Monthly Archives: February 2023

District statement on NCAA class eligibility

A parent in the district recently noticed that because of the district’s adoption of the American Birthright standards, some classes at the high school no longer met NCAA eligibility requirements. The district’s response is below, in an email sent to parents today. In summary, they’ll be submitting the new class info for review this summer, and also note the timeline for that review is uncertain. It doesn’t sound like parents will get an answer in time to decide whether to enroll their student here or elsewhere for this next school year, though it’s expected there will be online classes offered that would meet NCAA requirements.

Yet another example of the avoidable chaos that this school board and interim superintendent seem to embrace.

Are the Bad People Really Winning?

You are the one who can step from the shadows and tell the darkness that it has had the run of the house for long enough; who can send the brilliant floodlight of hope streaming into the shadowed places from where it had been vanquished.

It is only a matter of opening your mouth and releasing the truest of your truth without fear or hesitation or decorum. It is in you moving from looking for hope on the horizon and to finding it in the mirror.

— Read on johnpavlovitz.com/2023/02/09/are-the-bad-people-really-winning/

Conservative program meets inclusive standards in this Colorado school district – Colorado Newsline

More about Woodland Park’s implementation of the American Birthright standards. This is mostly information we’ve already posted here in other articles, but one new bit of information that’s come to light is that many classes no longer have NCAA approval…students that need this eligibility will, we believe, have other course options available to them, them just need to be careful when making class decisions and might be stuck with an online-only class.
— Read on coloradonewsline.com/2023/02/16/conservative-program-meets-inclusive-standards-in-this-colorado-school-district/

Podcast – Have You Heard, episode #151: Divide, Scatter, Conquer

Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider talk about Woodland Park in their latest episode of their Have You Heard podcast! They talked to many parents, students, and some teachers for this one. Check it out on Apple Podcasts or Soundcloud!

Please note, the podcast erroneously states that Sara Lee has made the decision to leave the district. That decision has not been made at this time.

Del Garrick gives two weeks notice!

Longtime district employee Del Garrick has given his two weeks notice! guy literally grew up in this town and went to these schools. 22 years working in this district. He’s been serving as HR director and, I believe, finance; he and Tina were co-superintendents before Witt was hired.

And now he’s out.

We’ve been fearing there would be a mass exodus of teachers at the end of this school year. If any of them were on the fence…seeing Del leave is not going to convince them to stay.

Talk Out of School (podcast)

Looking for a good podcast about charter schools nationwide? I previously recommended episode #150 of Have You Heard; here’s another one just released from Talk Out of School. Our board has not articulated their vision for this district in any detail, but seeing them engage Third Future last month makes it clear they’re working towards decreasing the traditional public schools in this district. There is a nationwide effort to do so; podcasts like these are useful to understand how this is playing out elsewhere and where it seems to be leading.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-out-of-school/id1490313171

2/12/23 Weekly update

As expected, this was a busy week

  • The Courier published a great letter from local resident Carol Greenstreet, read it here.
  • We received CORA results for emails related to Ken Witt’s decision to remove “Between the World and Me” from the curriculum in a high school elective class, read more here.
  • 107 people turned out for a school board meeting on Wednesday
    • We saw many new people speaking out in the public comments section
    • Witt did a first reading of proposed changes to GP-5, to change it to focusing only on the educational interests of students (examples of non-educational interests that would no longer be a priority would be things like bullying, LGBTQ+, pronouns, etc).
    • The board voted to modify the district calendar for next school year (when ready, it will be posted here).
  • The district announced it would halt withholding/processing of union dues from teachers’ paychecks, effective immediately.
  • An astute supporter put together a detailed ‘connecting the dots’ document helping explain the connections between some of the people in this saga.
  • A bill is advancing in the Colorado State Legislature that would provide state-level ethical oversight of local school boards.
  • We received clarification from the Colorado Department of Education on what they are will and able to do if a school district is suspected of not meeting state education standards, such as social studies.
  • Girl Scout cookies are now on sale! 🙂

Here’s what’s going on this coming week

  • Last week, we were expecting to be featured in a couple new media channels…that has been delayed, we’re hoping for this week. Stay tuned here.
  • We do not believe Witt and this board have abandoned plans to expand charter schools in this district after Third Future backed out; we’re watching this issue closely.

Your tax dollars for their private school? More states are saying yes – Los Angeles Times

We get caught up in our fight with our local school board, but it’s important to remember that there is a nationwide effort to privatize the educational system in this county, and that once we win our local fight, we need to shift focus to the national level.

This opinion piece from the Los Angeles Times talks about this more and is a good, quick primer on the topic.

— Read on www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-02-12/school-vouchers-private-public-school-iowa-kim-reynolds-lgbtq-parental-rights

If you have the time, it’s also worth listening to this podcast on the subject, as it talks more about where voucher programs may lead the educational system and a future for charter schools that wish to operate more like private schools.

https://soundcloud.com/haveyouheardpodcast/charter-schools-go-private?si=e27543d8678d44b2891e1be43e0a5e4e&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Enforcement of Social Studies standards in Colorado

Unless you’re new to this website, you already know that the Woodland Park school board adopted the American Birthright standard for social studies last month. Colorado Public Radio published a great article about this, and talked about how the state board of education rejected these standards last fall. These standards have already been used to censor one class, so naturally parents are concerned.

So, what’s a concerned parent to do? Well the state mandates that each district implement standards that meet or exceed the state standards.

Surely the American Birthright standard, which the state already rejected, wouldn’t meet these criteria?

I contacted the Colorado Department of Education. They in turn reached out to the Woodland Park school district about this issue, and received this reply:

So, they’ll be taking a non-compliant standard, picking and choosing sections to ensure compliance? On the surface this sounds bad but possibly compliant. But in the end, who will judge whether the district has pulled off this tightrope act? Turns out the answer is…the district themselves. The state does not review districts to actually ensure they’re complying with the state standards! This is what the Colorado Department of Education told me:

So there you have it.

Is there no government body overseeing our school board? Hey, what about the Colorado Association of School Boards! Sounds promising, right? Umm…no: