Category Archives: CORA requests

What’s going on with SROs in WPSD?

What’s going on with School Resource Officers (SROs) in Woodland Park schools? These have typically been Woodland Park police officers, providing a partial security presence at our schools. Last year, there were two SROs (I believe the school only paid for one, the cost of the other was on the city)…and by spring, both of those were no longer working as SROs in the district. With the board and superintendent eliminating the large mental health support program in our school district, parents have been justifiably concerned about the safety of our kids. David Illingworth and Ken Witt have repeatedly said that the city and sheriff are both unable to provide officers. CORA requests are casting doubt on this statement, as you’ll see below.

The question has been, what is the district’s plan for providing security to our students? Illingworth hinted at a plan in the works using private security in the April City Council meeting, and mentioned (time stamp 12:32 in this video) that the WPPD and Sheriff don’t have enough personnel to provide a full time officer in each of the six school (this is true). The board met in executive session with Sheriff Mikesell in the May 10th meeting to discuss security. The Sheriff does have his own private security company, so it’s been suspected the district would leverage that to help keep our kids safe – but no mention of this appeared in the budget in June.

What CORA requests have revealed is, reassuringly, the board DOES appear to have a plan in the works to have one security guard in each school (there is no indication that any plan has been finalized). There aren’t enough law enforcement officers in this small community to serve those roles (assuming one person per building), and it’s not clear at this point whether those roles will be entirely private security, or whether they’ll be a mix of private security and law enforcement officers. It’s also not clear what cost this will carry.

Dig deeper though and you see friction between our police department and Ken Witt. It seems to have started with the issue of plugging the ‘gap’ in SROs to close out the school year (though perhaps started earlier this year when the chief rejected the district’s request for police presence at all board meetings). On May 3rd, WP Police Chief Deisler offered officers on overtime three days a week to work as SROs, but the district didn’t take him up on that offer. Witt went on to spread incorrect information about that situation to a community member who had emailed him about their concerns (email link is below):

We were very disappointed when Chief Chris Deisler informed the school district this year that the WP PD no longer has the manpower to provide SROs given their law enforcement demands and limited personnel in Woodland Park.

Ken Witt, July 11, 2023

Chief Deisler replied to Witt:

Shortly after the announcement that Ofc. DeJesus was coming back to Patrol, I announced an internal lateral transfer “intent to apply” process for the now-vacant SRO position at WPHS since the final security plan for school safety and security had not been finalized for school year 23-24. Not one eligible police officer applied for this assignment. You can also see that in order to continue to support the school, I offered a city-paid overtime detail for three officers a week to be present at the campus to help get through end of the year at no cost to the District. No one at the school ever finalized this process with me.

WPPD Police Chief Deisler, July 12, 2023

If you read the entirety of the email exchange (obtained via CORA and can be read here), it’s pretty clear that Chief Deisler tried working with the district on this matter but the district did not engage him. Worse though, Ken Witt, in my opinion at least, has portrayed our local police department as uncooperative and unable to help, which is not the impression I get when I read the email from the Police Chief – quite the opposite, Chief Deisler actually seemed eager to help. It’s unknown why the district made the decisions they did about this.

While it’s reassuring that the board is still working on a security plan (Chief Deisler and Sheriff Mikesell appear to be collaborating on it), I hope that plan includes our local law enforcement officers, not just private security.

I encourage all community members to read the entirety of the email exchange for themselves.

District hires Gessler Blue to appeal CORA lawsuit

As a followup to my earlier post about District Legal Expenses, it has come to light that in March, the district hired law firm Gessler Blue LLC, and as the contract states, this is for the express purpose of appealing the CORA case where the court ordered the district to release surveillance video (which was leaked to NBC here). Principal Partner Scott Gessler bills his time at $425/hr (other lower staff billable rates are mentioned in the contract). Gessler is a former Colorado Secretary of State, was an attorney on Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, and was also the target of an ethics investigation which ended up costing the state over $515,000 in legal fees (Gessler was found guilty).

Thanks to the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA), you can read his contract with our district here.

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.

District Legal expenses

The current board has greatly expanded the use of outside legal counsel, compared to previous boards. Here’s the data:

  • In the ’19-20 fiscal year, the district spent $15,608.48 on legal expenses (link).
  • In the ’20-21 fiscal year, the district spent $63,532.14 on legal expenses (link). This was the year the district reviewed the charter school application from Merit Academy.
  • In the ’21-22 fiscal year, 7 months of which were under this current board, the district replaced legal counsel with Brad Miller’s office and spent $145,872.56 on legal expenses (link1, link2).
  • In the ’22-23 fiscal year, the district spent $171,250.21 on legal expenses (link1, link2).

