On Wednesday, the board interviewed three candidates for the vacant board seat. The video here is David Illingworth’s question, which he thinks is connected to the book “Between the World and Me” but really seems unrelated (I don’t think he actually read that book). This is the book that was removed (banned) from a high school class recently (read more about that here).
The board selected Mick Bates, the second person to be interviewed.
This board meeting was more of the boards usual shitshow. You can read KRDO’s coverage here, or watch it for yourself at the link below.
The budget discussion seemed to have some good news about revenue, but we’ll need to dive into that more later.
The board approved Witt’s proposed policy changes that would allow the district to bring on new charter schools at any time of year, instead of following the state schedule around fall applications. They skipped the (legally required?) second reading of the policy and just jumped to the vote, eager to get on to interviews for the board seat vacancy!
Out of the list of applicants, the board selected three candidates and interviewed them one at a time in this meeting. Each was asked the same questions. The candidate they chose, Mick Bates, had some polarizing answers to the questions. Watch it for yourself below (he’s the second candidate to be interviewed). And stay tuned here as we explore his words and background further.
After the shitshow that was the 12/21/22 board meeting, this one proved only slightly calmer (link to agenda). Though the police were called to this one when one audience member spoke up and refused to leave. Tensions were high leading up to this…not only was it going to be Witt’s first appearance as the new interim superintended, but he was going to presenting some unknown policy changes (first reading, not a vote). Also, the board was going to take action on a “Social Studies Academic Standard Resolution” to be read by board director Sue Patterson. What resolution, you say? We didn’t know, that’s all the info we had and there had been no discussion leading up to this.
So, prior to the meeting, we reached out to Patterson and Rusterholtz, asking if they could share any information about that resolution. They didn’t reply, but the board secretary did, sending us the name of the standard and a link to it – it’s the American Birthright standard. We turned to Google to educate us further…and wow, did we find a lot! But we’ll write up something different about that. Needless to say, people kinda freaked out that this might be adopted in our district, and attendance at the meeting was high.
– Some great speeches in the public comments! Listen to this, it’s actually pretty short as the board cut the allotted time to 3 minutes per speaker.
– Some minor policy changes proposed, including one making it sound like the agenda wouldn’t have to be written by the superintendent and/or board president (we’ll need to read the exact words on this one).
– Some BIG policy changes proposed by Witt around charter school process. Not sure why they care when they didn’t follow district process with Merit Academy? But what they are proposing now would allow charter schools to apply at any time of year (previously just fall) as long as the superintendent was OK with it. I expect we’ll get a new charter school before the end of the school year.
– As expected, the board voted to adopt the American Birthright standard, which does not align with Colorado standards and was rejected by the Colorado Board of Education last fall. But more on that in the coming days!
Here’s the video:
The district has signed a contract with Merit Academy, and is currently working on a Facilities Usage Agreement (FUA) to give them the space they wanted in the Middle School. The contract was voted on in their 5/19 meeting (link to video); this followed their 5/18 “town hall” meeting (link to video) to take public comment…none of which led to any changes in the contract later adopted. As expected, the board ignored the process laid out in Colorado charter school law and even the district’s own website. They also never did have a clean vote on the MOU that was supposedly the foundation for this action…the preliminary injunction had found the original vote to be in violation of the Open Meetings Law, and the subsequent two ‘re-votes’ to be rubber-stamping which is also not allowed (link).
For the Facilities Usage Agreement (FUA), the board posted the draft Friday evening before Memorial Day weekend, with all public feedback required by Monday evening of that same holiday weekend. Thereby establishing that FUA also stands for, “Fuck U All” and showing that they really didn’t want public feedback. On Wednesday June 1st, the board met to ‘review’ to that feedback (link to video), and promptly instruct the Superintendent to proceed with the FUA with Merit without any changes to what was posted the prior week.
The district’s own financial analysis (link) of Merit was concerning, with their conclusion being:
A compressed analysis window, inconsistent financial reporting, and the lack of
a full-year of Merit Academy’s operational existence make thorough fiscal
analysis for adding a charter school to the Woodland Park School District
difficult. Much of the information included in this summary is based on projected
or estimated data and may be dramatically impacted by a host of variables
including changing economic, demographic and political circumstances. A more
effective analysis will be possible after a fiscal audit by a contracted, external
auditor.
Despite those financial concerns, the board granted Merit a significant portion of the sales tax revenue received by the school, something the law does not require. A more conservative board would have at least tied that sales tax money to specific milestones Merit must achieve, such as a satisfactory financial audit. But then, this board is all about doing what’s best for Merit, not the public schools.
In a giant ‘fuck you’ to the taxpayers of this district awaiting a chance to voice their opinions on the Merit Academy contract in tonight’s special board meeting created for that purpose, the school board has gone ahead and posted a FINAL version of the Merit contract to the district website and scheduled a meeting for tomorrow at 6:00 (agenda) to vote to approve it (they also posted an approval resolution which they’ll be voting on). They have no intention of listening to public feedback nor making any changes to their contract based upon that feedback. This is all a circus show (maybe ‘shitshow’ would be a better description).
It’s worth showing up at tonight’s school board meeting, 6:00 (agenda) in the auditorium, and let the board know what you think about this corrupt, unethical process.
Both meetings will be livestreamed and the link for that is in the agendas.
The board has rescheduled their next meeting, originally scheduled for May 11th and rescheduled to May 18th. This is planned to be a town hall format to discuss the Merit Academy contract (which has not been released yet). They’re tentatively planning to approve a lease for Merit to use the Middle School on May 25th per the timeline.
They plan to tour Gateway Elementary this Friday at noon (agenda).
The Feasibility Study Presentation to be shown at tonight’s board work session can be downloaded here.
Points of note:
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.
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.
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.