COLORADO SPRINGS — School board presidents from the three largest districts in Colorado Springs took a public stance on recreational marijuana.
A mass campaign text and video were sent out to an unknown number of people on Sunday. You can watch the video below:
WATCH: School Board Campaign
The video included D11's Parth Melpakam, D20's Aaron Salt and D49's Lori Thompson. They spoke against two ballot measures.
"Please protect our children from recreational marijuana by voting yes on 2D and no on 300," stated in the video.
This raised some questions about campaign funding and who the text reached.
"This has infuriated a lot of people," said a D49 parent who lives in Colorado Springs, John West in an email. "I and everyone else I have spoken with did not ask for your opinion and never signed up for your text blast, where did you get all these phone numbers from?"
"We have the First Amendment in the United States of America, and if they're upset, that's okay, that's their free speech," said Thompson. "To date, I have not received negative feedback."
"A couple of messages I have received that also disagree with my stance on it and that is the nature of our society as long as we can agree to disagree," said Melpakam.
Melpakam and Thompson said the Colorado Springs Safe Neighborhood Coalition reached out to them.
"Our districts did not contribute any finances toward these text messages or toward the campaign," said Thompson.
News5's Lindsey Jensen reached out to the Coalition.
Daniel Cole with Cole Communications, which worked with the coalition on the campaign, called her.
Cole confirmed the coalition funded the campaign.
He told me the coalition paid a third-party vendor for phone numbers, but couldn't tell me how many people were targeted.
"I was speaking on my own behalf, I'm not speaking on behalf of the school district or school board," said Melpakam.
Jensen asked why they chose to use their positions for this campaign.
"If a title helps spread awareness, then I'm all for it," said Thompson.
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