Category Archives: CORA requests

Is Ken Witt qualified to be superintendent?

On May 10th, the board unanimously voted to extend the contract of Interim Superintendent Ken Witt by one year and remove the ‘interim’ from his job title. Is he qualified? Let’s review the original job posting from November and see where Witt stacks up.

The following qualifications have been identified by the Board of Education to be of particular importance:

  • Excel in communication with District Stakeholders
    • Grade: F. Parents report lack of email replies, and an inability to schedule in-person discussions. I’ve also had zero luck getting an answer from him in person before or after school board meetings. He didn’t even stick around after the last board meeting to talk to stakeholders present in the room.
  • Exceptional executive skills with experience in building effective relationships
    • Grade: F. He has not demonstrated an ability to build effective relationships with staff. Quite the contrary.
  • Ability to work with leadership team to execute strategic plan
    • Grade: A. He’s working very closely with the WPSD board to execute their plan.
  • Inspire a culture of greatness, innovation, and growth throughout the district
    • Grade: D. He avoids an ‘F’ on this one due to his (failed) attempt to get Third Future Schools to take over Gateway Elementary, I’d call that innovative (though not a ‘culture’ of innovation).
  • Courageous in making tough decisions for the district
    • Grade: C. He has absolutely made tough decisions for the district (like moving sixth grade out of the Middle School), but should we really be calling that ‘courageous’ instead of stupid? “A courageous person knows the possible danger and acts anyway. A stupid person, on the other hand, has no knowledge of the consequences and thus feels no fear in action” (quote citation).
  • Knowledgeable of Colorado school finance, law, and assessment
  • Straightforward, genuine, enthusiastic, energetic
    • Grade: F.
  • Ability to cultivate a positive and motivated work force
    • Grade: F. Can I give him an F-? 40-50% of district staff are leaving this year. I suppose one could argue he motivated them…to leave!
  • Student-focused
    • Grade: F. Eleven high school juniors were inducted into the National Honors Society…Witt was not there to congratulate them. I don’t believe Witt has ever been sighted at any after-hours school event.
  • Sound financial skills
    • Grade: C. He’s siphoning money from our traditional public schools to the charter school…he understands the finance side enough to accomplish his goals of undermining traditional public education.
  • Ethical
    • Grade: F. Where do I start?!
  • Prior superintendent/assistant superintendent or comparable administrative experience preferred
    • Grade: C. he has a bit of administrative experience from his executive director role of ERBOCES, where he still works today.

It’s not clear by what criteria the board was judging Witt, as a CORA request for evaluation results yielded no records.

The cost of PACE membership

As previously reported here, next year the district will auto-enroll staff into  the Professional Association of Colorado Educators (PACE). PACE is a state chapter of the Association of American Educators (AAE); referred to by some as the ‘anti-union union’.

New details obtained via the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) shed some more light on this topic. This will be costing our district approximately $40,000. The discussions with PACE took place before contracts were sent out to staff, but the announcement was made after those contacts were sent. It’s possible (likely?) that contracts may have been signed and returned before the announcement was made.

Yet another large expenditure of taxpayer money made behind closed doors and without stakeholder input.

Transportation Cost Sharing – part 2

My first stab at writing about this topic ended up being a bit long – read it here – so I thought I’d try to do a better job of summarizing this (see that link for source material for data here)

Transportation Costs in Woodland Park RE-2 School District – ’22-23 school year

  • Expenses
    • $1,563,177
  • Source of funds to cover expenses
    • Carryover fund balance from RE-2 previous year: $104,758
    • Transportation fees collected from parents: $20,000 ($50 per kid)
    • State Reimbursement: $235,000
    • Grants: $1,000
    • Money to be used from RE-2 General Fund: $1,202,419

The point here is, the bulk of the money comes from the RE-2 General Fund – and Merit Academy is not being required to share that portion of the cost when they participate in this program next year.

Transportation costs in the Woodland Park School District RE-2

I think we all love the idea of students from Merit Academy being able to take the bus to school…I’ve heard zero complaints about that. The question though, is money. Are Merit kids being asked to pay the same amount as kids in the public schools (or as the board likes to say ‘traditional public schools’)? Is our school board and interim superintendent treating all students fairly? The answer, I believe, is a resounding ‘no’.

