On May 10th, the board unanimously voted to extend the contract of Interim Superintendent Ken Witt by one year and remove the ‘interim’ from his job title. Is he qualified? Let’s review the original job posting from November and see where Witt stacks up.

The following qualifications have been identified by the Board of Education to be of particular importance:

• Excel in communication with District Stakeholders
  • Grade: F. Parents report lack of email replies, and an inability to schedule in-person discussions. I’ve also had zero luck getting an answer from him in person before or after school board meetings. He didn’t even stick around after the last board meeting to talk to stakeholders present in the room.
• Exceptional executive skills with experience in building effective relationships
  • Grade: F. He has not demonstrated an ability to build effective relationships with staff. Quite the contrary.
• Ability to work with leadership team to execute strategic plan
  • Grade: A. He’s working very closely with the WPSD board to execute their plan.
• Inspire a culture of greatness, innovation, and growth throughout the district
  • Grade: D. He avoids an ‘F’ on this one due to his (failed) attempt to get Third Future Schools to take over Gateway Elementary, I’d call that innovative (though not a ‘culture’ of innovation).
• Courageous in making tough decisions for the district
  • Grade: C. He has absolutely made tough decisions for the district (like moving sixth grade out of the Middle School), but should we really be calling that ‘courageous’ instead of stupid? “A courageous person knows the possible danger and acts anyway. A stupid person, on the other hand, has no knowledge of the consequences and thus feels no fear in action” (quote citation).
• Knowledgeable of Colorado school finance, law, and assessment
  • Grade: B. It’s not clear if he understands school finance…he has refused to answer my claims about transportation costs though I suspect his dodging of the question is not due to a lack of knowledge, rather a desire to conceal the truth from the taxpayers. As for law, he does have a good grasp on how to use serial meetings to avoid Open Meetings Law violations.
• Straightforward, genuine, enthusiastic, energetic
  • Grade: F.
• Ability to cultivate a positive and motivated work force
  • Grade: F. Can I give him an F-? 40-50% of district staff are leaving this year. I suppose one could argue he motivated them…to leave!
• Student-focused
  • Grade: F. Eleven high school juniors were inducted into the National Honors Society…Witt was not there to congratulate them. I don’t believe Witt has ever been sighted at any after-hours school event.
• Sound financial skills
  • Grade: C. He’s siphoning money from our traditional public schools to the charter school…he understands the finance side enough to accomplish his goals of undermining traditional public education.
• Ethical
  • Grade: F. Where do I start?!
• Prior superintendent/assistant superintendent or comparable administrative experience preferred
  • Grade: C. he has a bit of administrative experience from his executive director role of ERBOCES, where he still works today.

It’s not clear by what criteria the board was judging Witt, as a CORA request for evaluation results yielded no records.