Author Archives: Matt G

WPSD staff turnover after the ’22-23 school year

Many community members have been concerned about the effect this board and superintendent might have on the staff in the district…we all asked, how many would leave after this past school year? And would the district be able to replace them (as it turns out, it’s having a hard time of that part, with 16 teacher positions still unfilled at this moment). I wanted to get the facts out on this topic, but found it surprisingly difficult to get a concrete number. So let me explain the data I’m about to present.

At first, myself and others tracked resignations via word of mouth, but I quickly realized that was unreliable data. So, the data here depends almost exclusively on the meeting minutes from board meetings going back to December (those meeting minutes include staff resignations, retirements, and new hires). The only exception is some resignations announced since the last board meeting in June. Staff hired anytime in 2023 have not been included in these calculations.

The other side of it, and an unexpected complication, was determining exactly how many people actually work in the district. For that we scraped data from the district website at the end of February, and combined it with a more comprehensive data set that was obtained towards the end of the school year. That last data set quickly proved to be too broad, including some people no longer with the district, and some known substitute teachers.

Bottom line is, this data is 99% accurate but may have an error or two. If the district publishes their own data, I’ll readily post an update to these numbers. Also, there may yet be further resignations before the new school year starts, so final numbers will be posted in late August. Lastly, I thought it useful to show two bits of data…the percent of teachers leaving the school at the end of last year, as well as the overall percent of staff (including teachers) leaving.

That said, how have the board and superintendent’s actions impacted staffing levels in our district? I found it most useful to break this down on a school by school basis. As you can see, a Summit and Columbine have weathered this storm well. Gateway is absolutely devastated…the school that received the Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award this past spring is effectively an all-new school this year. The middle school and high school also each lost a very large percentage.

Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is, is this normal?

Insiders tell me it’s far from normal, but I do like data, so I dove into the data the CDE makes readily available and came up with a chart. It shows turnover is typically around 15-19%, and there was a weird spike in the COVID years – I don’t know what to make of that, except that those years were full of abnormalities across this country in societal trends (and with remote learning that year, I suspect many of the district positions were cut? I’m not certain). With the COVID year uncertainty, I instead compare this past year with the years previous, which shows the fears of a teacher exodus were well founded (last year was showing a small uptick, but nothing compared to this year).

To interpret that data – when it says ’23-24 compared with ’22-23, what that means is how many teachers or staff in the ’22-23 school year did not return for the ’23-24 school year.

Once the school year starts, we’ll have a final tally and I’ll update this then.

To protect teacher privacy, I will not be releasing my spreadsheet summary of the data as it includes all staff names, but I will share it with any legitimate reporters who are interested. You can reach me using the contact form on this website.

DAVIS: Buying the Birthright: A Woodland Park Investigation

Why are national groups and right-wing billionaires so involved in the transformation of the Woodland Park School District? Because the Woodland Park School District is where the opportunity to transform all public education first presented itself. And now that they have found a foothold in the Woodland Park district, they’re proclaiming it to be a model for the nation.

Their plans do not end in Woodland Park — the Bradley and Scaife Foundations are not known for limiting the scale of their ambitions — but they started there, and they started there because the conditions were right. 
— Read on coloradotimesrecorder.com/2023/07/davis-buying-the-birthright-a-woodland-park-investigation/55055/

Woodland Park woman’s acquittal brings vindication | Subscriber Content | gazette.com

When speaking with The Gazette, Peck said that nearly two weeks after she made the call she was arrested at her Woodland Park home by police and hit with three counts of false reporting, two of which were felonies.

Peck recalled being taken from her home near midnight in front of her three children, the oldest of whom was 14 at the time, and being forced to leave her children home alone.

“It’s awful to see the fear in your kid’s faces,” Peck said, recalling the night she was arrested and booked at the Teller County jail. “It’s awful to be treated like you were a violent threat to the community for making a call. … It’s not what the foundation of our community should be.”
— Read on the Gazette

Information about PSAT scores in the district

We need to set the record straight on PSAT scores.

To start with, congratulations WPHS! Our 9th graders scored great, as a recent CORA request revealed! Their mean score of 937 far surpassed the state’s mean of 890, as did all other benchmarks. Well done, Panthers!

Merit Academy also scored great, slightly exceeding WPHS with a mean of 954 vs. 937! They published their school’s PSAT scores on their website, as shown below:

Now, the numbers are good, and the students and teachers deserve credit for a job well done! But there’s some misinformation here which I’d like to straighten out.

