Last Week:

• After that May 10th board meeting, we were all anxiously awaiting NBC’s primetime segment on us, and they finally aired it on Thursday.
• Ken Witt was interviewed on local radio station KOA. Quote of the day: he “knows” the CEA and WPEA “hate America.”
• Ken Witt loaned a US flag to the district to be put on display, and used almost $600 of district money to have it framed. Turns out it’s not a valid US flag, it’s the ’42 star’ version that was never made official.
• We found some more recent resignation letters in a CORA request. These help shed some insight into what’s going on with staff.
• We received a copy of an email that a job applicant sent to the district, after withdrawing from the application process. This board and superintendent’s actions are impacting our district’s ability to attract candidates.
• The district has a new email filter…your freedom of speech to the board no longer extends to words such as ‘crap’. Emails contain that and, presumably, other words will be automatically rejected.
• We published a few small things learned in recent CORA requests. Including the fact that Witt’s contract with ERBOCES has been modified to reduce his salary, presumably since he’s not working there full-time anymore (his WPSD contract has not been similarly modified).
• CNN had a crew out in Colorado Springs, checking in on what Moms For Liberty is up to down there.
• The District Accountability Committee (DAC) held their regular monthly meeting. In it, Illingworth mentioned they’re looking at spending $1 million from district reserves on security upgrades (this would be for one-time costs, not recurring things like personnel). They’re also working on a plan for security personnel but not providing details yet. The discussion on budget was brief and unfortunately, no new detail that wasn’t shown in the 5/10 board meeting. Lastly, there was a productive conversation about how to improve school crosswalk safety, specifically the one in front of the Middle School that everyone agrees is dangerous.

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

• Class of 2023 graduates Saturday! Congratulations!
  • We’re told Ken Witt will be speaking at the graduation ceremony.
  • Please don’t disrupt the ceremony during Witt’s speech; this is the seniors’ special day and we should not do anything to spoil that. However, it might be a good opportunity to actually speak to Witt one on one, either before or after graduation.
  • As is customary, members of the board may be present; this event is being classified as a ‘work session’ so that they all may attend without being in violation of Open Meetings Law.