In the 1/17/2024 board meeting, which you can watch below, the Woodland Park school board voted to renew Ken Witt’s contract as superintendent. The board did not disclose the duration of the new contract, nor did they describe what changes were made to the contract (a CORA request is pending to obtain that information). Nor did the board discuss Ken Witt’s job performance or even whether he’d be a good choice for superintendent.
In April, we saw Charis students mobilized to pack the board room, shutting out about 100 people from attending. After last Thursday’s teacher protest letter, we all expected this to be a crowded meeting, but weren’t sure if the Charis Factor would come into play. Well, it did. This time, about 40 people were locked out when the meeting hit its 90 person capacity.
Many parents and teachers pleaded with board members the last few days to move tonight’s meeting to the auditorium or middle school commons area, both of which had been used in the past. No luck though…the board did not want a large crowd for their meeting so kept it in the district office.
Before the meeting started, board member Mick Bates did come out briefly and talked with one parent, who was able to get in when someone else inside graciously traded places. The rest of us were left outside, but hey, at least it wasn’t raining this time like it was last April.
Board Director David Illingworth II, up for reelection this fall, submitted this letter to the editor in the Courier…let’s do some fact checking:
Many have complained about not enough space at the May 10 Board of Education meeting (in fact my own wife was unable to get in). These complaints are either misinformed or misleading.
First, the overwhelming majority of our meetings are held in that meeting space, and it is exceptionally rare that there is not enough room for everyone. We can’t know when that will happen, but we do know that there was very heavy attendance at this meeting due to the presence of NBC News and the coordination and organizing by well-known local activists whose goal was to swamp the meeting and get on TV. They were there for the cameras and the attention, not the schools or the students.
Second, we cannot change the fire code or the weather. Everyone who could not get into the meeting room was offered the chance to watch the meeting from the WPHS auditorium, rather than stand in the rain. They all declined and decided, of their own free will, to stay outside and shout where the TV cameras just happened to be.
Finally, everyone was able to sign up for public comment, and many of those who addressed the BOE that night were escorted in from outside, so they had the same opportunities as those who had arrived earlier.
Let’s be clear: anyone who stood in the rain did so of their own choice after refusing staff offers to come inside WPHS where it was warm and dry. No one was denied the opportunity for shelter or to publicly address the BOE.
I don’t think we can quantify whether it’s ‘exceptionally rare that there is not enough room for everyone’, but the board commonly opened up an overflow area outside of the main conference room for those occurrences. At other times, they held the board meetings in either the high school auditorium, or the middle school commons area, to accommodate larger crowds.
Both the pro-board side, and the anti-board side, encouraged heavy attendance by their respective followers. The board had no reason to expect that a 90 person room would provide sufficient space for everyone, not when all indications were that turnout at this meeting would be extraordinary.
No one was offered a chance to watch the meeting from the auditorium. Towards the end of the public comment portion, I was offered a chance to take shelter in the commons area (not the auditorium), with no promise of any livestream in there.
The NBC TV camera was inside the conference room, not outside as he claims. A local TV reporter had her camera outside.
He claims ‘no one was denied the opportunity for shelter or to publicly address the BOE.’ That second part is false. The BOE cut public comment off at 30 minutes as has been their custom for a while now. Not everyone who signed up to publicly address the BOE was given that opportunity. Further, they were asked to wait outside in the rain to see if their name would be called (the commons area wasn’t opened up as shelter until public comment was almost over).
What about the claims that fire code meant they couldn’t open up the overflow area? We have not found any evidence to support that claim. Yes, the main conference room has a 90 person capacity limit sign posted, and that seems reasonable for that size of a space. However, our inspection of the overflow area revealed no posted capacity signs. A CORA request (#446) requested the fire department documents listing the maximum occupancy for those rooms:
I am requesting the official Fire Department documents listing the maximum occupancy for the WPSD District Office, the Distric Office Large Conference room and the two district office rooms that have traditionally been used to accommodate overflow for the WPSD BOE meetings.
This was met with the district’s response of, “There are no responsive documents to this request.”
