During the legislative session of 2020, Poudre School District (PSD) sent two lobbyists to the state capitol to lobby in favor of a bill, SB20-163. PSD has paid $48,801.45 of taxpayer money to the lobbying firm Mendez, Barkis, and Associates over the past 12 months, the firm sent to lobby in support of SB20-163 for PSD.

Why would PSD send lobbyists to support a bill that would harm up to 5% of its students and their families?

It is not common practice for a school district to send lobbyists to support such a bill, in fact, only one other school district in Colorado sent lobbyists to support this bill - Adams County.

Thousands of parents showed up at the state capitol to testify against this bill for both the Senate and House hearings. Parents let it be known loud and clear that their children would be targets if this bill passed. The Senate hearing, which was heard in February 2020 before the COVID lockdowns, went into the early morning hours with hundreds of parents testifying against the bill.

Until the last minute of the hearing, before the Senate majority (Democrat) leader showed up and had words with his party members, two of the Democrat Senators looked as if they were going to be no votes. However, after the majority leader left, the bill passed through the Senate with a party-line vote. Democrats voted yes and Republicans voted no. One Democrat Senator admitted the pressure was too much to give a no vote.

The House hearing came after the COVID lockdowns in June 2020. The hearing was scheduled on a Sunday, an unprecedented day for a hearing, especially for such a controversial bill. 

The committee chair allowed only 1.5 hours of testimony for each side. This allowed plenty of time for the proponents to get all testimony heard, but only gave enough time for a minute percentage of the thousands of opponents who came to testify against the bill. In fact, thousands of citizens who came out in opposition to the bill were forced to stay outside of the Capitol during the hearing.

SB20-163 is a bill that requires several new procedures relating to vaccine exemptions. The most troubling to parents is that it requires parents who choose to exempt their children from even one vaccine required for school entry, for personal or religious reasons, or children who are exempt for medical reasons, register their exemptions into a State tracking database full of personally identifying information on the child.

This database is an Immunization Information System or IIS. It houses dozens of personal data fields of private medical, location, and age information that parents would not want anyone to have access to unless the parent gave formal consent. Yet, over 6,000 people in Colorado currently have access to this Colorado IIS, also known as CIIS.

These types of medical tracking data bases are wrought with controversy including the very real threat of data breach. These tracking data bases also erode public trust in government, doctors and hospitals.

Sandra Smyser, Poudre School District Superintendent 

Sandra Smyser is the superintendent for PSD and is the person responsible for the approval of over $48,000 being paid to the lobbying firm over the year that included the lobbying for SB20-163. The opposition to this bill was well known and was covered in the local media.

Thus, Ms. Smyser cannot claim that parents wanted this bill to pass nor can she claim that she was working for her students. If she was not working for her students, who was she working for? Who was she helping and why would she be willing to pay lobbyists, at the tax payer's expense, to lobby for a bill that would bypass existing privacy laws such as FERPA and force parents to enter their children's private medical data and choices into a state tracking registry?

Smyser must realize that the reality of tracking registries is about to become much more real and concerning to thousands of more parents who do not want their children to be used as Guinea pigs for an experimental Covid vaccine that may use never before tested mRNA technology.

Especially now that multiple news outlets are reporting that a mandatory COVID vaccine is a great possibility and polls show that about half of the population is reluctant to comply, the reality is that exemption tracking will affect even more children in the future.

Looking deeper, it appears that Sandra Smyser did in fact have a reason to hire lobbyists to support SB20-163, and that reason seems to be nepotism. Sandra Smyser appears to be choosing her son and his interests over the interests of the students she is charged with serving.

So, Who is Sandra Smyser's son?

Sandra Smyser's Son Tracks and Targets People and Organizations Who Do Not Agree With His Agenda 

The son of Sandra Smyser is Joe Smyser. Joe Smyser has a Ph.D. in Public Health; has worked for the CDC; has been a Corporate Liaison where he orchestrated donations from corporate medical donors such as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and others; and has run social media campaigns for health-related issues. His recent endeavors include heading up several organizations and programs relating to public health and "misinformation" fighting campaigns. Interestingly, Mr. Smyser names Bill Gates as his number one influencer on his Linked-In page. This will prove even more interesting as we discover more about Sandra Smyser later in this article.

Joe Smyser is the CEO of an organization called the Public Good Project or PGP. PGP has vaccination as one of its public health tracking and targeting goals. PGP promotes large-scale behavior change programs through tracking and targeting on social media with the goal of stigmatizing or de-stigmatizing certain groups of people as described in this article from Wired which outlines one of his programs called Stronger.

PGP and Stronger's goals are to fight what Joe calls vaccine misinformation by targeting and stigmatizing any person or organization that goes against the CDC or official government stance on vaccination, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)-funded World Health Organization. As the largest donor to the WHO, the BMGF is currently the number one influencer for world health policy.

The BMGF also supports the CDC through grants to the CDC Foundation, further increasing the power of Gates to influence health policy. Both the CDC and the WHO have conflicts of interest with vaccine manufacturers. This fact makes Gate's influence especially troubling now that we see him actively promoting experimental vaccine technology, developed at "warp speed," and funded by his foundation to be delivered to every citizen of this planet as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

 Mr. Smyser has given several lectures describing how his programs track and target. On May 20, 2020, he gave a presentation to the National Press Foundation (NPF), urging them to use his VCTR program to find out who the organizations and people are that promote what Joe calls "vaccine misinformation."

He implores the NPF to write targeted pieces that stigmatize anyone who questions vaccines, instead of promoting fair journalism. He explains to the NPF that public health cannot understand the reasons that parents question vaccines or have "vaccine hesitancy." Mr. Smyser blames vaccine hesitancy on misinformation about vaccines that are promoted on social media and asks the press to target the purveyors of such information. 

If Mr. Smyser has truly been studying vaccine hesitancy as he says he has, he must know the real reasons for it. He could improve vaccine research and safety, two of the many reasons for vaccine hesitancy. Yet, he instead powers on with his message of tracking, censorship, and behavioral manipulation.

In another 2020 presentation at MisinfoCon, Mr. Smyser describes his program targeting and tracking results to colleagues. He gives a similar presentation to this crowd as he gives to the NPF but adds a few telling statements such as a blanket statement against chiropractors because, "they believe that solutions to your medical problems come from inside your body not outside," and another generalization regarding "anti-vaxxers." He states, "anti-vaxxers are not nice people, they find where you live, your friends and family and they attack you." Ironic coming from a man teaching people how to track and target others online. 

He admits that many people do not trust the biggest public health agency, the CDC, and that he needs to get real people involved in public health messaging. He highlights a Kaiser flu campaign that focused on vaccine-hesitant Latino and Black communities that he says are vaccine-hesitant "for really damn good reasons."

Yet, in this campaign, instead of addressing the reasons behind the hesitancy, he partnered with Kaiser and used influential people in the targeted communities to promote the flu vaccine. The old trick of appealing to authority to manage behavior. Because, for Mr. Smyser, this is not about truth, it is about behavior manipulation.

Joe Smyser Helped Track and Target Children in Colorado

In December of 2019, Joe Smyser came to Colorado to give a presentation to the E-Health Commission and the Office of eHealth Innovation. The Office of eHealth Innovation is focused on health information exchange and interoperable databases for "whole-person care," which sounds nice and sounds like big brother data tracking, the perfect venue for Joe Smyser.

Smyser presented a slide show of his "vaccine misinformation" tracking and targeting VCTR program to the commission and spoke about vaccine messaging strategies similar to his NPF presentation. (He also presented the commission with de-stigmatizing strategies for opioid addiction, but that is another rabbit hole for another day.)

In his presentation, he explains how PGP partners with several US media and technology companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, the Ad Council, HBO, and more. These partnerships are interesting given the recent censorship across the internet span if anyone dares question the government's narrative. PGP also partners with federal and state health agencies such as the FDA and medical giants like Kaiser.

Is Mr. Smyser partnering with the Colorado state health agency, The Colorado Department of Health and Environment, who pushed for SB20-163? This vaccine exemption data tracking bill was introduced in February 2020, only two months after Joe Smyser's visit to Colorado.

Representative Cathy Kipp from Fort Collins Who Used to Serve on the PSD Board Aids the Smyser Agenda

As mentioned, SB20-163 moved through the Senate first, and then moved on to the House for a committee hearing. The House hearing for SB20-163 was heard by the House Health and Insurance Committee on June 7, 2020. This committee has heard many other vaccine bills that have gone through the Colorado legislature.

The SB20-63 hearing, however, had several substitutions for committee members on the Democrat side. A notable substitution was a freshman Representative from Fort Collins House District 52 named Cathy Kipp.

Cathy Kipp happened to be on the PSD School Board for seven years, five of them while Sandra Smyser was the superintendent, before being appointed to her House Representative seat by the Democratic party. Kipp is not without controversy even in her PSD position when she paid the Democratic party to help her campaign for a seat on the school board, which is supposed to be a non-partisan position. It is noteworthy that Cathy Kipp was president of PSD Board when the lobbying firm that lobbied for SB20-163 was first hired in 2017. 

As her opponent asked, "How is any school board director who owes their election to the Democratic Party going to challenge the Democratic Party, leaders, and elected officials that helped them get elected, to address these critical school issues?"

In the end, it appears it didn't matter. Kipp never intended to challenge the Democratic party, she intended to join them. With Kipp's House seat secured, Sandra Smyser had an ally in the legislature who helped her get a bill passed that her son helped promote. What other agendas are the Smyser family promoting in Colorado?

Sandra Smyser Has Ties to The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

As mentioned previously, Joe Smyser claims to be influenced by Bill Gates. Could it be because Joe's mother has ties to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? Did Joe get his start from introductions by his mother? 

