Author Archives: admin

What if it Were Your Student? | Guest column

From the 7/17/2024 Courier:

If the election’s over, why keep talking about the school board?

There’s been a high price paid—starting with the then-traitorous signatures on the Declaration of Independence, and later in blood — for us not only to vote, but manage the gift of elected leaders, our collective taxes.

Responding to a director’s question at the June BOE about bussing students to and from school, the superintendent reported transportation was completely state-reimbursed. This error prompted Colorado Open Records Agreement (CORA) requests from one citizen, who provided documentation to the superintendent. The superintendent admitted the error, restating his commitment to provide transportation to all district students. I wholeheartedly support this.

But there’s a catch.

Student transportation in 22-23 cost WPSD $1,230,940 (per CDE). The state reimbursed $238,137, collected transportation fees were $13,035 —leaving $979,768 to be covered by state-provided per-pupil funding. At the time, 1,677 attended our five traditional schools; the remaining 300 attended Merit Academy. (Merit was in the district, but transportation wasn’t offered.)

That nearly $1 million balance has been paid only from our district’s traditional-school per-pupil allotment. That’s $584/student, all students not just bussed students, from an amount also intended for building, administration, teacher salaries, the works.

But let’s watch our math. For the 23-24 year the district began including transportation for Merit–only asking fund participation of the $100/family asked of all bus-utilizing families. Their reasoning: Merit Academy’s transportation did not require an additional stop. But it will in 2024-2025.

To be clear, the traditional 1,422 students paid for the bussing of 1,820 students.

For 24-25, MA again will not be asked to pay their share of busing costs.

This year, traditional enrollment is projected to lower; MA is projected to be higher as they add preschool and 11th grade. Yet the nearly $1 million transportation costs will only be divided among educational funds for the traditional schools.

If MA paid their share of district bussing, the traditional schools gain at least $214,124.

Which would go a long way to paying teachers—and students—more of what they deserve. (What if that traditional student was your own?)

CORA-requested information shows leadership from MA pursuing their fair share of grant funding—suggesting even though budgets were set, they could be revised.

Should MA, in kind, pursue their share of transportation costs? Some argue, truthfully, that district schools receive funding that MA does not. Yet MA is eligible as well for grants and waivers unique to charter schools.

It’s but one example among many of preferential treatment of one school by a BOE that is charged with looking fairly to the interest of all students, all schools.

What is the honorable response from all parties? Should district costs be shared among all its beneficiaries? Should those continuing to present similar issues, finding themselves ignored, remain silent? Should traditional students’ blindly trust this Board?

But more importantly, how could we as a community come together with facts—indivisible, toward justice for all?

Carol Greenstreet

WPSD adopts gender identity name change policy

This spring the State of Colorado passed bill HB24-1039, requiring schools to use their chosen name where it’s different than their legal name but reflects their gender identity. The Woodland Park School District has published policy JT to address this. I question whether this would hold up to legal scrutiny, and suspect the district is actually seeking a legal challenge as they’ve already expressed their opposition to HB24-1039 in a resolution passed earlier this year. The bill text seems to imply the schools need to comply with the students’ chosen names…but the district policy JT-R outlines a procedure requiring parental approval (via form JT-E). Any request must be approved by the school principal, and the final decision lies with the Chief Academic Officer. So it’s not the student’s choice, it is ultimately the parent’s choice.

WPSD gives teachers meager raise, implements performance-based pay scale

After giving Ken Witt a 10% raise this year and a guaranteed 5% minimum raise in following years, the Woodland Park School District announced they were “proud” to announce pay raises for educators ranging from 2-3.4%, with an average pay increase of 2.5%. Read the press release here. This means teacher pay will start at $43,000, which is an improvement but still the lowest in the area:

WPSD has also implemented a performance-based pay scale, a controversial plan that Ken Witt first tried when he was on the school board in Jefferson County many years ago (before getting recalled from that position). This new pay scale gives inexperienced teachers a higher raise than experienced ones, and it’s not clear how they’ll fairly judge each teacher’s performance given the huge variables out of their control. Here’s how the district describes the plan:

Interestingly, the school board never discussed this performance-based pay plan in any public meeting.

