If you’re wondering how many teachers and staff decided not to return after the ’22-23 school year, check out this summary.
CORA requests have shed some light on the topic of SROs in schools. The district says there are no officers available…emails from the police chief seem to suggest otherwise. We’re expecting the board to reach a deal with Sheriff Mikesell’s private security company for this instead.
The board promised teachers a 5% raise in July…it didn’t materialize…but getting this news out on social media prompted the district to at least send an email to all staff clarifying this.
Two and a half weeks until teachers need to report for the school year…and the district is facing a teacher shortage. How will they address this? Perhaps we’ll learn more at the next board meeting, week after this one on Wednesday August 9th.
The three candidates challenging the incumbents in this November’s election set up a new website shortcut with links to each of their individual websites…this will make it easier for you to share with other people. http://www.wpsdkids1st.com/
Many community members have been concerned about the effect this board and superintendent might have on the staff in the district…we all asked, how many would leave after this past school year? And would the district be able to replace them (as it turns out, it’s having a hard time of that part, with 16 teacher positions still unfilled at this moment). I wanted to get the facts out on this topic, but found it surprisingly difficult to get a concrete number. So let me explain the data I’m about to present.
At first, myself and others tracked resignations via word of mouth, but I quickly realized that was unreliable data. So, the data here depends almost exclusively on the meeting minutes from board meetings going back to December (those meeting minutes include staff resignations, retirements, and new hires). The only exception is some resignations announced since the last board meeting in June. Staff hired anytime in 2023 have not been included in these calculations.
The other side of it, and an unexpected complication, was determining exactly how many people actually work in the district. For that we scraped data from the district website at the end of February, and combined it with a more comprehensive data set that was obtained towards the end of the school year. That last data set quickly proved to be too broad, including some people no longer with the district, and some known substitute teachers.
Bottom line is, this data is 99% accurate but may have an error or two. If the district publishes their own data, I’ll readily post an update to these numbers. Also, there may yet be further resignations before the new school year starts, so final numbers will be posted in late August. Lastly, I thought it useful to show two bits of data…the percent of teachers leaving the school at the end of last year, as well as the overall percent of staff (including teachers) leaving.
That said, how have the board and superintendent’s actions impacted staffing levels in our district? I found it most useful to break this down on a school by school basis. As you can see, a Summit and Columbine have weathered this storm well. Gateway is absolutely devastated…the school that received the Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award this past spring is effectively an all-new school this year. The middle school and high school also each lost a very large percentage.
Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is, is this normal?
Insiders tell me it’s far from normal, but I do like data, so I dove into the data the CDE makes readily available and came up with a chart. It shows turnover is typically around 15-19%, and there was a weird spike in the COVID years – I don’t know what to make of that, except that those years were full of abnormalities across this country in societal trends (and with remote learning that year, I suspect many of the district positions were cut? I’m not certain). With the COVID year uncertainty, I instead compare this past year with the years previous, which shows the fears of a teacher exodus were well founded (last year was showing a small uptick, but nothing compared to this year).
To interpret that data – when it says ’23-24 compared with ’22-23, what that means is how many teachers or staff in the ’22-23 school year did not return for the ’23-24 school year.
Once the school year starts, we’ll have a final tally and I’ll update this then.
To protect teacher privacy, I will not be releasing my spreadsheet summary of the data as it includes all staff names, but I will share it with any legitimate reporters who are interested. You can reach me using the contact form on this website.
What’s going on with School Resource Officers (SROs) in Woodland Park schools? These have typically been Woodland Park police officers, providing a partial security presence at our schools. Last year, there were two SROs (I believe the school only paid for one, the cost of the other was on the city)…and by spring, both of those were no longer working as SROs in the district. With the board and superintendent eliminating the large mental health support program in our school district, parents have been justifiably concerned about the safety of our kids. David Illingworth and Ken Witt have repeatedly said that the city and sheriff are both unable to provide officers. CORA requests are casting doubt on this statement, as you’ll see below.
The question has been, what is the district’s plan for providing security to our students? Illingworth hinted at a plan in the works using private security in the April City Council meeting, and mentioned (time stamp 12:32 in this video) that the WPPD and Sheriff don’t have enough personnel to provide a full time officer in each of the six school (this is true). The board met in executive session with Sheriff Mikesell in the May 10th meeting to discuss security. The Sheriff does have his own private security company, so it’s been suspected the district would leverage that to help keep our kids safe – but no mention of this appeared in the budget in June.
What CORA requests have revealed is, reassuringly, the board DOES appear to have a plan in the works to have one security guard in each school (there is no indication that any plan has been finalized). There aren’t enough law enforcement officers in this small community to serve those roles (assuming one person per building), and it’s not clear at this point whether those roles will be entirely private security, or whether they’ll be a mix of private security and law enforcement officers. It’s also not clear what cost this will carry.
Dig deeper though and you see friction between our police department and Ken Witt. It seems to have started with the issue of plugging the ‘gap’ in SROs to close out the school year (though perhaps started earlier this year when the chief rejected the district’s request for police presence at all board meetings). On May 3rd, WP Police Chief Deisler offered officers on overtime three days a week to work as SROs, but the district didn’t take him up on that offer. Witt went on to spread incorrect information about that situation to a community member who had emailed him about their concerns (email link is below):
We were very disappointed when Chief Chris Deisler informed the school district this year that the WP PD no longer has the manpower to provide SROs given their law enforcement demands and limited personnel in Woodland Park.
Ken Witt, July 11, 2023
Chief Deisler replied to Witt:
Shortly after the announcement that Ofc. DeJesus was coming back to Patrol, I announced an internal lateral transfer “intent to apply” process for the now-vacant SRO position at WPHS since the final security plan for school safety and security had not been finalized for school year 23-24. Not one eligible police officer applied for this assignment. You can also see that in order to continue to support the school, I offered a city-paid overtime detail for three officers a week to be present at the campus to help get through end of the year at no cost to the District. No one at the school ever finalized this process with me.
WPPD Police Chief Deisler, July 12, 2023
If you read the entirety of the email exchange (obtained via CORA and can be read here), it’s pretty clear that Chief Deisler tried working with the district on this matter but the district did not engage him. Worse though, Ken Witt, in my opinion at least, has portrayed our local police department as uncooperative and unable to help, which is not the impression I get when I read the email from the Police Chief – quite the opposite, Chief Deisler actually seemed eager to help. It’s unknown why the district made the decisions they did about this.
While it’s reassuring that the board is still working on a security plan (Chief Deisler and Sheriff Mikesell appear to be collaborating on it), I hope that plan includes our local law enforcement officers, not just private security.
Why are national groups and right-wing billionaires so involved in the transformation of the Woodland Park School District? Because the Woodland Park School District is where the opportunity to transform all public education first presented itself. And now that they have found a foothold in the Woodland Park district, they’re proclaiming it to be a model for the nation.
In their June board meeting, the board and Witt promised teachers 5% raise starting with their July paychecks. Teachers in the room were surprised at that, and I asked them later why. They explained how the payroll system works for teachers, and that they wouldn’t expect to see any raise until their September paycheck. So when their July paycheck arrived unchanged, they weren’t surprised to see no increase.
Superintendent Ken Witt, CFO Amy Ryan, and the Woodland Park Board of Education directors owe the teachers an apology.
Please vote out the three board incumbents up for re-election this fall.
It’s no secret that Charis Bible “college” is working to take over school boards (as well as local government like city councils) statewide. They have a class devoted to exactly this (here’s the video from the 2022 Citizens Academy as well if you’re curious). A school board candidate training academy was held there this past spring (and a similar event in 2021). And of course, Wommack urged his followers to ‘take over Woodland Park‘. Charis has a separate business identity, Truth and Liberty Coalition, which as a 501c(4) non-profit is able to engage in political activity (the line between that organization and Charis is vague at best).
Don’t forget, too, that current board director Sue Patterson is a Charis grad herself:
Most recently, Truth and Liberty Coalition Executive Director Richard Harris (whose LinkedIn bio lists him as the “Coordinator, Practical Government School at Charis Bible College Colorado”) sent this mass email, encouraging their followers to run for school board statewide:
Voters in Woodland Park have the opportunity to push back against this, by voting out the three incumbents this fall. Sue Patterson is not up for re-election so would remain on the board, but at least her influence would be reduced.
The Junior Woodland Players have been working hard on their production of The Little Mermaid; shows are this Friday (7:00PM), Saturday (7:00PM), and Sunday (1:00PM) in Dickson Auditorium (high school).
The three challengers – Seth Bryan, Keegan Barkley, and Mike Knott – held a fundraiser event in Memorial Part Saturday, with free hot dogs and an opportunity to talk to them each one on one. Somewhere around 200 people showed up and the hot dogs from the Woodland Butcher Block were amazing!
When speaking with The Gazette, Peck said that nearly two weeks after she made the call she was arrested at her Woodland Park home by police and hit with three counts of false reporting, two of which were felonies.
Peck recalled being taken from her home near midnight in front of her three children, the oldest of whom was 14 at the time, and being forced to leave her children home alone.
“It’s awful to see the fear in your kid’s faces,” Peck said, recalling the night she was arrested and booked at the Teller County jail. “It’s awful to be treated like you were a violent threat to the community for making a call. … It’s not what the foundation of our community should be.”
— Read on the Gazette
