The three challengers – Seth Bryan, Keegan Barkley, and Mike Knott – held a fundraiser event in Memorial Part Saturday, with free hot dogs and an opportunity to talk to them each one on one. Somewhere around 200 people showed up and the hot dogs from the Woodland Butcher Block were amazing!
In their July 6th meeting, the Woodland Park City Council recognized an award Gateway Elementary recently received, an award that the district had not publicized in a timely manner. The news first broke here of Gateway Elementary’s receipt of the Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award (the district followed up later with a press release of their own). This award was based on the 2022 CMAS state assessment for excellence in student growth over the previous three years.
In the public comment period, former district employee Miles Tuttle talked about Gateway’s accomplishment.
Holly Sample talked about Gateway’s award, as well as mentioning the record high SAT scores at our high school. As she mentioned, these awards represented success across the entire system and was years in the making. She pointed out how most of the people responsible for Gateway’s success have left the district, as well as mentioning turnover at the High School and district levels.
Carol Greenstreet read a letter from Benjamin Honeycutt, a middle school teacher who left at the end of this past school year. She went on to talk about the timeline of the Gateway award and how the district kept employees uninformed of the award they had won. She talked about how teachers are being talked about by the community.
You can watch the video of this portion of the meeting below:
We saw the 2021 Woodland Park school board elections bring politics to a school board election with the ‘conservative choice’ candidates winning in November. Now in our 2023 election cycle, the partisanship of the board incumbents is only increasing. At the July 4th celebration in Memorial Park, board members were seen hanging out in the Teller County Republicans’ booth:
Next up for this overtly-conservative group of incumbents is this Saturday’s “Teller County Republicans Big Tent Event” at the Cultural Center. The event page proudly advertises that the three board incumbents will be present (Illingworth, Bates, Kimbrell).
On the other hand, the three school board challengers (Knott, Bryant, Barkley) are so far avoiding any outward political affiliation.
One uncertain thing about this Saturday’s event is whether all three candidates will actually be present at the same time. Doing so would constitute a quorum and thus require the meeting to be open to the public at no charge (cost is otherwise $50 in advance or $60 at the door).
I read one perspective, that “The goal of having nonpartisan elections is not to remove all politics from governing but to remove a conflict point that keeps a school board from doing its job” (source). I would blame policies, not politics, for the conflict this board has experienced since taking office, but in general, it seems like a wise move to reduce the impact of politics in school boards, not encourage and increase it.
The May 10th board meeting, as previously reported on here (and also on NBC), was more than a bit chaotic, with unprecedented turnout and around half the attendees being shut out in the rain. While we knew there was a huge number of Charis Bible College students in attendance, the reason for their sudden interest was unproven. One student told a local TV reporter a board member had told them to appear. We don’t know whether that’s true, but we do know that earlier that day, Charis founder Andrew Wommack, Charis executive director Richard Harris, and WPSD DAC member Aaron Helstrom appeared on a Truth and Liberty Broadcast appealing to their followers to show up at that board meeting. You can watch that in the video clip below.
At the end of this video. Wommack talks about a ‘swatting’ incident; be aware that most of what he says is incorrect (it wasn’t ‘swatting’, it wasn’t a board member, it wasn’t at Walmart, etc). The actual facts of that incident should become apparent after the trial (for the person who made the 911 call) in early July.
The Woodland Park School District announced achievements by two of its schools.
According to the district, Woodland Park High School earned the Marzano High Reliability Schools Level 1 certification, which recognizes a commitment to establishing a “safe, supportive and collaborative culture” as the foundation for student success.
“By addressing and evaluating day-to-day school operations, WPHS ensures a keen focus on student achievement,” the district said in a press releasse.
The Marzano HRS program uses a research-based five-level hierarchy along with other indicators to transform schools into proactive organizations prioritizing student success.
“By utilizing the HRS framework and indicators, WPHS can achieve sustained, positive, and significant impacts on student achievement,” said the district.
Ther district also said the Class of 2024 at WPHS set an all-time high SAT mean score of 1022, surpassing both state and national averages by 33 and 67 points, respectively.
The Class of ’24’s SAT math mean score of 496 falls just four points short of meeting the Colorado Benchmark for Career and College Readiness (CACR), comparatively, the state mean score falls 16 points lower than the CACR benchmark.
Their Evidence Based Reading and Writing (EBRW) mean score of 525 exceeds the Colorado Benchmark for CACR by 55 points. These achievements underscore WPHS’s commitment to providing a well-rounded education that prepares students for success in all areas.
Only 22% of students met college board benchmark expectations in 2017, while the class of 2024 now boasts 68% meeting EBRW benchmarks and 44% meeting Math benchmarks.
“WPHS has witnessed a significant shift in student outcomes over the years,” the district said. “These percentages surpass state and national averages, showcasing the commitment of teachers and administrators across the district in fostering academic growth and ensuring the success of WPHS students.”
Gateway Elementary wins governor’s award
Gateway Elementary School received the 2022 Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award, recognizing the school’s progress in meeting and exceeding academic growth expectations, as evaluated by the state’s school performance framework.
Earlier this year, Woodland Park banned/removed the book “Between the World and Me” from the classroom. A school district in Chapin, South Carolina has done the same.
Wood’s lesson plan was a part of preparing for Advanced Placement tests and involved watching two videos about systemic racism, reading Coates’ memoir and doing research with a variety of sources. Then, students were meant to write essays on their understanding of the book and make an argument about whether they agreed with Coates that systemic racism is a problem in the U.S.
Crazy that even healthy discussion and debate of sensitive issues is not allowed in conservative-controlled schools.
You can watch the author’s discussion with MSNBC here (shortly after WP banned the book).
In the last board meeting, one of the public comments, by a gentleman named Drew, mentioned the threat that some extremist groups can present to school boards. Moms For Liberty is one such national group that was recently labeled as ‘extremist’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The question whether Moms For Liberty has any influence in Woodland Park could perhaps be put to rest by this tweet from Woodland Park school board director Cassie Kimbrell:
Darcy Schoening is the chair of Moms for Liberty down in Colorado Springs:
I stumbled upon a bit of a surprise today…the CDE’s website shows Gateway Elementary received the Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award for 2022! Congratulations, Gateway! Great job! The press release from the CDE came out on May 18, 2023, and can be read here. As I understand it, this award is given out in the spring for test scores from the previous year (hence it’s listed as 2022).
What’s puzzling is why I find zero mention of this on the district’s website. Here’s their press release section as of today:
Best guess, is that with the press release in May, the district probably found out much sooner than that…I’ll submit a CORA request to try to learn more and will update this post with what I find. We know they’ve been trying to downplay Gateway and even tried handing it off to be operated by a charter school business earlier in 2023. It’d be hard to convince the community to hand off Gateway like that if it was known to be recognized by the Governor for its accomplishments.
There’s an ongoing court case in Douglas County, alleging the board violating open meetings laws by discussing the firing of their superintendent in private one on one discussions. This had previous been a gray area of Open Meetings Law…seeming to violate the spirit of the law while not actually being prevented by the law. This latest case though might be setting legal precedent in this area, as a Judge is ruling one on one discussions is a violating, saying “Circumventing the statute by a series of private one-on-one meetings at which public business is discussed and/or decisions reached is a violation of the purpose of the statute, not just its spirit.”
Interim Superintendent Ken Witt even admitted that he has one on one and one on two meetings with board members, though there’s never been any doubt prior that this is what the board was doing. Maybe the best documented case was their total lack of deliberation when deciding upon a new board member to replace a vacant seat.
With the law still not black and white in this matter, it doesn’t mean we can expect any change in WPSD’s board behavior. But hopefully it’ll lead to clarification of the law and improved government transparency statewide.
As school districts grapple with teacher shortages, NBC News’ Antonia Hylton takes us to a Texas town where frustrations over banned books, restrictions on race and identity lessons have contributed to a 40 percent increase in staff resignations and retirements.
— Read on www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/politics-and-education-clash-as-texas-district-sees-teachers-leave-182508101519
The turmoil in WPSD is happening elsewhere, too. Watch this story about events in a Texas school district.