Author Archives: admin

Follow the Money – canvassing

In their latest campaign expense filings, both David Illingworth and Mick Bates list a $250 expense to Crimson Central Services in Colorado Springs, for “Canvassing Services” (you can find all this info on TRACER). Let’s dig deeper. Here’s a list of all election campaigns that had similar expenses with that company for last month:

Six expenses of the same amount for various school board campaigns in different cities…it seems likely these are for the same purpose. We at first thought this was for door knocking, as that’s the traditional definition. However, those two Canon City BOE candidates list a different purpose for their $250 expenses…one lists ‘software expense’, the other lists ‘voter data’. If you look at the past history of this particular company, they have a very large number of expenses of $1,250 for consulting and data. It seems most likely that Bates and Illingworth are paying Crimson Central Services for voter data, which is a normal thing for a candidate to seek out anyway.

Who is Crimson Central Services?

Crimson Central Services is an LLC filed in Wyoming – a state which allows LLC owners to mask the identity of their owners. But the records on Tracer list business addresses, and 6140 South Gun Club Road, Unit K6-354 in Aurora, a UPS store where I presume the 354 is a mailbox number. So, bit of a dead end there. These days though, their address is listed as 100 East Saint Vrain Stree, unit #105, in Colorado Springs. Who else is at that address? Victor’s Canvassing.

Now, Victor’s Canvassing is not a company I’d expect you to have heard of. However, they identified themselves when handing out this flyer to teachers’ homes:

The return address on that flyer (some were mailed, some delivered in person by Victor’s Canvassing) lists the Freedom Foundation in Washington…a right-wing group known for attacking unions and public education (link1, link2, link3, link4, link5…you get the idea). So, no surprise to see them involved here, and not surprising to see Bates and Illingworth using a similar canvassing company as the Freedom Foundation.

But we’re not quite done digging! Who is behind Victor’s Canvassing? The Chief Operating Officer is Daniel Fenlason:

Who is Daniel? The Truth and Liberty Coalition (the 501c(4) group established by Andrew Wommack) proudly lists him as one of their ‘Influencers‘:

So, in summary – Bates and Illingworth appear to be using the services of a canvassing company that’s closely linked to the Truth and Liberty Coalition and Andrew Wommack, as well as the Freedom Foundation.

9/6/2023 Letters to the Editor

From the 9/6/2023 Courier:

Grassroots support for school board candidates

Which candidates are the choice of the parents and taxpayers in Teller County for the RE-2 school board? Interesting question. Looking at each of the candidates’ publicly available contributions, Barkley, Bryant and Knott each have over a hundred local donors while the incumbents have just a handful. Events put on by Barkley, Bryant and Knott are wildly successful with turnout from community members from across all walks of life…a nice representation of our community. Collectively, the new candidates have raised over $30K, mostly from local parents and taxpayers. What an impressive grassroots effort for three parents wanting to remove partisan politics from the school board.

Looking at all the candidates’ data, the incumbents appear to be beholden to a small group of big money donors while Barkley, Bryant and Knott appear to be beholden to the families and taxpayers of the Woodland Park School District as a whole. What’s also interesting is the number of teachers that feel safe to have their contributions publicly reported for the incumbents. Begs the question, would there be more teacher donations to Barkley, Bryant and Knott if there was no gag order or concern about retribution if the incumbents win in November? Who do you think represents our community more? The choice seems clear to me.

Elizabeth Douglass, Florissant

FACT CHECK – did the teachers union supply vans to the challengers?

Marvin Logan wrote this in the 9/6/2023 Courier Letters to the Editor:

Big omission

I want to believe Seth Bryant but his words do not ring true. Calling the Teachers Union support he, Barkley and Knott received in his column a “website login” while leaving out the Teachers Union also supplied him and the other candidates “platform vans to perform canvassing and communications scoping” is a big omission. Who helped him knock on doors in those Teacher Union supplied vans?

The Teacher Unions in this country kept our children out of school during Covid 19, and wasted years of their education on indoctrination efforts.

They’re one organization I would not want support from if I were running for school board as a conservative, but he and the other 2 have accepted their help anyhow.

Marvin Logan, Woodland Park

This highlights just how crazy social media is these days, especially the online platform Nextdoor, where Marvin and other have been quite vocal in their anti-union rhetoric.

But to the point – this is FALSE. ‘VAN’ is the computer system the candidates were given access to, a voter database that helps them more efficiently target their outreach efforts like door to door canvassing. NOT this:

Braver Angels group tackles community divisiveness

The Braver Angels, a national organization attempting to decrease divisiveness in communities, met last week at the library. Turnout was fantastic, with around 70 people attending a standing-room-only meeting intended to kick off a longer series of community meetings to bring people together in discussion instead of division. You can read more about it in the Courier. Next meeting will be a workshop on September 23rd.

9/3/2023 Weekly Update

Last Week:

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

  • This Friday, Bryant, Knott, and Barkley are hosting a fundraising dinner at the Cultural Center to support their school board election campaigns.
  • It’s a short week for students, who get Monday and Tuesday off!
  • Next school board meeting is Wednesday, 9/13.
  • I’m still trying to get school enrollment numbers from the district via CORA. Merit Academy was very helpful with this request; Ken Witt’s organization has not been as forthcoming.

Library updates for sixth graders

With the sixth graders being moved from the Middle School building to the three elementary schools, some of us were wondering, what will be done to give them access to library books in these new locations? We’ve learned a bit here so thought it’s worth sharing.

Columbine – 6th grade students were given the opportunity to create a 6th grade library wishlist last year. [Columbine staff] used their list as well as several 6th grade book lists, including one from the National Library Association to create a higher level library. 80% of the books in the 6th classroom are new this year and only available to 6th graders.

Gateway – parents were given the chance to sign a permission slip to allow their sixth graders to walk (as a group) to the public library every other Friday to check out books there.

Summit – we have not heard of the plan there.

It’s great that something is being done though allowing the kids to peruse the shelves of the public library, while simultaneously creating a ‘controversial topics’ section in the high school library requiring specific parental approval to check out, is odd.

The war on public education

Great TikTok video that talks about what’s going on with the attack on public education at a national level…and it helps explain many of the actions in the Woodland Park school district:

@electrobrogers

Remember #christopherrufo? The guy that invented the #crt #culturewar #outrage? Back in April 2022, he just spelled out the reason he did it. Erode publictrust. #publiceducation #propaganda #teachersoftiktok #teacher #defendpublicschools #defendpubliclibraries

♬ Stranger Things – Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein

CDE publishes school performance ratings

The Colorado Department of Education has published its school and district performance ratings, here’s how our district fared:

As you can see, all schools ranked as ‘performance plan‘ (the only higher level is ‘distinction plan’), except for Merit Academy which saw its score knocked down one level to ‘improvement plan‘ due to their lower test participation rates. This highlights the issue that while test scores are important, if a significant number of students aren’t taking those tests, it becomes more difficult to truly judge the performance of a school.

(read more at Chalkbeat)

8/27/2023 Weekly Update

Last Week:

Here’s what’s coming up next week:

  • I’m working to get enrollment numbers. Official numbers won’t come out until October, but I think we’re all curious what’s going on with this.