Today is a busy day for the school board. After last week’s fiasco regarding the Feasibility Study (let’s discuss it! Oh wait, we don’t want the public know about it, let’s remove it from the agenda!), they’ll be finally be giving the public a peek at it in tonight’s work session, scheduled to start at 6:00PM in the district offices (agenda link, livestream link). After the discussion about the feasibility study, they’ll go into a closed door executive session to chat with their lawyers about how to push this Merit contract though and set statewide precedent that will upend the traditional charter school approval process (or at the very least, lead to more expensive legal bills for our district).
First though, the board is scheduled to tour Columbine Elementary at noon (agenda). Why would they do this now, when they’re in the midst of contract dealings with Merit? And coincidentally, just reviewed (in private) the feasibility study on Merit being given space in the middle school? I suspect they’re reconsidering the middle school plan and considering giving Merit to Columbine, but we should learn more tonight.
Note too that we’re not guaranteed to see the original feasibility study…tonight is just a presentation about it. We may or may not get to view the document given to both the board and Merit last week.
A preliminary injunction has been granted against the school board regarding the OML (Open Meetings Law)!
“The Defendant shall comply with the OML by clearly, honestly, and forthrightly listing all future Agenda items regarding Merit Academy.”…”The Board is further enjoined from “rubber stamping” any Board decision that does not comply with the notice requirements of the OML.”
-It does NOT negate the MOU with Merit Academy.
-It does NOT prevent the Board from looking at and considering the Merit Contract.
-It does NOT prevent the Board from pursuing the Feasibility study and facility usage.
-It DOES state that they must diligently comply with all Open Meeting Laws.
-It DOES enforce the rule that they must explicitly state what they will be discussing in a meeting on the Agenda.
-It DOES support that our case has some legal justification and the judge saw fit to issue this until the time of a trial (based on my complaint/ lawsuit).
Let’s keep fighting for transparency in our school district! This is only the first step in this fight, a final hearing and ruling is yet to come. Please consider supporting this effort via the GoFundMe link above!
In the April 27 school board work session, the board agenda had the following item: “Feasibility Study Presentation by Executive Director of Technology & Operations Miles Tuttle” (source). This information was to be presented to the public in that work session. Instead, the school board decided to keep it secret and hidden from public view. Considering the financial ramifications of a potential contract with Merit Academy, this is unacceptable to the taxpayers of this community. CORA requests for this information are pending. This post will be updated with a video recording of the meeting shortly.
In the 4/13 meeting, David Illingworth said a draft of the Merit Academy contract had been posted to this website. You can view everything we have on this contract at this link.
Superintendent Neal is having to play damage control with comments made by local cult leader Andrew Wommack, who does have quite the following in this town with his bible study school (sorry dude, it’s not a real college). The Pike Peak Courier covers it well in this article.
I call on our school board to issue a resolution condemning the remarks made by Wommack. Rusterholtz is already quoted in that article opposing those statements…but those words are weak, we need a formal resolution from the board to send the proper message to our students and community.
The Gazette has more info on controversial board member Gary Brovetto announcing his desire to resign from the board. You can read the article here. It’ll be discussed and approved (we assume) in a special board meeting being held Wednesday (agenda).
He wrote that he “can no longer continue in this highly stressful hostile environment to be effective as a board member.” It’s not clear if it’s referring to the hostility of David Illingworth as evidenced in the 4/13 board meeting, or the pissed off community members (the latter, I presume).
Considering how Illingworth is absolutely driving the board at the moment with his obsession with Merit Academy it does leave little to no room for issues that Brovetto had previously expressed interest in.
Local parent Joseph Marney has written a response to Mr. Rusterholtz’s comments regarding what is being taught in our schools in the Maverick Observer to various media outlets; it’s too long to paste here but you can read the PDF at this link.
My favorite quote from this:
My children are strong. They are curious. They are vibrant and compassionate. They have already outgrown the small-minded prejudice that keeps you living in fear. Their world is big. You will not change them. They will change you.
“Greetings, Staff of the Woodland Park School District,
We want to make you aware that yesterday afternoon, Director Gary Brovetto delivered his letter of resignation to the District office as it is his wish to resign from the Board of Education effective immediately. We wanted to take a moment as a leadership team to thank Mr. Brovetto for his efforts in leading on the WPSD board, hours of dedicated time, and his specific support of our exchange students over the years.
As we look ahead, Mr. Brovetto’s resignation will be presented to the Board of Education in a special meeting on the 20th of April. Following this meeting, a Resolution to Declare the Vacancy will need to be approved by the Board, which is anticipated in the coming weeks.
Please continue to check back on the homepage of WPSD for any updates to this message.
Sincerely,
Dr. Mathew Neal Woodland Park Superintendent of Schools “
The board will be meeting April 20th to discuss this, along with presumably the Merit Contract in executive session (link to agenda).
Another fantastic turnout at the board meeting! It was a real marathon session too…the regular meeting lasted about five hours, before the board broke off to have an executive session to discuss the pending contract with Merit Academy. Those five hours sure were interesting though! For starts, attorney Brad Miller has recused himself from anything having to do with Merit, though the board is retaining him to deal with…well it’s not clear what he’ll be doing, a point board member Austin raised, as previous counsel is also retained. I suspect it’s because Miller is the one who wrote this contract for Merit so they might have questions. But there’s a new law firm brought on to deal with closing this deal with Merit (I didn’t note the name at the meeting but I’ll get it).
We don’t have video of the entire meeting, just the audio recording which can be listened to here. Below is a video of one of the more contentious agenda items, re-appoval (again) of the Merit MOU, and a brief discussion about CORA requests. You really should watch this video though…Chris Austin raise excellent points, and when he tried to get Illingworth to answer whether he’d seen a copy of the Merit contract draft, Illingworth got VERY defensive, and even started cross-examining Austin, totally unprofessional for a school board environment. His behavior really says a lot about him. He also lied about this website, saying we posted a copy of the Merit contract…I sure wish we had it! Fortunately the audience called him out on this lie.
One interesting point in the video above is around the ten minute mark, with Illingworth made it clear that approving the MOU meant approving Merit’s application to be a charter school. That application is a big deal, legally, and there was no mention of that in the board’s agenda (plus, charter school law requires public notice prior to application approval). So, this is the third time this board has violated the Sunshine Law on the exact same MOU (see section 2C of this link). There is a pending lawsuit to force the board to follow the law in this respect. The board is fabricating a process to convert a contract school (Merit) into a charter school, bypassing the normal charter school process. It’s unclear why they think they can do this, though keep in mind the attorney (Miller) who advised them that this was OK has since removed himself from anything having to do with this matter (reason unknown), so this whole thing is super sketchy right now. The board really needs to restart the process following established Colorado Charter School Law.
Surprisingly, there were not enough speakers signed up to fill the allotted one hour time slot! I spoke to several who told me they avoided signing up because they felt others had more important things to say…oh well, next time will be different I’m sure! The board discussed the possibility of adding follow-up meetings (town hall style) for additional public comment if needed in the future. It’d be great if there was a true question/answer format, but that’s all TBD. The speakers that did talk are worth listening to in the link above. Personal stories worth hearing, as well as a dry but informative five minutes of the various violations this board is making in how they’re conducting business.
Superintendent Neal revealed that he was not selected for the Anchorage position he was interview for, so he’ll be staying on with this district (we view this as a good thing). There was talk about raises for staff, though that really depends on statewide funding and total enrollment which hasn’t been announced yet. The administrative staff is going to look into options there so expect more on this in May’s board meeting, probably.
