CTR recently obtained an audio recording of Transform Colorado’s July 16 event in Del Norte, where speakers Richard Harris and William Federer encouraged the audience to support their conservative political agenda while indulging in wild conspiracies.
— Read on coloradotimesrecorder.com/2024/07/christian-conspiracy-conference-takes-on-globalists-transgender-people-and-election-fraud/63274/
Category Archives: News
Project 2025’s Plan to Eliminate Public Schools Has Started | TIME
Concerned about shrinking enrollments and budget crises, district leaders conclude that they must close schools, often without any evidence or analysis that it would save money—and, indeed, it hasn’t been shown to save money unless coupled with mass layoffs. They hire consultants who come up with “utilization” rates and then recommend closing schools with the lowest rates to “rightsize” the district—their euphemism for their misguided belief that school facility usage should be guided by arbitrary numbers instead of meeting communities where they are.
— Read on time.com/7001264/project-2025-public-school-closure/
WPSD adopts gender identity name change policy
This spring the State of Colorado passed bill HB24-1039, requiring schools to use their chosen name where it’s different than their legal name but reflects their gender identity. The Woodland Park School District has published policy JT to address this. I question whether this would hold up to legal scrutiny, and suspect the district is actually seeking a legal challenge as they’ve already expressed their opposition to HB24-1039 in a resolution passed earlier this year. The bill text seems to imply the schools need to comply with the students’ chosen names…but the district policy JT-R outlines a procedure requiring parental approval (via form JT-E). Any request must be approved by the school principal, and the final decision lies with the Chief Academic Officer. So it’s not the student’s choice, it is ultimately the parent’s choice.
WPSD gives teachers meager raise, implements performance-based pay scale
After giving Ken Witt a 10% raise this year and a guaranteed 5% minimum raise in following years, the Woodland Park School District announced they were “proud” to announce pay raises for educators ranging from 2-3.4%, with an average pay increase of 2.5%. Read the press release here. This means teacher pay will start at $43,000, which is an improvement but still the lowest in the area:
WPSD has also implemented a performance-based pay scale, a controversial plan that Ken Witt first tried when he was on the school board in Jefferson County many years ago (before getting recalled from that position). This new pay scale gives inexperienced teachers a higher raise than experienced ones, and it’s not clear how they’ll fairly judge each teacher’s performance given the huge variables out of their control. Here’s how the district describes the plan:
Interestingly, the school board never discussed this performance-based pay plan in any public meeting.
Across the nation and in Colorado, partisan cultural battles create blizzard of school-related lawsuits | Education | gazette.com
Not that long ago, public school boards in Colorado struggled to attract any candidates to run for office or be appointed to fill vacated seats. Today, some contenders spend tens
— Read on gazette.com/news/education/across-the-nation-and-in-colorado-partisan-cultural-battles-create-blizzard-of-school-related-lawsuits/article_dac50f66-3578-11ef-ac04-4bab5763adc1.html
ERBOCES restores Ken Witt’s full-time salary, gives him bonus and a raise
Some months after Ken Witt took a ‘full time’ job here in WPSD, his other employer, ERBOCES, cut his salary to reflect the part-time effort he was going to be putting into that. Well, they reversed that in their May 2024 board meeting. Ken Witt’s ERBOCES salary is back to the full base amount, PLUS he gets a 5% cost of living increase, PLUS he gets a 10% bonus. Scroll to the end of the meeting minutes here to read the details for yourself. So now Ken Witt is back to milking the taxpayers for two full-time salaries (ERBOCES executive director, and WPSD superintendent), plus generous benefits and bonuses.
Voters beware: Charter schools are trying to buy Colorado’s Board of Education
Dark money in support of charter schools is infiltrating the race in Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District.
— Read on coloradosun.com/2024/06/24/colorado-education-board-charter-schools-opinion-zornio/
For-Profit Charter Schools Provide an Entryway for Private Investors to Exploit Public Education
For-profit operators and their investors use complex business arrangements and networks of related companies to enrich themselves and do little to improve
— Read on www.pressenza.com/2024/06/for-profit-charter-schools-provide-an-entryway-for-private-investors-to-exploit-public-education/
The charter school concept is flawed…while innovation should be encouraged, we need to keep the money and control in the hands of taxpayers and voters, not corporations. Magnet schools offer one way of doing this.
Transportation cost sharing (again!)
If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know I’ve been hounding the board and Witt about transportation cost sharing for over a year now (read part 1, part 2, and part 3 if you need to get up to speed on this). I believe it’s unfair to not ask Merit Academy to pay a proportionate share of this cost, and when I’ve confronted the board, I’m met with either silence or denial and spin.
I first pointed this out to Witt and the board in May of 2023 both in public comment at a board meeting and via email, but did not receive any constructive feedback. In my email, I said,
“parent fees, mentioned to be $50 per child, only cover approximately 1.3% of the total cost, and this is expected to rise slightly next year. The state contributes around 15% towards the total cost, leaving the remaining burden to be shouldered by the General Fund of the five traditional public schools. Astonishingly, Merit Academy has not been asked to share this cost, which is undeniably unfair.”
In the May 10 board meeting where I talked about this in public comment, the board broke with their own rules and replied to the concerns I had raised, and Witt said,
“…every student and every family in Woodland Park pays the same amount to ride those busses…”…which totally ignored my point about where the bulk of the money for this service was coming from.
We saw this topic come up again in the 6/12/2024 board meeting, when Witt gave the budget presentation to the board (our CFO’s last day was in the weeks prior to this). When talking about transportation, Witt said, “…our transportation costs are fully covered by state reimbursement”, and went on to explain that the transportation fund was for transportation to and from the school, and all activity, extracurricular, and sports transportation costs were covered by fees and the general fund.
The thing is, he’s wrong. As I had pointed out to him back in 2023, the state only provides a small portion of the actual cost of transporting students to and from the school. He’s stuck to his story this whole time, but in the past year, I’d learned much more about school finance and was able to challenge him after the meeting, via email. I was able to point to actual expenses recorded in our General Ledger which showed how some of the monthly charges for transportation were charged to the transportation fund, but the majority was being charged to the General Fund. Further, I was able to show the worksheet used for calculation of the state reimbursement the previous year, which further shows how the state reimburses only a small amount of the actual cost. Faced with these facts, he finally admitted he was wrong, saying “So, simply stated, approximately one third of the to and from school transportation was covered by the state-provided funds (accounted in Fund 25), and two-thirds were not covered by the state-provided funds (accounted in Fund 10). I apologize for the error.” (I think the one-third is high but it’s in the ballpark so no need to dwell on that).
Why does this matter? As enrollment in Merit Academy grows and enrollment in the public schools declines, the per-pupil cost of daily transportation services is increasing, while total revenue into that General Fund decreases (due to declining enrollment). This reduces the money available for teacher salaries, by hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s just another way that Witt and this board are providing preferential treatment to Merit Academy, and sabotaging the other public schools.
Tony May appeal denied, heads to recall election for Re-2 School Board seat | PostIndependent.com
Elsewhere in Colorado today:
Garfield County 9th Judicial Judge Anne Nordin denied Tony May’s appeal to overturn the decision denying his petition on Tuesday. This comes after ongoing legal disputes over a recall effort to remove May from his…
— Read on www.postindependent.com/news/tony-may-appeal-denied-heads-to-recall-election-for-re-2-school-board-seat/