Monthly Archives: May 2022

Board posts final Merit contract and schedules vote

In a giant ‘fuck you’ to the taxpayers of this district awaiting a chance to voice their opinions on the Merit Academy contract in tonight’s special board meeting created for that purpose, the school board has gone ahead and posted a FINAL version of the Merit contract to the district website and scheduled a meeting for tomorrow at 6:00 (agenda) to vote to approve it (they also posted an approval resolution which they’ll be voting on). They have no intention of listening to public feedback nor making any changes to their contract based upon that feedback. This is all a circus show (maybe ‘shitshow’ would be a better description).

It’s worth showing up at tonight’s school board meeting, 6:00 (agenda) in the auditorium, and let the board know what you think about this corrupt, unethical process.

Both meetings will be livestreamed and the link for that is in the agendas.

Merit Contract draft finally posted!

The draft contract between WPSD and Merit Academy has finally been posted to the district’s website. You can download the full contract here, or the executive summary here. We’ll have our full analysis posted soon. The board will be taking public input in a meeting on Wednesday May 18th in the High School auditorium. They’ll also be taking questions via an online form that isn’t working at the moment, but when it does, the link is here.

Board meeting schedule

The board has rescheduled their next meeting, originally scheduled for May 11th and rescheduled to May 18th. This is planned to be a town hall format to discuss the Merit Academy contract (which has not been released yet). They’re tentatively planning to approve a lease for Merit to use the Middle School on May 25th per the timeline.

They plan to tour Gateway Elementary this Friday at noon (agenda).

Feasibility Study Presentation

The Feasibility Study Presentation to be shown at tonight’s board work session can be downloaded here.

Points of note:

  • Most public school rooms would be at 100% capacity. One classroom would have 1 empty seat. One ‘yoga’ room is at 0%.
  • Merit space would be at 66% capacity. So, the board would be giving Merit room to grow, but no room for the Middle School to grow.
  • Construction and other costs to make this happen would be in the $112-229k range. Additional capital expenditures are identified for the next two years; I think we’ll need to see the Merit contract to determine if they’re required to pay for any of this.
  • Some uncertainties are noted, such as whether moving and storage costs would be shared.

School Board meetings today

Today is a busy day for the school board. After last week’s fiasco regarding the Feasibility Study (let’s discuss it! Oh wait, we don’t want the public know about it, let’s remove it from the agenda!), they’ll be finally be giving the public a peek at it in tonight’s work session, scheduled to start at 6:00PM in the district offices (agenda link, livestream link). After the discussion about the feasibility study, they’ll go into a closed door executive session to chat with their lawyers about how to push this Merit contract though and set statewide precedent that will upend the traditional charter school approval process (or at the very least, lead to more expensive legal bills for our district).

First though, the board is scheduled to tour Columbine Elementary at noon (agenda). Why would they do this now, when they’re in the midst of contract dealings with Merit? And coincidentally, just reviewed (in private) the feasibility study on Merit being given space in the middle school? I suspect they’re reconsidering the middle school plan and considering giving Merit to Columbine, but we should learn more tonight.

Note too that we’re not guaranteed to see the original feasibility study…tonight is just a presentation about it. We may or may not get to view the document given to both the board and Merit last week.