Board Director David Illingworth II, up for reelection this fall, submitted this letter to the editor in the Courier…let’s do some fact checking:

Many have complained about not enough space at the May 10 Board of Education meeting (in fact my own wife was unable to get in). These complaints are either misinformed or misleading.

First, the overwhelming majority of our meetings are held in that meeting space, and it is exceptionally rare that there is not enough room for everyone. We can’t know when that will happen, but we do know that there was very heavy attendance at this meeting due to the presence of NBC News and the coordination and organizing by well-known local activists whose goal was to swamp the meeting and get on TV. They were there for the cameras and the attention, not the schools or the students.

Second, we cannot change the fire code or the weather. Everyone who could not get into the meeting room was offered the chance to watch the meeting from the WPHS auditorium, rather than stand in the rain. They all declined and decided, of their own free will, to stay outside and shout where the TV cameras just happened to be.

Finally, everyone was able to sign up for public comment, and many of those who addressed the BOE that night were escorted in from outside, so they had the same opportunities as those who had arrived earlier.

Let’s be clear: anyone who stood in the rain did so of their own choice after refusing staff offers to come inside WPHS where it was warm and dry. No one was denied the opportunity for shelter or to publicly address the BOE.

Dave Illingworth, Woodland Park Board of Education

source

I don’t think we can quantify whether it’s ‘exceptionally rare that there is not enough room for everyone’, but the board commonly opened up an overflow area outside of the main conference room for those occurrences. At other times, they held the board meetings in either the high school auditorium, or the middle school commons area, to accommodate larger crowds.

Both the pro-board side, and the anti-board side, encouraged heavy attendance by their respective followers. The board had no reason to expect that a 90 person room would provide sufficient space for everyone, not when all indications were that turnout at this meeting would be extraordinary.

No one was offered a chance to watch the meeting from the auditorium. Towards the end of the public comment portion, I was offered a chance to take shelter in the commons area (not the auditorium), with no promise of any livestream in there.

The NBC TV camera was inside the conference room, not outside as he claims. A local TV reporter had her camera outside.

He claims ‘no one was denied the opportunity for shelter or to publicly address the BOE.’ That second part is false. The BOE cut public comment off at 30 minutes as has been their custom for a while now. Not everyone who signed up to publicly address the BOE was given that opportunity. Further, they were asked to wait outside in the rain to see if their name would be called (the commons area wasn’t opened up as shelter until public comment was almost over).

What about the claims that fire code meant they couldn’t open up the overflow area? We have not found any evidence to support that claim. Yes, the main conference room has a 90 person capacity limit sign posted, and that seems reasonable for that size of a space. However, our inspection of the overflow area revealed no posted capacity signs. A CORA request (#446) requested the fire department documents listing the maximum occupancy for those rooms:

I am requesting the official Fire Department documents listing the maximum occupancy for the WPSD District Office, the Distric Office Large Conference room and the two district office rooms that have traditionally been used to accommodate overflow for the WPSD BOE meetings.

This was met with the district’s response of, “There are no responsive documents to this request.”

Not only did the BOE recruit Charis students to pack the conference room, but they encouraged those students to show up early – an hour ahead of time, the line was already long enough that those showing up after did not get in to the building. As evidenced by audience reactions during the meeting, the room was clearly packed with BOE supporters. The BOE knew there would be a large crowd, did not choose to move the meeting to a larger space, and took steps to actually reduce the number of people that would be allowed to attend the meeting (when compared to previous meetings).