Before her position with PSD, Ms. Smyser was the superintendent of the Eagle County School District. She was superintendent of the year in 2012 in Eagle County and she was mentioned in the 2013 annual letter written by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

A 2014 PolitiChicks article exposed Gates influence over education in Colorado, and Ms. Smyser was involved closely in this conflict of interest during her tenure in Eagle County. The short of it is that Gates's money influenced the adoption of the controversial Common Core curriculum and the subsequent Colorado Integration Project into Colorado schools through its almost $10 million grant to the Colorado Legacy Foundation in 2011.

Sandra Smyser was on the board of the Colorado Legacy Foundation at the time. Her school district received $565,000 of the grant, much more than other school districts its size.

Interestingly, all of the Colorado school districts that received the most money from this grant had Colorado State School Board Members with ties to Gates' money. As explained in the article, these grants influenced legislation. 

Quoting from the article, "how do this implementation and organizational support mentioned in the grant above look? The Colorado Integration Project 13 school districts in Colorado, through a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, were to integrate, in 2013, key educational reforms under Senate Bill 191 into their schools." Sandra Smyser's Eagle County School district was one of these 13 districts.

It is worth noting that the Colorado Legacy Foundation changed its name to Colorado Education Initiative (CEI) shortly after the January 2014 PolitiChicks article was written. The Colorado Education Initiative is still heavily funded by Bill and Melinda Gates. PSD is one of the districts that "won" a Colorado Education Initiative grant in 2014 to deliver Social-Emotional data to the Colorado Education Initiative after Ms. Smyser became the superintendent of the district. 

Not surprisingly, social- emotional and mental health tracking of children is another of Joe Smyser's online targeting and tracking interests. 

Joe Smyser's Mental Health Tracking Programs Target Colorado Children in Both His Mother's and His Brother's School Districts

Joe works closely with Kaiser on other campaigns besides the ones mentioned previously in this article. His social media crisis campaign tracker rcaid.org is funded by Kaiser.

He partners with Kaiser in mental health, tracking what people are saying about mental health online, and encouraging people to share their mental health stories online. Could people who share mental health issues online now and who are monitored by tracking programs or encouraged to share stories and data online be targets of discrimination or stigma later in life? Likely, and interestingly the youth who are most consistently online are often gamers.

So it is not hard to guess that Kaiser and Mr. Smyser are also targeting the gaming community with their mental health tracking? Now in the wake of the COVID response, as children across the world are being forced into online learning, tracking programs like those Mr. Smyser and Kaiser are creating have a whole new collection of people to watch and target. 

Similar types of mental health programs promoted by Joe Smyser and Kaiser described above are being implemented in Colorado schools through grants from the Colorado Education Initiative partnering with Kaiser. In fact, in 2017, the Colorado Education Initiative, the same group that was involved in influencing the adaption of the common core curriculum when Sandra Smyser was the Eagle County superintendent, gave a grant to 5 school districts in Colorado through the Thriving Schools behavioral health grants.

The Colorado Education Initiative describes the program: "CEI's work with Thriving Schools is part of a national effort by Kaiser Permanente to impact health in schools on a broad scale. In conjunction with the grant recipients' announcement, Kaiser Permanente also launched Find Your Words, a public health awareness campaign that talks about depression in an honest and inspiring way.

The "Find Your Words" campaign drives viewers to FindYourWords.org, a website that provides basic information about depression, offers resources, and invites the public to engage in a conversation about mental health and wellness through an interactive component." One of the school districts given this grant was Boulder Valley School District, where Joe Smyser's brother Timothy works as the IT security specialist for the district. In addition, in 2014 PSD started to 2014 deliver social, emotional data to the Colorado Education Initiative following the grant PSD received. 

Could it be that children in school districts like PSD will be targeted with Joe Smyser's tracking campaigns or mental health data grabs now that the children in that district have been sentenced to full-time online learning? Sandra Smyser is interested in promoting mental health and social, emotional skills, as described on her PSD homepage. Is that one of the reasons that PSD seems to have no intention of getting kids back to in-person learning even though the majority of PSD parents want their children back to school? Are PSD children being data mined for behavioral health indicators during their full days of online learning?

Are PSD students serving as another study group for Joe Smyser's projects through the help of his mother? This may sound far fetched, but after analyzing the Smyser family's entanglements and events of the 2020 legislative session, anything seems possible when it comes to the Smysers.

Sandra Smyser certainly has access to all the data for all students in her district. How can any parent trust that any of their children's data, such as mental health data or other medical data, is safe with Sandra Smyser at the helm? Given her blatant conflicts of interest, how can parents trust her with their children?

Parents across Colorado, and especially those with children in PSD should be asking a lot of questions and demanding answers. The most important being, "how can a superintendent like Smyser be trusted, and who will be her replacement?"

References

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