Interim superintendent Witt sent an email to staff and families Friday, saying Third Future Schools no longer intended to submit a charter application. It’s unclear what negotiations had been happening behind the scenes that may have led to this.
Third Future’s Intent to Apply form is now available and can be viewed here. They are proposing to take over Gateway Elementary as a ‘partnership school’; I don’t know what that means. We’ll dig into this all some more. Next board meeting is February 8th.
We are witnessing intimidation of the teacher’s union in Woodland Park, the Woodland Park Education Alliance (WPEA). This started with board director David Illingworth, who wrote (emphasis added is mine):
“If you expect me to play nice with the union, then you don’t know me.”
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This union is openly attempting to organize a coup in our schools using our equipment. They have abused our agreement. Therefore, I expect the board to review that agreement for modification or termination.
Further, they clearly feel emboldened and unchecked by your principals and executives. We will not employ people who seek to undermine and resist the people’s business. The exceptional education of our children is our highest priority, not begging forgiveness from people who have underperformed.In light of the open warfare launched by the union, with the tacit support of leadership, changes that might have been unnecessary before now become imperative. As our employee, I encourage you to use your best judgment in preparing a list of positions in which a change in personnel would be beneficial to our kids, and would likewise help the union see the wisdom in cooperation rather than conflict.
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Can you please ask the Superintendent to provide us any information he has about WPEA membership and command structure?
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Now, a resident relatively new to this town (with no kids in the schools), Jameson Dion, has obtained video footage of the WPEA’s recent meeting (CORRECTION 2/1 – this meeting was open to all teachers, not just WPEA), and is promising to post it online. He already posted a short segment of the video online as a ‘teaser’ of what’s to come. A screenshot is included below, but please note – the yellow markups are MY doing…Dion posted this unaltered, so you could see the face of the person speaking as well as the names and faces of some of the people joining the Zoom call and shown at the top (and note, he posted an actual video segment, not a still photo).
As expected, Third Future Schools has notified the district of their intent to submit a charter application. We expect the board to quickly approve this, and to enter into a facility usage agreement to give them either the Columbine or Gateway school buildings.
High School parent Bridget Curran has a child in the ‘Civil Disobedience’ class in the high school. The BOE gave the teacher an ultimatum, remove the reading of the book “Between the World and Me” or the class would be eliminated completely. The teacher refused, the class is gone. We’ve submitted a CORA request for emails related to this.
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
Amazon
Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone)
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH”
Most of these board members are relatively new to town. Us that have been here a long time remember days not so long ago, when the Middle School roof was leaking. Trash cans were placed in classrooms to catch the drips. The district had no money for a new roof. I recall sitting in on a presentation by Superintendent Bowman at the time…he outlined the expenses on staff, district-wide, at a very detailed level. He convinced me the district was operating as lean as it could be…and yet…there was still no money for a new roof. In the spring of 2016, voters surprisingly stepped up to help! We passed a 1.09% sales tax coupled with a property tax reduction! This has made a huge difference to our schools, and yes, the Middle School got their new roof. 🙂
This current school board has been completely reckless with spending and an insult to taxpayers who deserve more from our elected officials. Let’s look at some examples.
The board spent around $100k of district money to bring Merit Academy into the district. The feasibility study for the middle school cost our district $51,596.53. Caplan and Ernest, lawyers brought on solely for closing the deal with Merit, cost us $32,268.50. Brad Miller incurred some uncertain amount of legal fees until he stepped away from the deal at the end (his legal fees for the first five months of 2022 were about $66k and he was very involved with this beginning in January). The board was not required to give Merit any of the sales tax revenue…they could have withheld enough of that sales tax revenue to reimburse the district for expenses incurred bringing in Merit.
Miller’s legal advice to the board led to them violating Open Meetings Law in January, leading to a preliminary injunction and subsequent legal fees incurred by defending themselves in court. The exact cost is unknown, as Miller did not invoice separately for this court case and he redacts details from the invoices we request through CORA.
In June, Illingworth called for a special board meeting, where they decided to remove Superintendent Neal from the district. Having no cause for doing so, it cost the district $275k to break his contract (plus whatever legal fees were incurred by Miller for this).
Having put in place two very competent co-superintendents, Del Garrick and Tina Cassens, the board then proceeded to hire a new temporary interim superintendent, Ken Witt. Which on the surface is not necessarily financially bad, this board found a way to really screw taxpayers over on this one. They’re paying Witt an annual rate of $155k, plus a $500 car allowance and $100 cell phone allowance. The contract makes it very difficult to remove Witt, as doing so would require 120 day notice or comparable financial compensation! To top it all off, Witt is allowed to keep working at ERBOCES, where is also being paid $155k, gets a $500 car allowance, and a cell phone provided to him. Taxpayers are paying Witt more than $310k to work two fulltime jobs. You can read Witt’s contract with Woodland Park here, or read his ERBOCES contract here (that contract has been extended). Our district alone is paying a full time salary to someone that’s barely working here part time.
Mike Miles, the founder of the Third Future network of charter schools in Texas and Colorado, appears to be considering opening another charter school, this one in Woodland Park. On Saturday 1/15, Illingworth and Witt gave him tours of several district buildings – Columbine Elementary, Gateway Elementary, and the Middle School (well, what’s left of it after it was carved up for Merit Academy). Board President Rusterholtz was unaware of this and no announcement was made, and it was only through keen observation by community members that we were even made aware of it.
His two local schools are Coperni 2 and Coperni 3, both in Colorado Springs. Witt helped bring Coperni 2 to that district through his work at ERBOCES (though back then it was called Colorado Digital BOCES).
Check out this very well-written article about yesterday’s board meeting. Goes into a lot of detail…you’ll be hearing much more about this in the coming weeks!
There’s a new student-led group formed, the Woodland Park Student Alliance (Instagram). Check them out!
Also, you can read the students’ latest update at their change.org petition.
Director Illingworth views these kids as pawns, being used as part of a phantom union-led campaign. He couldn’t be further from the truth…I know some of those kids, and this is entirely their own effort. I also think any parent of teenagers knows that the stuff these kids are doing is not something any adult could direct…these young adults are free thinkers and should be admired for the strength and courage they’re exhibiting.
School board controversies are nothing new in Colorado, and I believe that by studying what has happened elsewhere in the state, we can gain some insight into where our school board may be heading, and what things to watch out for. That’s where this article in the Boulder Weekly from back in 2015 is helpful. It talks a lot about what happened in Thompson School District, but also Jefferson County and Douglas County. Our school district has one special aspect though…the board is united and has put in place a Superintendent who will join them (or even lead them?) in their reformist goals.
Note the one common element in all of these is Brad Miller (and to a lesser extent, his associate Bryce Carlson). If you didn’t already know, the first thing our board did when elected in 2021 was to hire Brad Miller, and he’s been an active participant ever since.