GREELEY, Colo. – Officials in the Greeley-Evans School District 6 are taking heat from the public after photos were posted online of students participating in an anti-fracking protest during a January field trip.

Jefferson High School teacher Rob Liebman took about 20 to 25 students to a Colorado Oil and Gas Task Force meeting in Greeley last month to research a position paper on fracking, but the meeting was delayed. Liebman brought the students outside, where they waited among anti- and pro-fracking activists for the meeting to start, the Greeley Tribune reports.

What unfolded between that time and the start of the meeting is in dispute, but pictures posted online show the students ended up toting anti-fracking signs during the school field trip. The pictures infuriated conservative bloggers and others, who are demanding answers.

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The teacher’s recollection of the events, meanwhile, conflict with a reporter from the site Watchdog.org who attended the meeting at the Island Grove Regional Park. The Colorado Oil and Gas Task Force was formed by Gov. John Hickenlooper in 2013 to make recommendations to the legislature.

Watchdog.org reports Liebman, a paraprofessional aide, and about 25 students arrived early at the meeting and initially sat quietly and waited for the meeting to begin, but when it was delayed “Liebman led his students outside to listen to about 15 anti-fracking activists who stood in front of the entrance to the 4H building, stridently laying out their case against gas and oil development in Colorado.”

Liebman never indicated students should remain neutral or just observe, and obtained handouts from the anti-fracking groups to give students. The protestors also gave students “Ban Fracking Now” signs, and “at no time did Liebman or the paraprofessional aide … ask them to return … signs to the protest organizers,” according to the news site.

Instead, Watchdog.org alleges, Liebman directed students to block pro-fracking advocates with the signs, which they did, and he took several photos of the incident. The students allegedly took their signs in with them and held them up as the meeting began, which was a violation of the meeting rules, the news site reports.

“Only minutes after the meeting began and introductions of the members of the Task Force were made, the Jefferson High teacher, paraprofessional aide, and students left the meeting,” according to Watchdog.org.

School officials and members of anti-fracking groups that at the meeting offered a different take on the events when contacted by the Greeley Tribune.

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Like Watchdog.org, they said students went outside when the meeting was delayed, but that Liebman did not encourage them to take sides or participate in the protest. An email from Jefferson Principal Larry Green to district administrators alleges that when students went outside to wait for the meeting to start “they encountered both sides demonstrating.”

“When they walked over to the anti-fracking demonstrators, they were given signs to hold up without any real discussion of what they were demonstrating about,” according to the email obtained by the Tribune.

“Our students did not understand what they were really doing,” Green wrote.

Sam Schabacker, director of Food and Water Watch Western Region – one of the anti-fracking groups at the meeting, told the Tribune the student protests were sparked when a counter protestor rudely waived their sign behind a woman who was speaking about her concerns with fracking near Bethke Elementary School.

“At that point, the counter-protestor went back behind the group of students and got high-fives from (other) counter protestors,” Schabacker told the news site.

He said students asked him for extra signs and move in front of counter protestors to get even.

“I wasn’t so much a protest as it was a reaction,” he said. “It was completely spontaneous. It was clear when students came in, they had no idea what was going on.”

Liebman, however, knew exactly what was going on, as he contacted Schabacker two weeks before the event “asking if his students could attend the rally as observers,” the Tribune reports.

District spokeswoman Theresa Myers told the Tribune there’s no district policies that apply to the situation. She said the district did not bus the students to the meeting to protest, but at the same time officials also do not want to unnecessarily restrict students’ free speech.

Green wrote in the email to his superiors that “the teacher’s intent was to provide good information for students so they can write a quality position paper.

“He feels very sad that this has happened and has learned a great deal from this experience.”