For starters, their comparison to the District scores is completely incorrect – I don’t know what district they’re comparing themselves to, but it’s definitely not Woodland Park RE-2 (as our WP data show above). I suspect this error may lie at the CDE level and that this form was generated there, as its style matches the WPHS one. I hope they correct this error quickly so the public is not misled about their academic performance vs. the high school’s.

The other important piece of information to look at is the participation rate – what percentage of 9th graders actually took the test. Using data from the CDE (here, or original source website here), Merit Academy has 27 9th graders. Merit says that 19 took the test, which means only 70% of their students took the PSAT. The district high school has 142 9th graders per the CDE (not 257 as Merit’s data shows), of which 124 took the test, for a participation rate of 87%. Almost one third of Merit students didn’t take this test…it’s hard to say how indicative these test results really are of the student population as a whole. Overall, a good, solid effort, but difficult to draw conclusions from if you ask me.

UPDATE – Merit has corrected their website to show that District scores are pending, and they also claim a 100% participation rate, saying that the ones who didn’t test were home school programs. I’m working to get details to confirm homeschool enrichment numbers.

Transportation Costs for ’23-24 school year

Using data from the district’s FY24 adopted budget from June, I put together a simple graphic showing how the board has decided to split transportation costs between Merit Academy and the five traditional public schools. They are not splitting it based upon enrollment as one might expect.

I had previously written about this topic here and here. I think everyone in the district loves and supports the idea of including Merit Academy students in the school bus program. No one debates that. The only debate is whether those Merit Academy students should be paying the same out of their budget that the other kids do. The board feels they should not, as this graphic shows.

7/16/2023 Weekly Update

Last Week:

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

  • Next Saturday, July 22nd, the three candidates challenging the board incumbents this fall are hosting a ‘meet and greet’ and fundraiser in Memorial Park from 12:30-3:30; they’ll be serving up free hot dogs and answering questions. If all three of these individuals get elected, that will leave only two of the current board, Rusterholtz and Patterson, in place and the balance of power will shift.

Woodland park woman acquitted of all charges tied to calling police on school board member’s wife | KRDO

A Woodland Park woman, who was a leading member of the effort to recall members of the Woodland Park Park School District Re-2 board, has been acquitted of all charges by a Teller County jury. Samantha Peck, 42, was previously charged with two counts of attempting to influence a public servant and filing a false police report with the Woodland Park Police Department.
— Read on krdo.com/news/2023/07/14/woodland-park-woman-acquitted-of-all-charges-tied-to-calling-police-on-school-board-members-wife/

DAVIS: American Birthright: A Woodland Park Investigation

For the past month, I have been investigating a concerted effort by national groups to use the Woodland Park School District as the testing ground for a radical new right-wing approach to public schools, where the goal is no longer to strangle the system and cut taxes, but to seize the system and train up conservative voters. While much has been reported about what is happening in WPSD, little has been documented about why it is happening in Woodland Park specifically, or who is ultimately behind it. 

The Woodland Park school board’s first-in-the-nation decision to adopt the American Birthright standards brings us closer to answers for those questions.
— Read on coloradotimesrecorder.com/2023/07/davis-american-birthright-a-woodland-park-investigation/54661/

If you care about public education, go to the polls – The Durango Herald

In the last such elections, in numerous Colorado school districts – e.g., Douglas County, Woodland Park, Colorado Springs, Montezuma-Cortez, Grand Junction and Garfield RE-2 – a group of far-right conservative candidates took over the majorities of those Boards of Education. These individuals sought those positions not because they are committed, genuinely, to improving the quality of public education. Instead, they are part of a political movement, launched in the wake of Glenn Youngkin’s defeat of Terry McAuliffe to become governor of Virginia that demonizes the supposed “indoctrination” of public school students by exposing them to “woke” concepts like equity and inclusion.
— Read on www.durangoherald.com/articles/if-you-care-about-public-education-go-to-the-polls/

Three school board candidates to hold meet and greet | Pikes Peak Courier | gazette.com

Three candidates for the Woodland Park School Board of Directors will be holding a meet and greet on July 22 at Memorial Park.

Candidates Mike Knott, Keegan Barkley, and Seth Bryant will be in attendance, which will be held between 12:30-3:30 p.m. The three will kick off their campaigns for the November election by outlining their stances on the issues facing the district.

Hot dogs will be served.
— Read on gazette.com/content/tncms/live/