ERBOCES restores Ken Witt’s full-time salary, gives him bonus and a raise

Some months after Ken Witt took a ‘full time’ job here in WPSD, his other employer, ERBOCES, cut his salary to reflect the part-time effort he was going to be putting into that. Well, they reversed that in their May 2024 board meeting. Ken Witt’s ERBOCES salary is back to the full base amount, PLUS he gets a 5% cost of living increase, PLUS he gets a 10% bonus. Scroll to the end of the meeting minutes here to read the details for yourself. So now Ken Witt is back to milking the taxpayers for two full-time salaries (ERBOCES executive director, and WPSD superintendent), plus generous benefits and bonuses.

WPSD to require citizenship test as condition of graduation

Ken Witt and the Woodland Park school board will be voting tonight on whether to require all seniors to pass a citizenship test in order to graduate. You can read the excerpt from the board packet below. This follows the same call to action by Moms for Liberty. While on the surface it seems like a fine idea, imposing this requirement starting next spring seems rushed and it’s not clear whether seniors will be properly taught the necessary questions in such a limited time when many probably aren’t even scheduled to take any civics or history classes next year.

School situation spiraling out of control | Guest column

From the 6/5/24 Courier, written by Susie Graf:

I come from a family of teachers and am a long-time volunteer and supporter of our district. It saddens me to see what has happened here, and how the situation is spiraling out of control. It is overwhelming and frightening.

In Woodland Park, teachers were always treated with respect and dignity and not called anarchists, socialists and enemies. These are our friends who we see in the grocery store and who sit next to us in church. They helped us raise our children, and that is not an attribute that can be quantified. People from out of state who don’t have children in our schools, or any school, are directing this diatribe toward our teachers. We should have the integrity and bravery to stand up to these people. Teachers are people even willing to give their life for your child.

In the 80’s, Parents, community members and leaders worked together to pass a bond issue for a new school using the middle school structure. Middle school kids were for years shuffled from one building to another as we had no place to put them. It took several tries to pass a bond, but we got the new building designed specifically for the middle school population. Classes were held in pods with students moving within those groups which allowed for cross discipline teaching and collaboration. The building itself and the principal received national attention. The current teachers there were accustomed to almost daily meetings to discuss characteristics needed to meet the educational and developmental needs of young adolescents at that age. We don’t know if this may take place in the new surroundings which are not designed to accommodate this age group.

The decision to close a building or give one away is not to be taken lightly, and there is a process to be followed. It is not to be announced on a Friday afternoon in an email to parents. These decisions should be discussed over time among all stakeholders, most notably residents who paid for the buildings, the parents, the faculty and staff and the administration. No one person should be making these decisions and then announcing them casually. A school is more than a building. It a place of love and laughter where growth and development take place daily in a very purposeful manner. Kids feel safe in their schools and with their teachers whom they love. You cannot take the emotional attachment away from the school building or the teachers.

Our children are our most important possessions. As an educational professional for over 50 years, and as a parent, I can tell you that those people who treat your children with kindness and respect and who encourage them in their educational and personal growth are the ones you can never thank enough and who you will always admire and yes, love. We need to support our wonderful teachers here in Woodland Park and not be hoodwinked by this Board of Education which is giving our district away.

City Council debates sales tax

In the 5/16 council meeting, city council talked about sales tax, and Ken Witt and Mick Bates gave a short presentation and answered some questions (you can watch it here). The debate seems to be over whether or not City Council should trust the Woodland Park School District to spend the sales tax money in the manner agreed upon. Witt provided pie charts but little actual detail, something council members Geer and Baldwin both pointed out.

