Colorado School District Pushing Sex-Ed on Kindergarteners?

Every school year, parents drop their kids off, trusting that if a lesson touches something as personal or potentially graphic as sex, gender, or their own body, the school will tell parents first. Just as importantly, parents trust that if the material doesn’t conflict with their values, they will have the ability to opt out. Sadly, that trust has been breached in Roaring Fork Schools, a Colorado district serving families from Glenwood Springs to Snowmass Village.

Alliance Defending Freedom has sent Roaring Fork a letter, arguing that its sex-education curriculum has left parents in the dark and, in some cases, ignored their choice to opt their kids out entirely.

School districts need to heed what the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed: parents, not school districts, get the final say over what their children are taught about sex and gender. How that right gets honored—or ignored—in one Colorado district could have implications for the hundreds of other communities where similar curricula are already in classrooms.

What a Colorado district is teaching kindergarteners—and hiding from parents

Roaring Fork Schools adopted the 3Rs curriculum in 2023 after a contentious board vote, over parent objections the board dismissed at the time as “sensational comments.” The board also promised families “a clear opt-out system in place for families,” and by its own admission, chose an opt-out model rather than opt-in specifically to “ensure students have access to health education.”

That promise hasn’t held up in practice, according to parents who raised concerns throughout the 2025-26 school year. The district requires only two weeks’ notice before a lesson, and even that notice arrives inconsistently. Sometimes it arrives in take-home folders, sometimes through e-newsletters or the Remind app, and sometimes not at all. Multiple parents told ADF their opt-out forms weren’t honored: One child was pulled from a lesson only after it was half over, and another sat through a full week of lessons. Superintendent Anna Cole has reported to the board that districtwide opt-out rates sit at just 1% to 5%—numbers that reflect a buried notice system, not a lack of parental concern.

The curriculum materials cited in the letter show why parents are paying closer attention. It isn’t just “health education.” See for yourself.

Kindergarteners are taught explicit anatomical terms and asked how they like to be touched, using a slide deck that the district’s own lesson plan calls “controversial” and instructs teachers to expect “community/family questions” about the material. That same lesson plan directs teachers to show even more graphic anatomical drawings from a book called Not the Stork—a book parents were never even shown. First graders complete a worksheet on reproduction called “Can This Make Babies?” By second grade, slides that were once optional become mandatory, and then direct instruction on sexual orientation is given in fifth grade.

ADF’s letter, sent in August 2026, asks the district to remove the 3Rs curriculum entirely. Short of that, it demands Roaring Fork switch to an opt-in system with clear, advance, and accurate notice before every lesson—all put in place before the 2026–27 school year begins.

What has the Supreme Court said?

In 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Mahmoud v. Taylor that parents have a constitutional right to advance notice and to opt their children out of public-school instruction that conflicts with their religious beliefs. In 2026, the Court reinforced that principle in Mirabelli v. Bonta, affirming that parents—not the state—hold primary authority over children’s upbringing, education, and healthcare. Both decisions build on Pierce v. Society of Sisters, a 1925 ruling that established the same idea a century ago. Colorado law adds its own layer: A state statute already requires school districts to give parents advance notice before teaching human sexuality content, and the right to excuse their child from it.

Together, the law puts the burden on school districts, not parents, to make sure families actually know what’s being taught and have a real chance to say no. A two-week notice window buried in a folder or app alert, delivered differently from school to school, is the kind of practice this legal framework was built to prevent.

The stakes reach well beyond Roaring Fork. The 3Rs curriculum isn’t unique to this district. It’s a free program created and actively marketed by Advocates for Youth, a national organization, and it’s now used in more than 500 school districts across at least 13 states, including California, Washington, Oregon, Maryland, Minnesota, and Oklahoma. Wherever it’s taught, the same constitutional protections apply. What happens in Roaring Fork could shape how thousands of other parents, in districts where they may not even realize are affected, learn what their children are being taught—and whether they have a real chance to opt out.

A parental right you don’t know is a parental right you can’t use

A right doesn’t do much good if the people who hold it don’t know it exists. That’s the problem at the center of the Roaring Fork’s curriculum: Parents there have always had the constitutional right to know what their children are taught about sex, gender, and their own bodies and to opt out when it conflicts with their beliefs. What they haven’t had is a district willing to make that right easy to find or reliable to use.

“Parents have the constitutional right to know what their children are taught about sex, gender, and their own bodies, and to opt out when curriculum conflicts with their beliefs,” said ADF Senior Counsel Kate Anderson, director of the ADF Center for Parental Rights. “Roaring Fork Schools is not only introducing kindergarteners to explicit content but also burying the information from parents and denying them a meaningful choice to opt their children out—by design.”

ADF’s August letter gives Roaring Fork a clear path to fix that before the 2026–27 school year begins. Either drop the 3Rs curriculum or replace its buried, inconsistent notice system with an advance, plainly worded opt-in process consistent with what the Supreme Court has already said parents are owed. Mahmoud v. Taylor and Mirabelli v. Bonta settled the legal question. What’s left is whether Roaring Fork will act on it.

The same right belongs to parents in the more than 500 other districts nationwide where the 3Rs curriculum is already being taught, most of whom have no reason yet to know they need to be asking these questions.

Parents don’t have to wait for a school board to answer it for them. Colorado parents can download ADF’s Parents in Control guide and submit an opt-out letter to their child’s school today—because a right worth having is a right worth knowing and using.