Not only did the BOE recruit Charis students to pack the conference room, but they encouraged those students to show up early – an hour ahead of time, the line was already long enough that those showing up after did not get in to the building. As evidenced by audience reactions during the meeting, the room was clearly packed with BOE supporters. The BOE knew there would be a large crowd, did not choose to move the meeting to a larger space, and took steps to actually reduce the number of people that would be allowed to attend the meeting (when compared to previous meetings).
The May 10th Woodland Park RE-2 school board meeting was absolutely crazy. With schools earlier being on ‘shelter in place’ status due to a tornado warning (later downgraded to a tornado watch), a record crowd still turned up for this meeting. An hour ahead of the meeting’s 6PM start time, there was already an estimated 90 people in line (doors typically open 30 minutes prior)! I showed up just after 5:00, found some friends, and we very quickly ascertained what was going on. The common thread with the people we saw and talked to was a connection with Charis Bible school. We all gathered in a huge line, waiting in the rain for the doors to open.
But I need to take a step back…why the fuss? We knew that in this meeting, the board would vote to extend Ken Witt’s contract for another year, and change his job title from Interim Superintendent to Superintendent. The crowd was not there for that though…the board had caught wind that NBC Nightly News was sending a camera and crew to cover this meeting. A Fox21 reporter was told that a board member had told the Charis students to come (by the time of the meeting, I’d estimate about 200 people had showed up). That NBC camera crew was joined by cameras and reporters from two local TV stations, KOAA and Fox21 (follow those links for their stories of the evening).
What followed was…unprecedented for this small town.
So, the board knew to expect a crowd. The main conference room, the planned location for this meeting, had a 90 person capacity. In the past, they’d often open up overflow rooms, other conference rooms in the same office, where those people watched the livestream on TV. Larger past meetings have been held in the Middle School commons room, or the High School auditorium (which is the building adjoining the district offices hosting this meeting).
Given the anticipated record crowd, what would you expect the WPSD RE-2 board of education to do? This board chose to handle that crowd by, for the first time ever, reducing capacity and limiting participation to only the 90 people that could fit in the main conference room. Once those people had entered the building, the doors were locked with around a hundred people waiting outside in the rain.
While refusing to open the overflow rooms, move to the adjacent auditorium, or even reschedule the meeting, the board allowed people outside to sign up for public comment, though those people still had to wait outside to see if their names would be called (this board chose to limit public comment to 3 minutes per person which is fine, but only 30 minutes total, so typically a LOT of people do not get a chance to speak). Sometime around the middle of public comment, the board opened the doors to the high school for people who wanted to seek shelter from the rain in there (it’s still not clear why we couldn’t enter one of the vacant other conference rooms in the district office).
The meeting moved into executive session at the end; this is done in private and most of the audience shuffled out. At that point, myself and other parents were able to escape the rain and go inside to await the board’s return from executive session (they need to return to the conference room to officially adjourn the meeting). We had the chance for a brief interaction with board president Rusterholtz after the meeting (the others all fled immediately after the meeting was adjourned, none of them would talk to us).
The board put on a show for the cameras…rants about socialism, capitalism, prayer, guns, etc. They passed a resolution about economic freedom, and of course approved Witt’s contract.
At the 26:55 mark, you can hear Rusterholtz ask Kelly how many people signed up, she said 30 had. 9 were given the chance to speak and be heard.
Last Thursday, ten public school supporters spoke up in the public comment period of the Woodland Park, Colorado city council meeting. They did a fantastic job of explaining many of the community’s concerns about this school board and interim superintendent. Check out the video below:
If you missed the 4/12/2023 school board meeting, you can watch it here:
Highlights:
There was some interesting public comment (including a reference to the ‘rich and powerful teachers unions’, LOL), though only a handful of those who signed up actually got to speak, due to the board limiting public comment to 30 minutes total.
The board included an amendment to Merit Academy’s contract in the consent agenda. The public was not informed of the content of this amendment until the district sent an email out on 4/14 stating, “The board also approved the Merit contract amendment to eliminate charter school liaison charges.” This amendment was not discussed nor read in the 4/12 meeting.
The board announced a $1500 retention bonus for teachers, and approved a resolution declaring May 8-12 Teacher Appreciation Week. It’s nice to see them mirroring the declaration of the National PTA group.