Here are some actions by the district and superintendent to consider when asking whether they can be trusted to spend sales tax money as agreed upon:

  • The district provides transportation services to Merit Academy without making them pay a proportionate share of the overall cost – and when public comment has brought this to light last year, Witt provided misleading answers.
  • The district spent about $100,000 to charter Merit Academy…money they could have asked that school to reimburse but instead had the other schools pay via their funds.
  • The district provides food service to Merit Academy at no cost to that school.
  • The board paid a $275,000 separation agreement to our previous superintendent, Dr. Mathew Neal (this was recorded in the FY’23 general ledger as “July 2022 Supplemental Payroll” with no comments added about who it was for).
  • The district redirected $270,155 of federal grant money without public notice nor board approval – the board had voted to spend this money on the five ‘traditional’ public schools, but it was instead sent to Merit Academy in secret.
  • The board voted to renew Ken Witt’s contract, giving him a raise and potential bonus in the process, without ever performing any job review.
  • In the 5/16/2024 city council meeting, Ken Witt appears to have lied to council, saying sales tax money was being used for ‘innovation’ by paying for the Capturing Kids Hearts program, when the facts show that program is funded by different sources.
  • District CFO Amy Ryan has barely lasted a year…a job posting shows she’s leaving the district already.

Ken Witt and the Woodland Park School District have not earned our trust with our sales tax money.

Capturing Kids Hearts – what does it cost?

UPDATE 5/30 – I’ve received updated general ledger information which shows three additional charges in this current fiscal year FY’24, bringing the total to $53,700 paid out of ESSER grant money, and $97,050 paid out of general fund 10 reserves (carryover from last year as per the specific budget resolution). No change to the conclusions in what I wrote below – Ken Witt lied to council about sales tax money being used for this.

For the current school year, the district implemented the Capturing Kids Hearts program, a social-emotional learning tool. People following this matter closely might be curious where the money is coming from, as in Ken Witt’s presentation to City Council on 5/16, he highlighted this as how sales tax money is spent on ‘innovation’ in the current fiscal year (’23-24 school year):

Another slide from his presentation showed the district was spending $80,000 on this innovation aspect in FY24 (when asked about the ‘other’, he said there currently are no examples of that nor have there ever been):

Just to be perfectly clear, his presentation to council was solely on how sales tax money is being spent by the district. So $80k on this Capturing Kids Hearts program could probably be considered an OK expense for that ‘innovative programing’ category of sales tax money expenses.

Except it wasn’t.

Sales tax money goes directly into the General Fund, which is fund 10. So when reviewing expenses, based on Ken Witt’s statement one would expect all Capturing Kids Hearts expenses to be charged to that fund. When reviewing the general ledger though (my data is only current as of 4/11, it’s possible new charges have been added), we see that $5,610 was spent on food service (for training events, presumably):

Then, $8,000 was spent from the general fund on software. That’s it for charges which could be tied to sales tax money. But that’s not the extent of charges related to this program. The bulk of the cost of Capturing Kids Hearts this year, $53,700 was paid for with ESSER grant money (aka, Federal Covid Relief funds). NOT sales tax money. Note fund ’22’ below (designated purpose grants), and grant number 4414 (the specific grant):

In other words, Ken Witt was not being truthful when he told City Council the district was spending $80k of sales tax money this year on innovation programs, of which only Captured Kids Hearts was named.

So for the current FY’24, where Witt says we’re spending $80,000 in sales tax money on Capturing Kids Hearts, at most we’ve only spent $13,610 – the rest came from a federal grant. But even that $13,610 is called into question when you look at the specific budget resolution passed for FY’24. This resolution authorizes expenditure of fund balances for specific purposes – or to word it differently, spending our reserve fund. The specific budget resolution for the current fiscal year, FY’24, authorizes spending $100,000 from our reserve fund – NOT sales tax – on Capturing Kids Hearts:

I mentioned my general ledger data is only current as of 4/11/2024 – new charges may have been added since. If that’s the case, and more than $13,610 has been spent, just keep in mind that the board authorized $100,000 of reserve funds to be spent on this program, so the district would have to exceed $100,000 in charges, to fund 10, in the current fiscal year for Ken Witt to be make the argument that the district is using any sales tax money on that program for this year.

If you’d like to view the invoices for details on the money paid to Capturing Kids Hearts, you can view them here (provided via CORA).

Looking at the previous fiscal year, FY’23 (school year ’22-23), we see when the district first paid Capturing Kids Hearts for the program, a $108,500 charge in June. This was charged to fund 10, the general fund, so it could be argued that the district used sales tax money in the previous fiscal year to pay for Capturing Kids Hearts.

So, the facts do not support Ken Witt’s claim that the district is spending sales tax money on Capturing Kids Hearts in the current fiscal year.