To participate in the bus transportation to/from schools, parents pay $50 per child, or a maximum of $100 per family. The district’s signed agreement with Merit Academy, from April 12, 2023, ensures that all parents of all schools abide by these same guidelines, which seems fair on the surface. Perhaps some people view $50 as too high, but the district found in the past that if a nominal fee weren’t charged, many parents would sign up with a ‘just in case’ or ‘why not’ attitude, which resulted in challenges to determine actual capacity and routes required.

Let’s look at what the district has budgeted for transportation expenses in the current ’22-23 school year. If you pour through our ’22-23 budget, you’ll find the board has allocated $1,202,419 from the General Fund, $1,000 from the Grants fund, and $359,758 from the Transportation Fund, for a total Transportation Budget for ’22-23 of $1,563,177. Of that money, they budget for only $20,000 to come from the fees paid by parents (that $50 fee mentioned above). $235,000 is expected to come from the State as a reimbursement (I believe, but am not certain, that this is due to the rural nature of our district). With the 1676 student enrollment in our (traditional) public schools, that works out to $779.94 per student ($1,202,419 from General Fund and $104,758 from current fund balance), being used to cover transportation costs in the district in the ’22-23 school year.

The board put in place an agreement with Merit where Merit students pay $50 if they want to use the service, $0 if they don’t – there is no cost sharing beyond that $50 fee. The students in the (traditional) public schools will be paying $829.94 if they opt in to the bus service, $779.94 if they don’t use the service (due to money being taken out of their General Fund to pay for the transportation costs). Of course, this money doesn’t come directly from the students – but it is money from the general fund that could otherwise be used to fund teachers or counselors in the public schools.

If the board were to split costs equally amongst all students, that would equate to $651.31 per pupil in base fees coming out of each school’s General Fund, plus the $50 for each kid who opts in. To look at it another way, if the district split the base transportation cost based on enrollment numbers at each school, that would result in $215,583.25 more money in the General Fund for the (traditional) public schools, money which could be used to pay for some of the lost counseling/social worker positions.

I recognize this is an approximation – precise costs for the ’23-24 school year would require us to know:

  • Actual costs of Durham services, which per contract can increase 2.5-4% per year
  • Actual enrollment in all schools
  • Number of parents from each school participating (this will impact the $20,000 revenue estimate)
  • State reimbursement ($235,000 for the current school year)
  • Costs of transportation of field trips (which should not be a shared expense)

So keep that in mind…but when we’re comparing $779.94 to zero, those details are just noise, lost in the bigger picture here. The issue here is the foundation of this cost sharing agreement and the inequity it imposes upon the students in this district.

Why did the Woodland Park School Board not ask Merit Academy to share in the transportation expenses? Merit is funded on a per-pupil basis just like the district public schools…why is the board asking our public schools to subsidize transportation costs for Merit Academy? This isn’t fair to the public school children, and isn’t fair to Merit Academy as it might make them look bad when this is the WPSD board’s decision, not theirs.

(if you notice any errors with my math, please reach out to me using the Contact form)

Merit Academy not paying for transportation services

UPDATE – it’s been pointed out to me that there may yet be an agreement written to split costs (a Merit board member says there will be one at some point).

——————-

The district made a big deal about expansion of transportation services to Merit Academy students, and emphasized that it would not add any cost to the district. What they failed to mention is that Merit Academy isn’t paying anything themselves for this service (apart from, presumably, the $50 per kid per year fee parents pay for this service) – the money is coming out of funds used to educate the children of the transitional public schools alone. This was evident in a CORA request I just received results for. The actual text of the CORA request was:

Please provide the district’s contract with Durham bus services for the following school years: 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024. Please also provide the contract, amendment, or other agreement(s) with Merit Academy covering their use of transportation services through Durham Bus Services.

source

I did receive the contract with Durham, and one amendment to that contract. But that’s it, no written agreement between the district and Merit. When I inquired as to whether that was omitted in error, this was the reply:

All documents responsive to this request were provided.

The relevant section from the Merit Academy charter contract is section 5.2, as follows:

5.2. Transportation. The District and the School acknowledge and agree that transportation will not be provided by the District to students attending the School unless otherwise mutually agreed in writing. Any transportation of students to the School shall be the sole responsibility of the School, with all costs borne by the School. The School and the District agree to meet on an annual basis to discuss how the Parties might collaborate to provide transportation options for students of the School.

source

So, Merit kids get a free ride…the public school kids pay for the busses, leaving Merit kids with more money per pupil to be used for educational purposes. Let’s hope the board decides to instead enact an agreement that fairly splits costs…a board director has told me that no written agreement is needed for this transportation issue, but I’m hoping that’s not the final word.

