tuesday, 2/10 at 6:30 p.m., the Montrose County School Board will consider whether to hire controversial legal figure Brad Miller of the Miller Farmer Law Firm, as the school district’s attorney.  The Miller Farmer firm is known for religious and political leanings that stir up controversy and draw trouble and expense to school districts, like working to launch Colorado’s “first public Christian school,” in hopes of generating a legal test case that might make it to the U.S. Supreme Court. Miller has encouraged school board members to skirt laws and rules, like coaching them on how to get around established request-for-proposal (RFP) policies so board members can hire whomever they want, and coaching school board members on how to get around rules guiding what can get on a meeting agenda and when. Miller gave the Elizabeth School District (on the eastern plains) bad advice about transparency that brought costly legal fees to that school district, in part by requesting continuances that dragged out a lawsuit against the district for a year and seven months. He’s engaged in conflicts of interest, like representing both a charter school and the public school district in which it’s located. He’s encouraged school districts to adopt controversial and discriminatory culture war policies that could draw lawsuits and get them in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, like policies that discriminate against transgender students.

While Brad Miller denies being a charter school crusader, he uses his Twitter feed to advocate for for charter schools and oppose institutional funding of public schools. His own kids attended charter schools, private schools and were homeschooled. They did not attend public school.

Based on the experiences of other Colorado school districts, hiring Brad Miller is likely to bring turmoil, increased legal expense and unwanted negative headlines to the Montrose County School District — things the Montrose County School District could avoid entirely by hiring a less controversial attorney whose primary purpose isn’t imposing political, religious and cultural changes on school districts for the sake of generating test cases and pushing right wing ideological changes.