What is the board spending our money on? It’s hard to say, they’re pretty secretive as the attorney invoices get heavily redacted. Here’s one from April of last year. What sort of information is being hidden from us? A bit of insight can be gained by looking at the invoice from May of last year, which is the only one received in unreacted form. That will show you the sort of information the district is choosing to keep secret. Judge for yourself if it’s appropriate. One thing you’ll note is soon after Miller came on, the board started using lawyers to redact CORA requests, something done by district employees previously. That’s just a small portion of overall legal fees, but does raise the question of why the board felt necessary to include lawyers in all of those documentation reviews.

Colorado Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award (Gateway Elementary)

As previously reported here, Gateway Elementary was honored with the Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award recently! The thing is though, no one in Woodland Park seemed to know about it until I posted it on Facebook. We found reference to it on the CDE’s website, and a couple weeks after making this info public, the district did finally issue a press release about this.

I learned via CORA that Superintendent Ken Witt received two emails from the CDE about this back on April 27th (email 1, email 2). Here’s what Witt received:

Good morning,


On behalf of Commissioner Anthes, I am pleased to invite you to participate in CDE’s School and District Awards Ceremony on Thursday, May 18 from 2:00-4:30 p.m. to recognize the achievements of your district from 2022!


The award designations for 2022 were noted on School Performance Frameworks, and our Competitive Grants and Awards team will be reaching out to you following this email with a list of your award recipients.


We are hoping that you can attend the awards ceremony and reception and look forward to hearing from you. Knowing that it is a very busy time of year, we will also be delivering award banners and certificates to districts who are unable to attend. Attached you will find an invitation with event details including how to RSVP.


Kindest regards and congratulations,
Rhonda Haniford

source

Not only was our district a no-show at the awards ceremony, but I’ve heard nothing about any of the promised award banners and certificates. It’s not clear why the board and superintendent are handling this the way they are.

Outgoing principal placed on leave, gag order issued

A CORA request has revealed that retiring Gateway Elementary superintendent Ashley Lawson was placed on administrative leave (with pay) on June 8th. While no cause was given, the email did say it was NOT disciplinary action. Her access to email and voicemail was suspended, and her access to ‘district or school grounds’ was restricted to ‘by appointment’. She was also prohibited from contacting any students, parents, or personnel involved with the district, via any ‘medium of communication’. Lots to digest there, but at a minimum…does the district really have the right to prohibit an employee from speaking to people like that?

How to email your board members and superintendent (how to avoid email censoring)

The WPSD board and superintendent have put limits on freedom of speech for voters in this district. If a voter wants to speak up at a public board meeting, they may or may not get a chance, as total public comment period is limited to 30 minutes max, and names are drawn at random. If someone doesn’t get selected they’re encouraged to email the board instead, but did you know the board applies a filter to incoming emails? If your email contains one of the ‘Blocked Words’, it will be bounced back to you and the board will never see it (same goes for emails to the superintendent.

If you’d like to call Witt a ‘turd’, well, that’s not allowed. Want to call Illingworth a ‘prick’? Not allowed. All sorts of classic mild profanity is included in the list, which thanks to CORA, the public can now peruse…click ‘more’ to see the list at the end of this post (unlike them, I DO believe in freedom of speech).

Read more: How to email your board members and superintendent (how to avoid email censoring) Continue reading →

Various tidbits from a recent CORA request

…modeling professionalism is important, and blue or green hair is not a good model for success in today’s workplace, if we wish leadership opportunity for our students.

Ken Witt, in reference to a new staff policy requiring only natural hair hues.

So does this mean purple hair is OK?

Here’s some insight into the hiring process:

I appreciate the chance to review our top two candidates for the open HS math position. Both seem reasonable candidates. However, Mr Hornbeck-Kaiser, having an exemplary education background as a long-time Colorado rural teacher, likely has a lot more commitment to this area than a Texas transplant. Let’s go with Mr Hornbeck-Kaiser, unless a superior Colorado HS Math teacher has presented him/herself.

Ken Witt, intervening into the hiring process in the High School

In March, Ken Witt signed an updated contract for his other job, Executive Director at ERBOCES, reducing his salary from $155,000 to $112,750 – presumably because he’s not working there full-time. There has been no modification to his contract with WPSD, apart from the one year extension.

We were tipped off to one interesting fact about the flag that Witt used $600 of district money to frame (Witt owns this flag personally and it’s just on loan to the district). It’s a design that was never made an official US flag, having only 42 stars. With the star count being made ‘official’ on July 4th each year, this flag was never an official US flag as our 43rd state, Idaho, received statehood on July 3rd, 1890. Given that Witt is more of an engineer than an educator, his fascination with this 42 star flag may have more to do with the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference, or just a love of the asterisk, than any concern about historical merit.