I’ve asked for recent invoices from Durham so we can put some exact numbers on this…but with the Durham costs being fixed, the fewer the kids paying for it, the more each kid pays. For example, if you and three friends eat out and need to split a $100 bill, that’s $25 per person. But if one of those people doesn’t contribute, each of the remaining people have to pay $33.33. That’s the situation here…the bus bill is not being split equally amongst all the students covered by it. Parents do pay $50 per child to participate in this service, but that only covers a small fraction of the actual costs.

WPSD Academic Achievement Update (March 2023)

In the March DAC meeting, a presentation was given showing the WPSD academic achievement. It took the district eight days to finally send it to me (the legal limit under CORA is three days for a single document); you can view it below.

Some of the highlights:

  • High School PSAT/SAT Achievement Gains
  • Achievement for 8th Grade Math & Reading (16% and 19% over state proficiency)
  • Growth for 5th Grade Math at Gateway Elementary (73% tile)
  • Graduation Rate for Student with Disabilities (95%)

Well done, WPSD!

Check out the full report here.

Detailed information on the effect of refusing grant money this year

The school board and interim superintendent Ken Witt chose not to apply for most grants for the upcoming school year. We’ve struggled a bit to really and truly quantify what this means for the district…how to translate grants into job positions and benefits for the students. Thanks to the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA), we’ve learned quite a bit. There are some outstanding CORA requests for more information, but for now, here’s what we’ve learned.

  • the grants received by the district for the ‘21-22 school year;
  • here’s the ‘22-23 school year info. Note the ‘ESSER’ grants are what’s often referred to as Covid money…temporary federal grants that are going away this fall.
  • Here’s a conversation via email about what grant topics are to be pursued for next year.

The real treasure trove of useful facts though, comes from an email exchange between Ken Witt and Laura Magnuson, the district mental health supervisor and a co-author of the mental health presentation given to the board on 12/21. Laura outlines how grants are being used, and later in the email summarizes a discussion she had with Witt on this topic of grants. Read this email for yourself, there is a LOT of information in there, only some of which I’ll be summarizing below.

  • The Substance Abuse Block Grant funded two social work positions and had additional funding for prevention. This grant was up for renewal; it would have been easy to renew this and maintain that funding.
  • The grant money she expected to be lost was about $1.2 million annually, funding fifteen jobs.
  • The School Health Professional Grant currently funds five school social workers (‘with significant additional program funding’).
  • Witt’s approach to mitigation acts of violence is to rely upon campus security, rather than fixing this problem at its source (mental health).
  • When asked how the schools would continue their work to prevent youth suicide, Witt replied that WPSD will prioritize academic success.

Sadly, Laura closed her email by stating her intent to not return to WPSD next year. Her email makes clear her dedication and caring for the students, and the community should be greatly concerned at not only her loss, but the reshaping of our district which has pushed her and others like her out.

Please read her email in its entirety for yourself. It’s our best insight to date on the use of grant money for social programs in the school district, and what we’ll be losing out on next year due to this board and interim superintendent.

BOE and Witt’s modification of Merit contract is invalid

As previously reported here, in February Ken Witt initiated and signed an amendment to to the Merit Academy contract, to shift the cost of hiring a charter liaison from Merit to the District. When BOE President Rusterholtz was asked whether Witt has the authority to do this, this was his reply:

However, page 37 of the District’s contract with Merit says something different, in section 12.2:

There has been no discussion of this amendment in any board meeting.

There has been no vote on this amendment in any board meeting.

Our district attorney provided incorrect legal advice to our board President.

This amendment is invalid.

WPSD Student Mental Health – 12/21 presentation

In December of 2021, Laura Magnuson (WPSD Mental Health Supervisor) and Josh DeSmidt (Restorative Practices Coordinator) gave a presentation to the board titled, “WPSD Student Mental Health.” While it’s a little more than a year old at this point, this report did a fantastic job of outlining some of the grants that the district receives, and exactly how that grant money is spent. There’s been a lot of talk lately about interim superintendent Witt’s policy of rejecting any grant money (due to ‘strings attached’), but I think most of us don’t really understand how that grant money is used. This presentation goes a long ways towards explaining that. As you read it, keep in mind that Witt is declining every grant…the positions and programs outline here will not be funded through grant money and are expected to be cut at the end of this ’22-23 school year.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rDts0w-zbfLH2YAgBoKr-frr7dEfR0Sb/view?usp=share_link