Last Week

• The board held its regular monthly meeting on 6/14/2023. The main focus was approving the budget for school year ’23-24. I’m still pouring through some details so will have more on that later. The board did not move the meeting to a larger space, though everyone who wanted to attend was admitted as there was no organized appearance of Charis students like the 5/10 meeting (which left ~100 people standing out in the rain).
• We noticed an interesting link between board member Kimbrell and a Moms For Liberty leader in Colorado Springs.
• Gateway Elementary won the Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award! The district made no announcement of this though…I have CORA requests pending to try to figure out why.
• The WPSD board is no stranger to ‘serial meetings’…meeting one on one in private to skirt open meetings laws. A court case in Douglass County threatens to put an end to that strategy.
• We’re seeing similar turmoil in other school districts…one in Texas being the latest example.
• KOAA reported on the expansion of mental health screenings in Colorado schools (except for a few like WPSD).

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

• The next regular board meeting will be in August. The board met in executive session on 6/14 to discuss security arrangements though, so it wouldn’t be surprising for them to schedule a meeting before the end of the fiscal year to implement a new program, if they reach consensus on one and if it will affect the budget. So we’ll be watching for a last minute meeting scheduled in June.
• School may be out, but this is a time to dig deeper to check into some things the district is doing. So stay tuned for more.
• Three people have announced their intention to run for school board against the three incumbents up for reelection. I haven’t heard much since that original article in the Courier, but expect that as the summer goes by, their campaign efforts will ramp up. I’ve looked into these candidates and think they’ll be great board members!