Witt gave a few updates on the transition of sixth grade to elementary schools, though they still haven’t worked out all the details.
Interim Superintendent Witt talked briefly about the Academic Achievement report previously shown to the DAC. He didn’t show any slides in this meeting; if you want to view the report you can see it here.
The board hired Amy Ryan as CFO, and Bill Phalen was promoted to be the new Middle School principal for next year.
There were two professional photographers taking pictures at the meeting, and more than one reporter observed in the room.
Our board has traditionally ignored and violated their own governing policies, but seems intent now on instead of violating policy, changing it to align with what they’re going to do anyway. The latest policy under examination is GP-5. Proposed changes are to the first sentence of the policy, which currently reads:
Board members must represent the interests of the citizens of the entire school District.
In the last board meeting on 2/8/23, Witt did a first reading of the proposed change, which he suggested should read:
Board members must represent the educational interests of the students and families as first priority, as well as the citizens of the entire school District.
We expected the board to do their second reading, and vote, on this policy change in the 3/8/23 meeting (as stated in the agenda). Instead, David Illingworth offered forth a different proposal for GP-5:
Board members must represent the interests of the citizens of the entire school District, while always recognizing that the district exists solely to educate children and that parents retain a fundamental constitutional right to direct their children’s education.
Anyone reading the posted agenda would have expected a second reading of the policy change proposed by Witt in the last meeting. The fact that no board members appeared surprised (there was zero discussion on it when prompted by President Rusterholtz) by this change of plans does further suggest more discussion is happening outside of the public eye.
This policy change furthers the stated focus of the board to be academics only. The board is intent on cutting all Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs and denying any grants (and thus calling into question continuance of any programs/classes funded by those grants). It remains to be seen how the board will view art, music, and athletic programs.
Here’s a video clip of just the public comment from the 3/8/23 school board meeting in Woodland Park:
If you missed Nate’s public comment during executive session, it’s at the end of the video above, or you can watch just that one speech in the clip below:
Once again, strong public turnout led to an overflow room being opened up. When will the school board recognize they need to have this meetings in the auditorium instead?
Public speaking this time had a strong religious showing, with much prayer. We are making an impact, and Charis (presumably) is worried.
For GP-5, the board proposed a DIFFERENT change to GP-5 than what they read the first time. So, this is a first reading of the new edit. Previously, minor changes to the first sentence. Now, Illingworth proposes it to read, “board members must represent the interests of the citizens of the entire school district while always recognizing that the district exists solely to educate children and that parents retain a fundamental constitutional right to direct their children’s education.” Setting things up to further eliminate any sort of Social Emotional Learning programs from our district.
GP-9 change – would allow for the vote to happen in the same meeting as the second reading of a proposed policy change. This was a first reading of that change, not a vote.
Redistricting – will not affect the boundaries for what school each student attends. For the April meeting, two redrawing district maps will be presented. Three priorities: roughly equal population in each district. two, well consolidated district boundaries that reflect current geographic clusters. Three, preservation of current director resident districts. Brad Miller will be creating the maps (per Rusterholtz).
Next board meeting is March 22nd! It’s a ‘work session’, so no public comment period.
Video link is below. After they go to executive session, the camera keeps rolling, skip ahead to 1:36 for some additional public comment.
The public comments in the 2/8 meeting were really inspiring and worth watching…you can view this segment below. Lots of new voices at this meeting and some great speeches, word really is spreading.
In the meeting itself, Witt proposed a change to GP-5, to change from:
Board must represent the interests of the citizens of the entire school District
To:
Board must represent the educational interests of the students and their families as first priority, as well as thecitizens of the entire school District
This change is expected to come into play with any decisions regarding social issues with students (LGBTQ+, etc) – we expect less tolerance for anything like that (especially after Illingworth’s questions in the 1/25 meeting!). We have CORA requests open to learn more about what discussions may be going on behind the scenes. This was a FIRST READING of this policy, so has not yet been enacted. Be sure to email board members if you have concerns about this (see the district contact info page).
The board also voted to modify the district calendar for next year…I expect they’ll publish that soon.
